on recognizing
me. But Rodenard talked on, engrossed in his theme to the exclusion of
all else.

"Monsieur le Marquis," he was saying, "is a gentleman whom it is,
indeed, an honour to serve--"

A scream burst from him with the last word, for the lash of my whip had
burnt a wheal upon his well-fed sides.

"It is an honour that shall be yours no more, you dog!" I cried.

He leapt high into the air as my whip cut him again. He swung round, his
face twisted with pain, his flabby cheeks white with fear, and his eyes
wild with anger, for as yet the full force of the situation had not been
borne in upon him. Then, seeing me there, and catching something of the
awful passion that must have been stamped upon my face, he dropped on
his knees and cried out something that I did not understand for I was
past understanding much just then.

The lash whistled through the air again and caught him about the
shoulders. He writhed and roared in his anguish of both flesh and
spirit. But I was pitiless. He had ruined my life for me with his
talking, and, as God lived, he should pay the only price that it lay in
his power to pay--the price of physical suffering. Again and again my
whip hissed about his head and cut into his soft white flesh,
whilst roaring for mercy he moved and rocked on his knees before me.
Instinctively he approached me to hamper my movements, whilst I moved
back to give my lash the better play. He held out his arms and joined
his fat hands in supplication, but the lash caught them in its sinuous
tormenting embrace, and started a red wheal across their whiteness.
He tucked them into his armpits with a scream, and fell prone upon the
ground.

Then I remember that some of my men essayed to restrain me, which to my
passion was as the wind to a blaze. I cracked my whip about their heads,
commanding them to keep their distance lest they were minded to share
his castigation. And so fearful an air must I have worn, that, daunted,
they hung back and watched their leader's punishment in silence.

When I think of it now, I take no little shame at the memory of how I
beat him. It is, indeed, with deep reluctance and yet deeper shame that
I have brought myself to write of it. If I offend you with this
account of that horsewhipping, let necessity be my apology; for the
horsewhipping itself I have, unfortunately, no apology, save the blind
fury that obsessed me--which is no apology at all.

Upon the morrow I repented me alread