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has already faded. I would not have been in the least indignant if the Judge had pointed a menacing finger at me and said:
    'You killed her...'
    For it is true. Only, in her case, I didn't know it. If I had suddenly been asked:
    'Do you love your wife?'
    I should have answered with perfect candour:
    'But, of course!'
    Because it is understood that one loves one's wife. Because that is as far as I could see. It is understood also that one loves one's children. Everyone kept saying:
    'The next one will be a fine big boy.'
    And I let myself be beguiled by this idea of having a fine big boy. It pleased my mother too.
    I killed her because of this idea of having a fine big boy which they had put into my head and which I finally came to believe was my own wish.
    When Jeanne had a miscarriage after her first baby, I was a little worried.
    'It happens to every woman ...' her father said. 'You'll see, after you've had a few more years practice ...'
    'She isn't strong...'
    'Don't you know that the women who seem the most delicate are usually the toughest. Look at your mama .. .'
    So I went on. I said to myself that Dr Marchandeau was older than I, had more experience and that in consequence he must be right.
    A fine big boy, very big, to the tune of at least twelve pounds, for I weighed twelve pounds when I was born.
    Jeanne never said a word. She would follow in my mother's wake around the house.
    'Can't I help you, Mama?'
    I was out on my big motor-cycle all day, visiting patients, fishing. But I did not drink. I was just barely unfaithful to Jeanne.
    We spent the evenings together, the three or the four of us. Then we would go upstairs to bed. I used to say to Jeanne jokingly:
    'Shall we make that son tonight?'
    She would smile shyly. She was very shy.
    She became pregnant again. Everybody was enchanted and predicted the famous twelve-pound boy. As for me, I gave her tonics, hypodermics.
    'The midwife is worth more than all those damn surgeons!' my father-in-law kept saying.
    When it became necessary to resort to forceps, they sent for me. The sweat poured off my eyelids so that I could hardly see. My father-in-law was there, running back and forth like a little dog who has lost the scent.
    'You'll see - everything will be all right ... ' he kept saying.
    Well, I had the child. An enormous baby girl who weighed just under twelve pounds. But the mother died two hours later, without even a look of reproach, murmuring:
    'How stupid that I'm not stronger.. .'
     
     

Chapter Three
    During my wife's last pregnancy, I had intercourse with Laurette. If you count at least one drunkard to a village, a 'man who drinks' to every family, is there, I wonder, a single village at home that is without a girl like Laurette?
    She worked as chambermaid at the mayor's. She was a good sort, really, and possessed the most amazing frankness, which many people would have called cynicism. Her mother was the priest's housekeeper, but that did not prevent Laurette from going to him to confess her sins.
    Shortly after my installation at Ormois, she walked calmly into my office, like an old habitué.
    'I just came - I always do, from time to time - to make sure there's nothing the matter with me,' she explained, pulling up her skirts and removing her white drawers, which were stretched across a pair of plump round buttocks. 'Didn't the old doctor tell you about me?'
    He had told me about most of his patients but had forgotten, or voluntarily neglected, to mention her. Yet she was one of his regular patients. Of her own accord, her skirt rolled up to her waist, she stretched out on the leather-covered couch I used for my examinations - and, with visible satisfaction, pulled up her knees and separated her large milk-white thighs. One felt that she woud have been perfectly happy to keep that pose all day.
    Laurette never missed a chance of sleeping with a man.
    She confessed that on certain days, when she foresaw this possibility, she went without drawers in order