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.”