"I have already said that I don't know, that I haven't seen the box, and that I did not take it," cried Diego, unable to longer contain himself, with an explosion of brutality, and shaking his head; and the sombre flame which lit up his face made him resemble the absentee. "Do you understand?"
The mother, pale as death, looked at George, to whom the look seemed to impart a similar color.
Seized with a fit of trembling impossible to hide, the elder brother said to the younger:
"Diego, leave the room."
"I'll leave when it pleases me," replied Diego insolently, shrugging his shoulders, without, however, looking his brother in the face.
Then a sudden exasperation seized George, one of those extreme exasperations which, in feeble and irresolute men, have such an excessive vehemence that they cannot manifest themselves by any external act, but cause to pass before the thwarted will flashes of criminal visions. The hatred between brothers, that odious hate which, since the creation, breeds secretly at the bottom of human nature to break out at the first discord, more ferocious than every other hate—that inexplicable hostility which exists, latent, between the males of the same blood, even though the customs and peace of the birthplace have created between them affectionate bonds; and, also, that horror which accompanies the execution or the thought of a crime, and which is perhaps only the vague sentiment of the law inscribed by secular heredity in the Christian conscience—all this surged confusedly in a sort of vertiginous whirl which, for a second, superseded all other sentiment in his soul, and gave him an aggressive impulse. The very aspect of Diego, his thick-set and sanguine body, his fallow head on the bull-like neck, the evident physical superiority of this robust, muscular fellow, the offence against his authority as the elder—all contributed to augment his fury. He would like to have had a prompt means of dominating, subjugating, felling this brute, without resistance and without a struggle. Instinctively he looked at his fists, those large, powerful fists, covered with a reddish down, which at dinner, employed in the service of a voracious appetite, had already caused him such a strong repulsion.
"Leave the room! Leave the room immediately!" he repeated in a higher and more commanding key; "or else ask my mother's pardon immediately."
He advanced towards Diego, his hand extended as if to grasp an arm.
"I do not permit anyone to give me orders," cried Diego, at last looking his elder brother in the face.
And, beneath his low forehead, his little gray eyes expressed a resentment which had been brooding for years.