either asleep or helpless from weakness.

He stretched his hand out toward a bag. In doing so, he kept his eyes
on the dying man, so that his hand missed the bag twice.

There was a creaking on the floor above, and both the man and I
trembled. A door slammed. He rose as if to keep back an exclamation.

He opened the bag slowly, and I, no longer myself, I was afraid that he
would not have time.

He drew a package out of the bag. It made a slight sound. When he saw
the roll of banknotes in his hand, I observed the extraordinary gleam
on his face. All the sentiments of love were there, adoration,
mysticism, and also brutal love, a sort of supernatural ecstasy and the
gross satisfaction that was already tasting immediate joys. Yes, all
the loves impressed themselves for a moment on the profound humanity of
this thief's face.

Some one was waiting for him behind the half-open door. I saw an arm
beckoning to him.

He went out on tiptoe, first slowly, then quickly.

I am an honest man, and yet I held my breath along with him. I
/understood/ him. There is no use finding excuses for myself. With a
horror and a joy akin to his, I was an accomplice in his robbery.

All thefts are induced by passion, even that one, which was cowardly
and vulgar. Oh, his look of inextinguishable love for the treasure
suddenly snatched up. All offences, all crimes are outrages
accomplished in the image of the immense desire for theft, which is the
very essence and form of our naked soul.

Does that mean that we must absolve criminals, and that punishment is
an injustice? No, we must protect ourselves. Since society rests upon
honesty, we must punish criminals to reduce them to impotence, and
above all to strike them with terror, and halt others on the threshold
of evil deeds. But once the crime is established, we must not look for
excuses for it. We run the danger then of always finding excuses. We
must condemn it in advance, by virtue of a cold principle. Justice
should be as cold as steel.

But justice is not a virtue, as its name seems to indicate. It is an
organisation the virtue of which is to be feelingless. It does not aim
at expiation. Its function is to establish warning examples, to make
of the criminal a thing to frighten off others.

Nobody, nothing has the right to exact expiation. Besides, no one can
exact it. Vengeance is too remote from the act and falls, so to speak,
upon another person. Expiat