I had to prevent at any cost my mother's learning the truth respecting the death of my father. I had not sacrificed my first vengeance, allowing the wretch who actually did the deed to go free, to permit the consequence of the second to wound the unhappy woman far more cruelly. I had therefore to plan this second act of justice so as to secure beyond all risk my own escape from the law. I should have to employ, in the killing of my stepfather, all the cautious precaution that he had employed in procuring the killing of my own father. Let me speak plainly: I was bound to assassinate him. Yes, to assassinate him; that is the name by which the act of killing a man who does not defend himself is called--and things would happen thus. No matter how ingenious the snare that I might lay for him, were I to poison him drop by drop, to wait for him at a street corner and stab him, to fire a pistol at him, there would be only one name for the deed. An assassination! I myself should be an assassin. All the base infamy the word represents was suddenly evoked in my thoughts, and for the first time I was afraid of the vengeance I had so much desired, on which I had counted since my childhood, as the sole and supreme reparation for all my misery. When I became conscious of the sudden failure of my courage in presence of the actual deed now it had become feasible, I was at first astounded. I closed my eyes that I might collect my mind and force it in upon itself, and I had to confess to myself: "I am afraid." Afraid of what? Afraid of a word! For it was only a word. My vengeance, to which I had sacrificed even the respect due to the wishes of the dying--had I not failed to fulfil the desire of my aunt in her last moments?--now caused me a thrill of terror, because the work that was to be done was repugnant. To what? To the prejudices of my class and my time. I am afraid to kill; but had I been born in Italy, in the fifteenth century, would I have hesitated to poison my father's murderer? Would I have hesitated to shoot him, had I been born in Corsica fifty years ago? Am I then nothing but a civilised person, a wretched and impotent dreamer, who would fain act, but shrinks from soiling his hands in the action? I forced myself to contemplate the dilemma in which I stood, in its absolute, imperative, inevitable distinctness. I must either avenge my father by handing over his murderer to be dealt with by the law, since M. Massol had prudently fulfilled all the formalities necessary to bar the limitation, or I must be my own minister of justice. There was a third alternative; that I should spare the murderous wretch, allow him to live on in occupation of his victim's place in my mother's home, from which he had driven me; but at the thought of this my rage revived. The scruples of the civilised man did indeed give him pause; but that hesitation did not hinder the savage, who slumbers in us all, from