Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola Page A

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