At this moment, Spy, having come out of his corner, was advancing toward me, shaking his back, dancing on his hind legs like those of a spider. And I looked at Spy persistently. I was thinking that Spy was the only creature that Juliette loved, that to kill Spy would be to inflict the greatest sorrow on Juliette! The dog raised its paws toward me and tried to get on my lap. He seemed to say:
"Even if you do suffer so much, I am not to blame for it. To avenge yourself on me—so small, so feeble, so trustful, would be cowardly. And then you think she really loves me so much! I amuse her as a plaything, I serve as a distraction for her for a moment and that is all. If you kill me now she will get another little dog like me this very evening, one whom she will call Spy as she did me and whom she will overwhelm with caresses as she did me, and nothing will be changed!"
I did not heed Spy any more than I heeded any of the voices that spoke within me whenever evil was drawing me on to commit some reprehensible deed.
Brutally, ferociously I seized the little dog by his hind legs.
"Here is what I am going to do, Mother Souchard!" I shouted. "Look!"
And hurling Spy into the air with all my force so that he turned over several times, I crashed his head against the corner of the fireplace. Blood streamed all over the looking-glass and the hangings, bits of brains stuck to the candlesticks and a torn-out eye fell on the carpet.
"What am I going to do, Mother Souchard?" I repeated, flinging the cadaver into the middle of the bed upon which a pool of blood appeared. "What am I going to do? Ha, Ha! You see this blood, this eye, these brains, this cadaver, this bed! Ha, Ha! Well, that's what I am going to do to Juliette, Mother Souchard! That's what I am going to do to Juliette, do you hear me, you old drunkard!"
"Ah! for the life of me!" Mother Souchard stammered out, terrified. "For the life of the good Lord, I...."
She did not finish. With bulging eyes, her mouth wide open and distorted into a horrible grimace, she was staring at the black body on the bed and at the blood absorbed by the bed clothes, the red stain on which was becoming purple and larger.