imperfections or rather because of these very imperfections,she possessed the sad and irresistible charm which is given to certain creatures privileged by misfortune, and around whom there floats an atmosphere of something irreparable. Her childhood and her early youth were periods of illness and were marked by some disquieting nervous fits. But it was hoped that marriage, in modifying the conditions of her existence, would restore her health which the physicians believed was suffering only from an excessive sensitiveness. It was not so at all. Marriage, on the contrary, only developed the morbid tendencies that were in her, and her sensitiveness was heightened to such a degree that, among other alarming symptoms, my poor mother could not stand the slightest odor, without being thrown into a fit, which always ended in a swoon. Of what did she suffer? Why these melancholic fits, these prostrations, which left her huddled up on the lounge for entire days, motionless and sullen like an old paralytic? Why these tears which would suddenly choke her throat to suffocation and for hours roll from her eyes in burning streams? Why this disgust with everything, which nothing could overcome: neither distractions nor prayers? She could not tell, for she herself did not know. . . Of the causes of her physical ailments, her mental tortures, her hallucinations which filled her heart and brains with a passionate desire to die, she knew nothing. She knew not why one evening as she sat in front of the glowing fireplace, she was suddenly seized with a horrible temptation to roll on the fire grate, to deliver her body over to the kisses of the flame which called her, fascinated her, sang to her hymns of unknown love. Nor did she know why on another day, while taking a stroll in the country and noticing a man walking in a half-mowed meadow with his scythe on the shoulder, she ran to-
