The following morning, Laurent awoke fresh and fit. He had slept well.
The cold air entering by the open window, whipped his sluggish blood. He
had no clear recollection of the scenes of the previous day, and had it
not been for the burning sensation at his neck, he might have thought
that he had retired to rest after a calm evening.
But the bite Camille had given him stung as if his skin had been branded
with a red-hot iron. When his thoughts settled on the pain this gash
caused him, he suffered cruelly. It seemed as though a dozen needles
were penetrating little by little into his flesh.
He turned down the collar of his shirt, and examined the wound in a
wretched fifteen sous looking-glass hanging against the wall. It formed
a red hole, as big as a penny piece. The skin had been torn away,
displaying the rosy flesh, studded with dark specks. Streaks of blood
had run as far as the shoulder in thin threads that had dried up. The
bite looked a deep, dull brown colour against the white skin, and was
situated under the right ear. Laurent scrutinised it with curved back
and craned neck, and the greenish mirror gave his face an atrocious
grimace.
Satisfied with his examination, he had a thorough good wash, saying to
himself that the wound would be healed in a few days. Then he dressed,
and quietly repaired to his office, where he related the accident in an
affected tone of voice. When his colleagues had read the account in the
newspapers, he became quite a hero. During a whole week the clerks at
the Orleans Railway had no other subject of conversation: they were all
proud that one of their staff should have been drowned. Grivet never
ceased his remarks on the imprudence of adventuring into the middle
of the Seine, when it was so easy to watch the running water from the
bridges.
Laurent retained a feeling of intense uneasiness. The decease of Camille
had not been formally proved. The husband of Thérèse was indeed dead,
but the murderer would have liked to have found his body, so as to
obtain a certificate of death. The day following the accident, a
fruitless search had been made for the corpse of the drowned man. It was
thought that it had probably gone to the bottom of some hole near the
banks of the islands, and men were actively dragging the Seine to get
the reward.
In the meantime Laurent imposed on himself the task of passing each
morning by the Morgue, on the way to his office. He had made up his mind
to attend to the business himself. Notwithstanding that his heart rose
with repugnance, notwithstanding the shudders that sometimes ran through
his frame, for over a week he went and examined the countenance of all
the drowned persons extended on the slabs.
When he entered the place an unsavoury odour, an odour of freshly washed
flesh, disgusted him and a chill ran over his skin: the dampness of the
walls seemed to add weight to his clothing, which hung more heavily on
his shoulders. He went straight to the glass separating the spectators
from the corpses, and with his pale face against it, looked. Facing him
appeared rows of grey slabs, and upon them, here and there, the naked
bodies formed green and yellow, white and red patches. While some
retained their natural condition in the rigidity of death, others seemed
like lumps of bleeding and decaying meat. At the back, against the wall,
hung some lamentable rags, petticoats and trousers, puckered against the
bare plaster. Laurent at first only caught sight of the wan ensemble of
stones and walls, spotted with dabs of russet and black formed by
the clothes and corpses. A melodious sound of running water broke the
silence.
Little by little he distinguished the bodies, and went from one to the
other. It was only the drowned that interested him. When several human
forms were there, swollen and blued by the water, he looked at them
eagerly, seeking to recognise Camille. Frequently, the flesh on the
faces had gone away by strips, the bones had burst through the mellow
skins, the visages were like lumps of boned, boiled beef. Laurent
hesitated; he looked at the corpses, endeavouring to discover the lean
body of his victim. But all the drowned were stout. He saw enormous
stomachs, puffy thighs, and strong round arms. He did not know what to
do. He stood there shuddering before those greenish-looking rags, which
seemed like mocking him, with their horrible wrinkles.
One morning, he was seized with real terror. For some moments, he had
been looking at a corpse, taken from the water, that was small in build
and atrociously disfigured. The flesh of this drowned person was so soft
and broken-up that the running water washing it, carried it away bit by
bit. The jet falling on the face, bored a hole to the left of the nose.
And, abruptly, the nose became flat, the lips were detached, showing the
white teeth. The head of the drowned man burst out laughing.
Each time Laurent fancied he recognised Camille, he felt a burning
sensation in the heart. He ardently desired to find the body of his
victim, and he was seized with cowardice when he imagined it before him.
His visits to the Morgue filled him with nightmare, with shudders that
set him panting for breath. But he shook off his fear, taxing himself
with being childish, when he wished to be strong. Still, in spite of
himself, his frame revolted, disgust and terror gained possession of his
being, as soon as ever he found himself in the dampness, and unsavoury
odour of the hall.
When there were no drowned persons on the back row of slabs, he breathed
at ease; his repugnance was not so great. He then became a simple
spectator, who took strange pleasure in looking death by violence in the
face, in its lugubriously fantastic and grotesque attitudes. This sight
amused him, particularly when there were women there displaying their
bare bosoms. These nudities, brutally exposed, bloodstained, and in
places bored with holes, attracted and detained him.
Once he saw a young woman of twenty there, a child of the people, broad
and strong, who seemed asleep on the stone. Her fresh, plump, white form
displayed the most delicate softness of tint. She was half smiling, with
her head slightly inclined on one side. Around her neck she had a black
band, which gave her a sort of necklet of shadow. She was a girl who had
hanged herself in a fit of love madness.
Each morning, while Laurent was there, he heard behind him the coming
and going of the public who entered and left.
The morgue is a sight within reach of everybody, and one to which
passers-by, rich and poor alike, treat themselves. The door stands open,
and all are free to enter. There are admirers of the scene who go out of
their way so as not to miss one of these performances of death. If the
slabs have nothing on them, visitors leave the building disappointed,
feeling as if they had been cheated, and murmuring between their teeth;
but when they are fairly well occupied, people crowd in front of them
and treat themselves to cheap emotions; they express horror, they joke,
they applaud or whistle, as at the theatre, and withdraw satisfied,
declaring the Morgue a success on that particular day.
Laurent soon got to know the public frequenting the place, that mixed
and dissimilar public who pity and sneer in common. Workmen looked in
on their way to their work, with a loaf of bread and tools under their
arms. They considered death droll. Among them were comical companions
of the workshops who elicited a smile from the onlookers by making witty
remarks about the faces of each corpse. They styled those who had been
burnt to death, coalmen; the hanged, the murdered, the drowned, the
bodies that had been stabbed or crushed, excited their jeering vivacity,
and their voices, which slightly trembled, stammered out comical
sentences amid the shuddering silence of the hall.
There came persons of small independent means, old men who were thin and
shrivelled-up, idlers who entered because they had nothing to do, and
who looked at the bodies in a silly manner with the pouts of peaceful,
delicate-minded men. Women were there in great numbers: young
work-girls, all rosy, with white linen, and clean petticoats, who
tripped along briskly from one end of the glazed partition to the other,
opening great attentive eyes, as if they were before the dressed shop
window of a linendraper. There were also women of the lower orders
looking stupefied, and giving themselves lamentable airs; and
well-dressed ladies, carelessly dragging their silk gowns along the
floor.
On a certain occasion Laurent noticed one of the latter standing at a
few paces from the glass, and pressing her cambric handkerchief to her
nostrils. She wore a delicious grey silk skirt with a large black lace
mantle; her face was covered by a veil, and her gloved hands seemed
quite small and delicate. Around her hung a gentle perfume of violet.
She stood scrutinising a corpse. On a slab a few paces away, was
stretched the body of a great, big fellow, a mason who had recently
killed himself on the spot by falling from a scaffolding. He had a broad
chest, large short muscles, and a white, well-nourished body; death had
made a marble statue of him. The lady examined him, turned him round
and weighed him, so to say, with her eyes. For a time, she seemed quite
absorbed in the contemplation of this man. She raised a corner of her
veil for one last look. Then she withdrew.
At moments, bands of lads arrived--young people between twelve and
fifteen, who leant with their hands against the glass, nudging one
another with their elbows, and making brutal observations.
At the end of a week, Laurent became disheartened. At night he dreamt
of the corpses he had seen in the morning. This suffering, this daily
disgust which he imposed on himself, ended by troubling him to such a
point, that he resolved to pay only two more visits to the place. The
next day, on entering the Morgue, he received a violent shock in the
chest. Opposite him, on a slab, Camille lay looking at him, extended on
his back, his head raised, his eyes half open.
The murderer slowly approached the glass, as if attracted there,
unable to detach his eyes from his victim. He did not suffer; he merely
experienced a great inner chill, accompanied by slight pricks on his
skin. He would have thought that he would have trembled more violently.
For fully five minutes, he stood motionless, lost in unconscious
contemplation, engraving, in spite of himself, in his memory, all the
horrible lines, all the dirty colours of the picture he had before his
eyes.
Camille was hideous. He had been a fortnight in the water. His face
still appeared firm and rigid; the features were preserved, but the skin
had taken a yellowish, muddy tint. The thin, bony, and slightly tumefied
head, wore a grimace. It was a trifle inclined on one side, with the
hair sticking to the temples, and the lids raised, displaying the dull
globes of the eyes. The twisted lips were drawn to a corner of the mouth
in an atrocious grin; and a piece of blackish tongue appeared
between the white teeth. This head, which looked tanned and drawn out
lengthwise, while preserving a human appearance, had remained all the
more frightful with pain and terror.
The body seemed a mass of ruptured flesh; it had suffered horribly.
You could feel that the arms no longer held to their sockets; and the
clavicles were piercing the skin of the shoulders. The ribs formed black
bands on the greenish chest; the left side, ripped open, was gaping
amidst dark red shreds. All the torso was in a state of putrefaction.
The extended legs, although firmer, were daubed with dirty patches. The
feet dangled down.
Laurent gazed at Camille. He had never yet seen the body of a drowned
person presenting such a dreadful aspect. The corpse, moreover, looked
pinched. It had a thin, poor appearance. It had shrunk up in its decay,
and the heap it formed was quite small. Anyone might have guessed
that it belonged to a clerk at 1,200 francs a year, who was stupid and
sickly, and who had been brought up by his mother on infusions. This
miserable frame, which had grown to maturity between warm blankets, was
now shivering on a cold slab.
When Laurent could at last tear himself from the poignant curiosity that
kept him motionless and gaping before his victim, he went out and begun
walking rapidly along the quay. And as he stepped out, he repeated:
“That is what I have done. He is hideous.”
A smell seemed to be following him, the smell that the putrefying body
must be giving off.
He went to find old Michaud, and told him he had just recognized Camille
lying on one of the slabs in the Morgue. The formalities were performed,
the drowned man was buried, and a certificate of death delivered.
Laurent, henceforth at ease, felt delighted to be able to bury his
crime in oblivion, along with the vexatious and painful scenes that had
followed it.