very day, my love for
you increases--though that would seem to be almost an impossibility.
Why should I not become a fatalist? Remember how, on the third day that
we ascended the Shlangenberg, I was moved to whisper in your ear: 'Say
but the word, and I will leap into the abyss.' Had you said it, I
should have leapt. Do you not believe me?"

"What stupid rubbish!" she cried.

"I care not whether it be wise or stupid," I cried in return. "I only
know that in your presence I must speak, speak, speak. Therefore, I am
speaking. I lose all conceit when I am with you, and everything ceases
to matter."

"Why should I have wanted you to leap from the Shlangenberg?" she said
drily, and (I think) with wilful offensiveness. "THAT would have been
of no use to me."

"Splendid!" I shouted. "I know well that you must have used the words
'of no use' in order to crush me. I can see through you. 'Of no use,'
did you say? Why, to give pleasure is ALWAYS of use; and, as for
barbarous, unlimited power--even if it be only over a fly--why, it is a
kind of luxury. Man is a despot by nature, and loves to torture. You,
in particular, love to do so."

I remember that at this moment she looked at me in a peculiar way. The
fact is that my face must have been expressing all the maze of
senseless, gross sensations which were seething within me. To this day
I can remember, word for word, the conversation as I have written it
down. My eyes were suffused with blood, and the foam had caked itself
on my lips. Also, on my honour I swear that, had she bidden me cast
myself from the summit of the Shlangenberg, I should have done it. Yes,
had she bidden me in jest, or only in contempt and with a spit in my
face, I should have cast myself down.

"Oh no! Why so? I believe you," she said, but in such a manner--in the
manner of which, at times, she was a mistress--and with such a note of
disdain and viperish arrogance in her tone, that God knows I could have
killed her.

Yes, at that moment she stood in peril. I had not lied to her about
that.

"Surely you are not a coward?" suddenly she asked me.

"I do not know," I replied. "Perhaps I am, but I do not know. I have
long given up thinking about such things."

"If I said to you, 'Kill that man,' would you kill him?"

"Whom?"

"Whomsoever I wish?"

"The Frenchman?"

"Do not ask me questions; return me answers. I repeat, whomsoever I
wish? I desire to see if you were speaking seriously just now."