"I know what you are going to say to me," resumed Jacques, with more vivacity. "You are going to say to me that you do not wish to be cured, and that my red hot iron will not even make your already too much bruised flesh cry out. I know, besides, what you think, for I see your anger and your disdain. You think that we are worth less than you, we who do not love, who do not weep; you think that we have made this world, this woman who causes you to suffer, that we are cowardly, cruel, and that our way of being young is more shameful than your love and your abasement. You are on the point of crying out to me, to me who live tranquilly in the same mud as yourself, that you are dying of shame, that I lack soul if I do not die with you. You are, perhaps, right: I ought to sob, to twist my arms. But I do not feel the need of weeping; I have not your woman's nerves, your violence or your delicacy of sensation. I comprehend that you suffer through me, through the rest, through all those who love without love, and I pity you, poor, grown up infant, because you appear to me to suffer so much from an affliction I know nothing about. If I cannot ascend to you, cannot expose myself to your shame and pain arising from excess of soul and excess of justice, I wish, at least, in order to cure you, to give you our cowardice and our cruelty, to tear out your heart and leave your breast empty. Then, you will walk upright in the path of youth." He had raised his voice; he grasped my hands strongly, almost with anger. This must be all Jacques' passion: a soulless passion, made up of logic and duty. Pale before him, my head half turned away, I smiled in contempt and anguish.