there in the torchlight, which had gone to plunge into
the town and grow darker among the dungeon-cells of the bedchambers,
there to hatch more forgetfulness in the gloom, more evil and misery,
or to breed unavailing generations who will be abortive at the age of
twenty!

The desire to do it gripped my body for a moment. I fell back, and I
went away, like the others.

It seems to me that, in not doing it, I did an evil deed.

For if the men who are to come free themselves instead of sinking in
the quicksands, if they consider, with lucidity and with the epic pity
it deserves, this age through which I go drowning, they would perhaps
have thanked me, even me! From those who will not see or know me, but
in whom for this sudden moment I want to hope, I beg pardon for not
doing it.

* * * * * *

In a corner where the neglected land is turning into a desert, and
which lies across my way home, some children are throwing stones at a
mirror which they have placed a few steps away as a target. They
jostle each other, shouting noisily; each of them wants the glory of
being the first to break it. I see the mirror again that I broke with
a brick at Buzancy, because it seemed to stand upright like a living
being! Next, when the fragment of solid light is shattered into
crumbs, they pursue with stones an old dog, whose wounded foot trails
like his tail. No one wants it any more; it is ready to be finished
off, and the urchins are improving the occasion. Limping, his
pot-hanger spine all arched, the animal hurries slowly, and tries
vainly to go faster than the pebbles.

The child is only a confused handful of confused and superficial
propensities. _Our_ deep instincts--there they are.

I scatter the children, and they withdraw into the shadows unwillingly,
and look at me with malice. I am distressed by this maliciousness,
which is born full-grown. I am distressed also by this old dog's lot.
They would not understand me if I acknowledged that distress; they
would say, "And you who've seen so many wounded and dead!" All the
same, there is a supreme respect for life. I am not slighting
intellect; but life is common to us along with poorer living things
than ourselves. He who kills an animal, however lowly it may be,
unless there is necessity, is an assassin.

At the crossing I meet Louise Verte, wandering about. She has gone
crazy. She continues to accost men, but they do not ev