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in crime, which, by its excess, tends to prove innocence. All is clear.
No doubt. I feared but one thing,--that they might run in different
directions, that they might invent some new lie, and thus deprive me of
material proof, and of the sorrowful joy of punishing, yes, of executing
them.
"And to surprise them more quickly, I started on tiptoe for the
dining-room, not through the parlor, but through the hall and the
children's rooms. In the first room slept the little boy. In the second,
the old nurse moved in her bed, and seemed on the point of waking, and
I wondered what she would think when she knew all. And pity for myself
gave me such a pang that I could not keep the tears back. Not to wake
the children, I ran lightly through the hall into my study. I dropped
upon the sofa, and sobbed. 'I, an honest man, I, the son of my parents,
who all my life long have dreamed of family happiness, I who have never
betrayed! . . . And here my five children, and she embracing a musician
because he has red lips! No, she is not a woman! She is a bitch, a dirty
bitch! Beside the chamber of the children, whom she had pretended to
love all her life! And then to think of what she wrote me! And how do
I know? Perhaps it has always been thus. Perhaps all these children,
supposed to be mine, are the children of my servants. And if I had
arrived to-morrow, she would have come to meet me with her coiffure,
with her corsage, her indolent and graceful movements (and I see her
attractive and ignoble features), and this jealous animal would have
remained forever in my heart, tearing it. What will the old nurse say?
And Gregor? And the poor little Lise? She already understands things.
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