This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> [NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an entire meal of them. D.W.] CONSCIENCE By HECTOR MALOT BOOK 2. CHAPTER XI THE INSTRUMENT OF DEATH When, after two hours' sleep, Saniel woke, he did not at first think of this knife; he was tired and dull. Mechanically he walked about his room without paying attention to what he was doing, as if he were in a state of somnambulism, and it astonished him, because he never felt weariness of mind any more than of body, no matter how little he had slept, nor how hard he had worked. But suddenly, catching a glimpse of the knife that he had placed on the mantel, he received a shock that annihilated his torpor and his fatigue. It dazzled him like a flash of lightning. He took it, and, going to the window, he examined it by the pale light of early morning. It was a strong instrument that, in a firm hand, would be a terrible arm; newly sharpened, it had the edge of a razor. Then the idea, the vision that had come to him two hours before, came back to him, clear and complete at nightfall, that is, at the moment when the concierge was in the second wing of the building, he mounted to Caffie's apartment without being seen, and with this knife he cut his throat. It was as simple as it was easy, and this knife left beside the corpse, and the nature of the wound, would lead the police to look for a butcher, or at least a man who was in thehabit of using a knife of this kind. The evening before, when he had discussed Caffie's death, the how and the when still remained vague and uncertain. But now the day and the means were definitely settled: it should be with this knife, and this evening. This shook him out of his torpor and made him shudder. He was angry with himself for this weakness. Did he know or did he not know what he wished? Was he irresolute or cowardly? Then, going from one idea to another, he thought of an observation that he had made, which appeared to prove that with many subjects there is less firmness in the morning than in the evening. Was this the result of dualism of the nervous centres, and was the human personality double like the brain? Were there hours when the right hemisphere is master of our will, and were there other hours when the left is master? Did one of these hemispheres possess what the other lacked, and is it according to the activity of this or that one, that one has such a character or such a temperament? This would be curious, and would amount to saying that, a lamb in the morning, one might be a tiger at evening. With him it was a lamb that woke in the morning to be devoured by a tiger during the day. To which hemisphere belonged the one and the other of these personalities?