them up, all these lamentable, bewildered, maimed people; those who had wings and who are now crawling on all fours; those who scrape the earth with their nails and feed on their own excrements! Why, you yourself . . . a minute ago looked at Juliette with ecstasy . . . you were ready to do anything for a kiss from her. . . . Don't deny it, I saw you. . . . Oh! well, let's go out; that's enough, I can't work any more."
He arose and paced across the studio in agitation. Gesticulating and angry, he upset the chairs and pasteboards, ripped some of his sketches with a kick. I thought he was going mad. His bloodshot eyes rolled wildly; he was pale, and the words were coming out of his drawn-up mouth in a violent jumble.
"For men to be born of woman . . . men! . . . How irrational! For men to be conceived in an impure womb! . . . For men to gorge themselves with woman's vices, with her imbecile, ferocious appetites, to have sucked the sap of life from her nefarious breasts! Mother! . . . Ah! yes, mother! . . . Divinized mother, eh? Mother who creates us, sick and wasted race that we are, who stifles the man in the child and hurls us nailless and toothless, stupid and tamed, upon the bedstead of a mistress and the nuptial bed! . . ."
Lirat stopped for a moment; he was choking. Then, bringing his hands together and knotting his crisp fingers in the air, as if gripping an imaginary neck, he shouted madly, terribly:
"This is what should be done with them, all of them, all of them! . . . Do you understand? . . . eh . . . tell me? . . . All of them! . . ."
And he began pacing back and forth again, swearing, stamping his feet. But the last shout of anger had evidently relieved him.
"Come now, my dear Lirat, calm yourself," I said
