driving me crazy.” She pitied Madame Bergeret, for now she was kindly treated. They used to spend the evening, sitting side by side in the lamp-light, exchanging confidences. It was with her heart full of all these emotions that Euphémie said to M. Bergeret: “I am going away. You are too wicked. I want to leave.” And again she shed a flood of tears. M. Bergeret was by no means vexed at this reproach. He pretended, in fact, not to hear it, for he had too much sense not to be able to make allowances for the rudeness shown by an ignorant girl. He even smiled within himself, for in the secret depths of his heart, beneath layers of wise thoughts and fine sayings, he still retained that primitive instinct which persists even in modern men of the gentlest and sweetest character, and which makes them rejoice whenever they see they are taken for ferocious beings, as if the mere power of injuring and destroying were the motive force of living things, their essential quality and highest merit. This, on reflection, is indeed true, since, as life is supported and nourished only upon murder, the best men must be those who slaughter most. Then again, those who, under the stimulus of racial and food-conquering instincts, deal the hardest knocks, obtain the reputation of magnanimity, and please women, who are naturally interested in securing the strongest mates, and who are mentally incapable of separating the fruitful from the destructive element in man, since these two forces are, in actual fact, indissolubly linked by nature. Hence, when Euphémie in a voice as countrified as a fable by Æsop, told him he was wicked, M. Bergeret, by virtue of his philosophical temperament, felt flattered and fancied he heard a murmur which filled out the gaps in the maid’s simple speech, and said: “Learn, Lucien Bergeret, that you are a wicked man, in the vulgar sense of the word—that is to say, you are able to injure and destroy; in other words, you are in a state of defence, in full possession of life, on the road to victory. In your own way, you must know, you are a giant, a monster, an ogre, a man of terror.”