"Ah! the devil take me! It's all up with him."
The man, no doubt tumbling out of a carriage, had fallen with his face downwards, a couple of feet at the most from the metals. Nothing could be seen of his head but a crown of thick black hair. His legs were apart. His right arm lay as if dislocated, while his left was bent under his chest. He was very well attired in a big, blue cloth overcoat, neat boots, and fine linen. The body bore no trace of having been crushed, but a quantity of blood had run from the throat, and soiled the shirt collar.
"Some gentleman whom they've done for," tranquilly resumed Misard, after a few seconds' silent inspection. Then, turning towards Jacques, who stood motionless and thunderstruck, he continued:
"He must not be touched. It's forbidden. You will have to remain here, and watch over him, while I go to Barentin to tell the station-master about it."
He raised his lantern, and looked at a mile-post.
"Good!" said he. "Just at post 153." And, placing his lantern on the ground beside the corpse, he took himself off at his usual loitering gait.
Jacques, left by himself, did not move, but continued gazing at this inert mass that had fallen there, and which the uncertain light, just above the ground, only revealed indistinctly. The agitation that had made him rush forward, the horrible attraction that held him there, ended in this keen thought which burst from all his being: the other one, the man he had caught sight of with the knife in his hand had dared! He had gratified his desire! He had killed. Ah! what would he give not to be a coward, to be able to satisfy himself at last, to plunge in the knife! He, who had been tortured by this thirst for ten years!
In his fever, he felt contempt for himself, and admiration for the other; and, above all, he felt the necessity to gaze on the victim, the quenchless thirst to feast his eyes on this human remnant, this broken dancing-Jack, this limp rag, which the stab of a knife had made of a creature. What he dreamed of, the other had realised, and it was that. If he killed, he would have that on the ground. His heart beat fit to break. His prurience for murder became violent as concupiscence, at the sight of this tragic corpse. He took a step, approached nearer, after the manner of a child making himself familiar with an object he fears. Yes, he would dare, he would dare in his turn!
But a roar behind his back, made him spring aside. A train arrived which he had not heard, being so taken up with the contemplation of the body. He would have been crushed to pieces had not the warm steam and the formidable puffing of the engine warned him in time. The train flew past in its hurricane of noise, smoke, and flame. This one also carried a great many people. The flood of travellers continued streaming towards Havre, for the fête on the morrow. A child was flattening his nose against a window, looking out at the black country; profiles of men appeared, while a young woman, lowering one of the glasses, threw out a paper stained with butter and sugar. Already the joyous train was flying away in the distance, listless of the corpse its wheels had almost grazed. And the body continued lying there on its face, indistinctly lit up by the lantern, amidst the melancholy peacefulness of night.
Then Jacques had a desire to see the wound, while he was alone. But he hesitated, in the anxiety that if he touched the head, it would, perhaps, be noticed. He reckoned that Misard could not be back with the station-master before three-quarters of an hour; and as the minutes passed, he thought of this Misard, of this puny fellow, so slow, so calm, who also dared, who was killing as tranquilly as possible, with doses of poison. Then it was easy enough to kill? Everybody killed. He drew nearer the corpse, and the idea of looking at the wound stung him so sharply that he was burning all over. He wanted to see how it had been done, and what had run from it, to see the red hole! By carefully putting the head back into its position, nobody would know anything about it. But at the bottom of his hesitation was another fear which he had not owned, the dread of blood. He had still a quarter of an hour to himself, and he was on the point of making up his mind to look, when a slight sound beside him, made him start.