Alfred de Musset - Passion's evil

FANNY:

“Hai! Hai! The liquor burns! Hai! my entrails! How it picks me, how it pierces! AM I shall die! Vile and damned sorceress, you have me! You hold me. . ah!”

Gamiani, insensible to these cries of agony and torture, redoubled her fury. She broke, tore and revealed in streams of blood; but see how her eyes roll. Her members twist, her fingers crack. I no longer doubted that she drank and then given an ardent poison. Frightened, I threw myself to her aid. I broke down the doors in my violence. I gained entrance. Helas! Fanny was no more. Her arms and legs, horribly contorted, were still enlaced with those of Gamiani who still struggled, alone, with the dead.

I tried to separate them.

“Do you not see,” she said to me in a rattled voice, “that the poison torments me. . that my nerves are stretched to the breaking point. Go then. This woman belongs to me. Hai! Hai!”

“This is awful!” cried I, dumb-founded.

GAMIANI:

“Yes.” But I have known all the excesses of the senses. Fool! Can't you understand that there only remained for me to learn if, in the torture of poison, if, in the death agony of another woman mingled with my own, there was any possible sensuality. It is atrocious, do you hear? I die. . in a rage of pleasure. . in a rage of pain;. . I can stand no more!. . Heu. .!”

With that prolonged cry, wrung from the very depths of her bosom, the horrible fury fell dead on the cadaver.