This
wrinkle, which Laurent remembered having noticed on the convulsed face
of the drowned man, marked them all with a sign of vile relationship.
Laurent understood that he had taken too long a look at Camille at the
Morgue. The image of the drowned man had become deeply impressed on his
mind; and now, his hand, without his being conscious of it, never failed
to draw the lines of this atrocious face which followed him everywhere.
Little by little, the painter, who was allowing himself to fall back
on the divan, fancied he saw the faces become animated. He had five
Camilles before him, five Camilles whom his own fingers had powerfully
created, and who, by terrifying peculiarity were of various ages and of
both sexes. He rose, he lacerated the pictures and threw them outside.
He said to himself that he would die of terror in his studio, were he to
people it with portraits of his victim.
A fear had just come over him: he dreaded that he would no more be able
to draw a head without reproducing that of the drowned man. He wished to
ascertain, at once, whether he were master of his own hand. He placed a
white canvas on his easel; and, then, with a bit of charcoal, sketched
out a face in a few lines.
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