"I had to take the necessary steps to prevent this alleged suicide from getting known, to see the commissary of police and the "doctor of the dead." I had to preside at the funeral ceremonies, to receive the guests and act as chief mourner. And always, always, he was present to me, with the dagger in his breast, writing the lines that had saved me, and looking at me, while his lips moved. Ah, begone, begone, abhorred phantom! Yes! I have done it; yes! I have killed you; yes! it was just. You know well that it was just. Why are you still here now? Ah! I will live; I will forget. If I could only cease to think of you for one day, only one day, just to breathe, and walk, and see the sky, without your image returning to haunt my poor head which is racked by this hallucination, and troubled? My God! have pity on me. I did not ask for this dreadful fate; it is Thou that hast sent it to me. Why dost Thou punish me? Oh, my God, have pity on me!"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Bourget
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Paul Bourget
Paul Charles Joseph Bourget (2 September 1852 – 25 December 1935) was a French novelist and critic.
40 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Paul Bourget →
Related Quotes
"There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contemp…"
"The forests have taught man liberty."
"I once spoke to my aunt of the vow I had taken, the solemn promise I had made to myself that I would discover the mur…"
"I was suddenly carried away by rage to the point of losing all control over my frenzy. "Ah!" I cried, "since you will…"
"I seized the sheet of paper; the lines were written upon it in characters rather larger than usual. How it shook in m…"
"Was I saved? Was I lost? All depended on the moment at which somebody might go into my stepfather's room. If my mothe…"
"The story he told me was "per sfogarsi," as Bayle loved to say; his idea was that I would not discover the real hero.…"
"Is there any God, any justice, is there either good or evil? None, none, none, none! There is nothing but a pitiless …"
"You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting…"
"La plus cruelle vengeance d'une femme est quelquefois de nous rester fidèle."