And this image of those two with
the key in the studio seemed to me a most monstrous conception of
fanaticism, of a perfectly horrible aberration. For who could
mistake the state that made Jose Ortega the figure he was,
inspiring both pity and fear? I could not deny that I understood,
not the full extent but the exact nature of his suffering. Young
as I was I had solved for myself that grotesque and sombre
personality. His contact with me, the personal contact with (as he
thought) one of the actual lovers of that woman who brought to him
as a boy the curse of the gods, had tipped over the trembling
scales. No doubt I was very near death in the "grand salon" of the
Maison Doree, only that his torture had gone too far. It seemed to
me that I ought to have heard his very soul scream while we were
seated at supper. But in a moment he had ceased to care for me. I
was nothing. To the crazy exaggeration of his jealousy I was but
one amongst a hundred thousand. What was my death? Nothing. All
mankind had possessed that woman. I knew what his wooing of her
would be: Mine--or Dead.
All this ought to have had the clearness of noon-day, even to the
veriest idiot that ever lived; and Therese was, properly speaking,
exactly that.
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