"They have taken everything! They have taken everything ... everything ... everything ... everything! Even the Louis XVI cruet." While Madame was looking at the boxes as if she were looking at a dead child, Monsieur, scratching his neck, and rolling haggard eyes, moaned persistently in the far-away voice of a demented person: "Name of a dog! Ah! name of a dog! Name of a dog of name of a dog!" And Joseph, too, with atrocious grimaces, was exclaiming: "The cruet of Louis XVI! The cruet of Louis XVI! Oh! the bandits!" Then there was a minute of tragic silence, a long minute of prostration,--that silence of death, that prostration of beings and things, which follows the fracas of a terrible downfall, the thunder of a great cataclysm. And the lantern, swinging in Joseph's hands, cast a red, trembling, sinister gleam over the whole scene, over the dead faces and the empty boxes. I had come down, in response to Joseph's call, at the same time as the masters. In presence of this disaster, and in spite of the prodigious comicality of these faces, my first feeling was one of compassion. It seemed to me that this misfortune fell upon me too, and that I was one of the family, sharing its trials and sorrows. I should have liked to speak consoling words to Madame, whose dejected attitude it gave me pain to see. But this impression of solidarity or of servitude quickly vanished. In crime there is something violent, solemn, justiciary, religious, which frightens me, to be sure, but which also leaves in me--how shall I express it?--a feeling of admiration. No, not of admiration, since admiration is a moral feeling, a spiritual excitement, whereas that which I feel influences and excites only my flesh. It is like a brutal shock throughout my physical being, at once painful and delicious,--a sorrowful and swooning rape of my sex. It is curious, doubtless it is peculiar, perhaps it is horrible,--and I cannot explain the real cause of these strange and powerful sensations,--but in me every crime, especially murder, has secret relationships with love. Yes, indeed! A fine crime takes hold of me just as a fine man does. I must say that further reflection suddenly transformed into a hilarious gaiety, a childish content, that grave, atrocious, and powerful enjoyment of crime which succeeded the impulse to pity that at first so inappropriately startled my heart. I thought: