aim in life was to annoy me.) Some where I have read that, not infrequently, children of from twelve to fourteen years of age—­that is to say, children just passing from childhood to adolescence—­are addicted to incendiarism, or even to murder.  As I look back upon my childhood, and particularly upon the mood in which I was on that (for myself) most unlucky day, I can quite understand the possibility of such terrible crimes being committed by children without any real aim in view—­without any real wish to do wrong, but merely out of curiosity or under the influence of an unconscious necessity for action.  There are moments when the human being sees the future in such lurid colours that he shrinks from fixing his mental eye upon it, puts a check upon all his intellectual activity, and tries to feel convinced that the future will never be, and that the past has never been.  At such moments—­moments when thought does not shrink from manifestations of will, and the carnal instincts alone constitute the springs of life—­I can understand that want of experience (which is a particularly predisposing factor in this connection) might very possibly lead a child, aye, without fear or hesitation, but rather with a smile of curiosity on its face, to set fire to the house in which its parents and brothers and sisters (beings whom it tenderly loves) are lying asleep.  It would be under the same influence of momentary absence of thought—­almost absence of mind—­that a peasant boy of seventeen might catch sight of the edge of a newly-sharpened axe reposing near the bench on which his aged father was lying asleep, face downwards, and suddenly raise the implement in order to observe with unconscious curiosity how the blood would come spurting out upon the floor if he made a wound in the sleeper’s neck.  It is under the same influence—­the same absence of thought, the same instinctive curiosity—­that a man finds delight in standing on the brink of an abyss and thinking to himself, “How if I were to throw myself down?” or in holding to his brow a loaded pistol and wondering, “What if I were to pull the trigger?” or in feeling, when he catches sight of some universally respected personage, that he would like to go up to him, pull his nose hard, and say, “How do you do, old boy?”

Under the spell, then, of this instinctive agitation and lack of reflection I was moved to put out my tongue, and to say that I would not move, when St. Jerome came down and told me that I had behaved so badly that day, as well as done my lessons so ill, that I had no right to be where I was, and must go upstairs directly.

At first, from astonishment and anger, he could not utter a word.

“C’est bien!” he exclaimed eventually as he darted towards me.  “Several times have I promised to punish you, and you have been saved from it by your Grandmamma, but now I see that nothing but the cane will teach you obedience, and you shall therefore taste it.”

This was said loud enough for every one to hear.  The blood rushed to my heart with such vehemence that I could feel that organ beating violently—­could feel the colour rising to my cheeks and my lips trembling.  Probably I looked horrible at that moment, for, avoiding my eye, St. Jerome stepped forward and caught me by the hand.  Hardly feeling his touch, I pulled away my hand in blind fury, and with all my childish might struck him.