“I debated it long,” he continued.  “I felt that since I was prevented from arresting any of the evil to myself, I could at least mature my plans for an adequate discharge of just retributions on her.  It reveals the impotence resulting from the trammels of modern civilization, that while the possibilities of wrong are infinite, the openings for vengeance are few and contemptible.  Only when a man is thrown upon the necessities of this ‘wild justice’ does he discover how difficult vengeance really is.  Had Agalma been my wife, I could have wreaked my wrath upon her, with assurance that some of the torture she inflicted on me was to fall on her.  Not having this power what was I to do?  Kill her?  That would have afforded one moment of exquisite satisfaction—­but to her it would have been simply death—­and I wanted to kill the heart.”

He seemed working with an insane passion, so that I regarded him with disgust, mingled with some doubts as to what horrors he was about to relate.

“My plan was chosen.  The only way to reach her heart was to strike through her husband.  For several hours daily I practised with the pistol, until—­in spite of only having a left hand—­I acquired fatal skill.  But this was not enough.  Firing at a mark is simple work.  Firing at a man—­especially one holding a pistol pointed at you—­is altogether different.  I had too often heard of ’crack shots’ missing their men, to rely confidently on my skill in the shooting gallery.  It was necessary that my eye and hand should be educated to familiarity with the real object.  Part of the cause why duelists miss their man is from the trepidation of fear.  I was without fear.  At no moment in my life have I been afraid; and the chance of being shot by Korinski I counted as nothing.  The other cause is unfamiliarity with the mark.  This I secured myself against by getting a lay figure of Korinski’s height, dressing it to resemble him, placing a pistol in its hand, and then practising at this mark in the woods.  After a short time I could send a bullet through the thorax without taking more than a hasty glance at the figure.

“Thus prepared, I started for Paris.  But you will feel for me when you learn that my hungry heart was baffled of its vengeance, and baffled for ever.  Agalma had been carried off by scarlet fever.  Korinski had left Paris, and I felt no strong promptings to follow him, and wreak on him a futile vengeance.  It was on her my wrath had been concentrated, and I gnashed my teeth at the thought that she had escaped me.

“My story is ended.  The months of gloomy depression which succeeded, now that I was no longer sustained by the hope of vengeance, I need not speak of.  My existence was desolate, and even now the desolation continues over the whole region of the emotions.  I carry a dead heart within me.”

VIII

A SECOND VICTIM