But the sight of her breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her face.
"You're ugly when you're dead," she said in deliberate tones.
And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her jaw, in order to see how she would look.

Thus disfigured, she turned toward the count.
"Do look! My head'll be quite small, it will!" At this he grew vexed.
"You're mad; come to bed!" He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep, and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer.

It was some time ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was wont to leave him well-nigh stunned.

The joints of his fingers used to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only: "My God, my God, my God!" It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of that sin against which, though his damnation was certain, he felt powerless to strive.

When Nana returned she found him hidden beneath the bedclothes; he was haggard; he had dug his nails into his bosom, and his eyes stared upward as though in search of heaven.