this scamp.

Had not Phillis herself condemned him?

To tell the truth, she had added that Providence or justice should be
his executor, but this was the scruple of a simple conscience, formed in
a narrow environment, to which influence he would not submit.

Had he these scruples, this old man who coldly, and merely for the
interest of so much a hundred on a dot, advised him to hasten the death
of a woman by drunkenness, and that of an infant in any way he pleased?

When he reached this conclusion he stopped, and asked himself whether he
were mad to pursue this idea; then immediately, to get rid of it, he set
to work, which absorbed him for a certain time, but not so long a time
as at first.

Then, finding that he could not control his will, he turned his thoughts
to Caffie.

It was only too evident that if he had carried out the idea of
strangling Caffie, all the difficulties against which he had struggled,
and which would overwhelm him, if not the following day, at least in a
few days, would have disappeared immediately.

No more sheriffs, no more creditors. What a deliverance!

Repose, the possibility of passing examinations with a calm spirit that
the fever of material troubles would not disturb--in this condition he
felt his success was assured.

And his experiments! He would run no danger of seeing them rudely
interrupted. His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious
culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the
second-hand dealer's. He continued this train of thought to the results
that he desired for him, glory; for humanity, the cure of one, and
perhaps two, of the most terrible maladies with which it was afflicted.

The question was simple:

On one side, Caffie;

On the other side, humanity and science;

An old rascal who deserved twenty deaths, and who would, anyhow, die
naturally in a short time;

And humanity, science, which would profit by a discovery of which he
would be the author.

He saw that the perspiration stood out on his hands, and he felt it run
down his neck.

Why this weakness? From horror of the crime, the possibility of which he
admitted? Or from fear of seeing his experiments destroyed?

He would reflect, think about it, be upon his guard.

He had told Phillis that intelligent men, before engaging in an action,
weigh the pro and con.

Against Caffie's death he saw nothing.

For, on the contrary, everything combined.

If he ha