Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XVIII. La Salpêtrière
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up the whole night talking about death in the
little saloon of his Bel Ami riding at her anchor off
Antibes harbour. He was afraid of death. He
said the thought of death was seldom out of his
mind. He wanted to know all about the various
poisons, their rapidity of action and their relative
painlessness. He was particularly insistent in
questioning me about death at sea. I told him
my belief that death at sea without a lifebelt was
a relatively easy death, with the lifebelt perhaps
the most terrible of all. I can see him now fixing
his sombre eyes on the lifebelts hung by the cabin
door and saying he would throw them overboard
next morning. I asked him if he meant to send
us to the bottom of the sea during our projected
cruise to Corsica. He sat silent for a while.
“No,” he said at last, he thought after all he
wanted to die in the arms of a woman. I told
him at the rate he was going he had a fair chance
to see his wish fulfilled. As I spoke Yvonne
woke up, asked half dazed for another glass of
champagne and fell asleep again, her head on his
lap. She was a ballet dancer, barely eighteen,
reared by the vicious caresses of some vieux
marcheur in the coulisses of the Grand Opera,
now helplessly drifting to total destruction on
board the Bel Ami in the lap of her terrible lover.
I knew that no lifebelt could save her, I knew she
would have refused it if I had offered it to her.
I knew she had given her heart as well as her
body to this insatiable male who had no use for
anything but her body. I knew what her fate
would be, it was not the first girl I had seen
asleep, her head on his lap. How far he was
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