I would believe them if they consoled me and effaced death." With a manifest effort, as uncertain of himself as she was of herself, feeling his way, he replied: "They would efface it, perhaps, if you believed in them." She turned toward him and took one of his hands in both of hers.

She questioned him with inexorable patience, then she slipped to her knees before him, like a lifeless body, humbled herself in the dust, wrecked in the depths of despair, and implored him: "Oh, answer me! I should be so happy if you could answer me.

I feel as though you really could!" He bent over her, as if on the edge of an abyss of questioning: "Do you know what we are ?" he murmured.

"Everything we say, everything we think, everything we believe, is fictitious.

We know nothing.
Nothing is sure or solid." "You are wrong," she cried.