To plan evil for others is mingled with an acceptance of some hazy responsibility.  We risk ourselves in the danger which we impel towards another, because the chain of events sometimes, of course, brings unexpected accidents.  This does not stop the man who is truly malicious.  He feels as much joy as the patient suffers agony.  He is tickled by the laceration of the victim.  The malicious man blooms in hideous joy.  Pain reflects itself on him in a sense of welfare.  The Duke of Alva used to warm his hands at the stake.  The pile was torture, the reflection of it pleasure.  That such transpositions should be possible makes one shudder.  Our dark side is unfathomable. Supplice exquis (exquisite torture)—­the expression is in Bodin[12]—­has perhaps this terrible triple sense:  search for the torture; suffering of the tortured; delight of the torturer.

Ambition, appetite—­all such words signify some one sacrificed to some one satiated.  It is sad that hope should be wicked.  Is it that the outpourings of our wishes flow naturally to the direction to which we most incline—­that of evil?  One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to efface.  Almost all our desires, when examined, contain what we dare not avow.

In the completely wicked man this exists in hideous perfection.  So much the worse for others, signifies so much the better for himself.  The shadows of the caverns of man’s mind.

Josiana, in a plenitude of security the fruit of ignorant pride, had a contempt for all danger.  The feminine faculty of disdain is extraordinary.  Josiana’s disdain, unreasoning, involuntary, and confident.  Barkilphedro was to her so contemptible that she would have been astonished had any one remarked to her that such a creature existed.  She went, and came, and laughed before this man who was looking at her with evil eyes.  Thoughtful, he bided his time.

In proportion as he waited, his determination to cast a despair into this woman’s life augmented.  Inexorable high tide of malice.

In the meantime he gave himself excellent reasons for his determination.  It must not be thought that scoundrels are deficient in self-esteem.  They enter into details with themselves in their lofty monologues, and they take matters with a high hand.  How?  This Josiana had bestowed charity on him!  She had thrown some crumbs of her enormous wealth to him, as to a beggar.  She had nailed and riveted him to an office which was unworthy him.  Yes; that he, Barkilphedro, almost a clergyman, of varied and profound talent, a learned man, with the material in him for a bishop, should have for employ the registration of nasty patience-trying shards, that he should have to pass his life in the garret of a register-office, gravely uncorking stupid bottles, incrusted with all the nastiness of the sea, deciphering musty parchments, like filthy conjuring-books, dirty wills, and other illegible stuff of the kind, was the fault of this Josiana.  Worst of all, this creature “thee’d” and “thou’d” him!  And he should not revenge himself—­he should not punish such conduct!  Well, in that case there would no longer be justice on earth!