and she wished to keep it as a relic at once 
horrible and dear—and she took possession of 
the nail and the cord. 
At last, at last, all was over. There was 
nothing more to do but to go back to work 
even more eagerly than was my custom, so as 
to drive away, little by little, this tiny corpse 
which haunted the halls of my brain, and 
whose phantom with its great fixed eyes wore 
me out. But the next day I received a packet of 
letters, some from the tenants in my own 
house, some from next door; one from the first 
floor, another from the second, another from 
the third, and so on; some of them written in a 
half-jesting style as if seeking to disguise un-
der the cloak of frivolity the sincerity of their 
request; others dully shameless and misspelt, 
but all of the same purport, namely, to obtain 
from me a piece of the fatal, the happiness-
conferring cord. Among the signatories there 
were, I must say, more women than men, but 
not all, you may believe it, belonged to the 
lowest class or even to the vulgar. I have kept 
these letters. 
And then, of a sudden, light broke in my 
brain; I understood why the mother was so 
anxious to take away the cord, and by what 
commerce she proposed to console herself.