lend
itself to any shade of sentiment or of moral terror. A man of energy and
even of violence, born to make war, to ravage conquered countries and to
massacre the vanquished, full of the savage instincts of the hunter and
the fighter, he scarcely took count of human life. Though he respected
the church through policy, he believed neither in God nor in the devil,
expecting consequently in another life neither chastisement nor
recompense for his acts. As his sole belief, he retained a vague
philosophy composed of all the ideas of the encyclopedists of the last
century; and he regarded religion as a moral sanction of the law, the
one and the other having been invented by men to regulate social
relations. To kill anyone in a duel, or in war, or in a quarrel, or by
accident, or for the sake of revenge, or even through bravado, would
have seemed to him an amusing and clever thing, and would not have left
more impression on his mind than a shot fired at a hare; but he had
experienced a profound emotion at the murder of this child. He had, in
the first place, perpetrated it in the distraction of an irresistible
gust of passion, in a sort of spiritual tempest that had overpowered his
reason. And he had cherished in his heart, cherished in his flesh,
cherished on his lips, cherished even to the very tips of his murderous
fingers, a kind of bestial love, as well as a feeling of crushing
horror, towards this little girl surprised by him and basely killed.
Every moment his thoughts returned to that horrible scene, and, though
he endeavored to drive away this picture from his mind, though he put it
aside with terror, with disgust, he felt it surging through his soul,
moving about in him, waiting incessantly for the moment to reappear.

Then, in the night, he was afraid, afraid of the shadow falling around
him. He did not yet know why the darkness seemed to seem frightful to
him; but he instinctively feared it, he felt that it was peopled with
terrors. The bright daylight did not lend itself to fears. Things and
beings were seen there, and so there were only to be met there natural
things and beings which could exhibit themselves in the light of day.
But the night, the unpenetrable night, thicker than walls, and empty,
the infinite night, so black, so vast, in which one might brush against
frightful things, the night when one feels that mysterious terror is
wandering, prowling about, appeared to him to conceal an unknown danger,
clo