And at last I had my desire, and regretted it the instant it came. In the excitement of passing events I was taken out of myself; but here, in this huge bedroom, where the candles seemed but to make little circles of light, where the logs burned low on the hearth, where thoughts black as the shadows that flitted in the uneasy light over the heavy curtains of the bed, and thick tapestries on the walls, crowded round me, I dreaded my loneliness. For a moment I thought of seeking Badehorn to discuss with him arrangements for the morrow, and then I laughed at my weakness, and, undressing, flung myself into a large easy-chair by the fire, for I felt it was useless trying to sleep. My body was wearied, it is true, but my brain was working like a clock--it was the old story, that mania which I had fought so long, and thought defeated, come back again stronger, more insistent than ever. Sometimes when I think of this period of my life, I try to delude myself into the belief that I was mad then; that it was not I, Gaspard de Vibrac, who walked the earth, but a fiend that had ousted my soul from its earthly tenement--else why was this hateful consciousness of a double presence within me? What was this impalpable, but resistless power, that was able to force me, despite my struggles, to follow its malign course? But let this rest! Mad or sane, I have to answer for my past, and the scroll, with its damning record, is running red before my eyes as I write; but then, as I sat there, the things that were to come, the things that were to be of my own doing, seemed to quiver like uneasy phantoms before me, and to finally resolve themselves into the one devilish thing that made me what I am. Listen! I had sought to injure Marcilly, therefore I hated him. I had lowered myself to play the traitor to him in all that man holds dearest. But that he stood between me and my love, this would not have been, and I hated him the more for that. I had tried to win my way back to honor, and all but succeeded, when, but a few hours ago, I found, as I thought--I jumped to conclusions as usual--that I had been made the victim of a coquette’s pastime. All my vanity, all my self-love, was wounded and in arms--I was filled with the rage that burns in a heart in which love is turned to anger. I was capable of anything, and I had paved the way for this total descent. It was no case--it never is--of one becoming at once supremely vile. I would have revenge, a full and complete revenge, for my abasement, and then came the whispered temptation that lost me my soul.