ty of some kind of act which would fall
under the law if it were discovered?

ADOLPHE. Yes, I believe that is true, but no evil act escapes
being punished by one's own conscience at least. [Rises and
unbuttons his coat] And--nobody is really good who has not erred.
[Breathing heavily] For in order to know how to forgive, one must
have been in need of forgiveness--I had a friend whom we used to
regard as a model man. He never spoke a hard word to anybody; he
forgave everything and everybody; and he suffered insults with a
strange satisfaction that we couldn't explain. At last, late in
life, he gave me his secret in a single word: I am a penitent! [He
sits down again.]

(HENRIETTE remains silent, looking at him with surprise.)

ADOLPHE. [As if speaking to himself] There are crimes not
mentioned in the Criminal Code, and these are the worse ones, for
they have to be punished by ourselves, and no judge could be more
severe than we are against our own selves.

HENRIETTE. [After a pause] Well, that friend of yours, did he find
peace?

ADOLPHE. After endless self-torture he reached a certain degree of
composure, but life had never any real pleasures to offer him. He
never dared to accept any kind of distinction; he never dared to
feel himself entitled to a kind word or even well-earned praise:
in a word, he could never quite forgive himself.

HENRIETTE. Never? What had he done then?

ADOLPHE. He had wished the life out of his father. And when his
father suddenly died, the son imagined himself to have killed him.
Those imaginations were regarded as signs of some mental disease,
and he was sent to an asylum. From this he was discharged after a
time as wholly recovered--as they put it. But the sense of guilt
remained with him, and so he continued to punish himself for his
evil thoughts.

HENRIETTE. Are you sure the evil will cannot kill?

ADOLPHE. You mean in some mystic way?

HENRIETTE. As you please. Let it go at mystic. In my own family--I
am sure that my mother and my sisters killed my father with their
hatred. You see, he had the awful idea that he must oppose all our
tastes and inclinations. Wherever he discovered a natural gift, he
tried to root it out. In that way he aroused a resistance that
accumulated until it became like an electrical battery charged
with hatred. At last it grew so powerful that he languished away,
became depolarised, lost his will-power, and, in the end, came to
wish himself dead.

A