“I am a demon, prejudged and predestined, and the saint of the Place du Trône is possessed with me.”
“A saint, possessed!”
He wrung his hands insanely.
“Oh!” he cried—“but is it not a fate to which damnation were Paradise! For me, the gentle Aubriot, who in my material form had shrunk from killing a fly—for me to thus deluge an unhappy land with the blood of martyrs! But I have threshed my conscience with a knotted discipline, and I know—yes, monsieur, I know—what gained me my punishment. A cripple once begged of me a poor two sous. I hesitated, in that I had but the one coin on me, and my nostrils yearned for snuff. I hesitated, and the devil tripped up my feet. I gave the man the piece and asked him a sou in change. For so petty a trifle did I barter my salvation. But heaven was not to be deceived, and its vengeance followed me like a snake through the grass. Ah!” (he jumped erect) “but the blade fell within an ace of thy shoulder!”
This was disquieting enough, in all truth. Yet I took comfort from the thought that the madman could avail himself of no more murderous weapon than his hands.
“Now, M. Guillotin,” said I, “observe that it is characteristic of you to lie quiescent when you are put away for the night.”
“Nenni, nenni, nenni!” he answered. “That may have been before the hideous apotheosis of the instrument. Now, possessed as I am, I slash and cut at whoever comes in my way.”
Mon Dieu! but this was a wearisome lunatic! and I longed very ardently to be left peacefully to my own reflections. I came forward with a show of extreme fortitude.
“This demon of yourself,” I said—“you wish it to be exorcised, that the soil of France may grow green again?”
A fine self-sacrificial rapture illumined his wild face.