When the suffering mind stretches its hands, so to speak, toward annihilation, when the soul forms some violent resolution, there seems to be an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold and hard.  Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death.  I can not express what I experienced, unless it was as if my pistol had said to me:  “Think what you are about to do.”

Since then I have often wondered what would have happened to me if the girl had departed immediately.  Doubtless the first flush of shame would have subsided; sadness is not despair, and God has joined them in order that the one should not leave us alone with the other.  Once relieved of the presence of that woman, my heart would have become calm.  There would remain only repentance, for the angel of pardon has forbidden man to kill.  But I was doubtless cured for life; debauchery was once for all driven from my door, and I would never again know the feeling of disgust with which its first visit had inspired me.

But it happened otherwise.  The struggle which was going on within, the poignant reflections which overwhelmed me, the disgust, the fear, the wrath, even (for I experienced all these emotions at the same time), all these fatal powers nailed me to my chair; and, while I was thus a prey to dangerous delirium, the creature, standing before my mirror, thought of nothing but how best to arrange her dress and fix her hair, smiling the while.  This lasted more than a quarter of an hour, during which I had almost forgotten her.  Finally some slight noise attracted my attention to her, and turning about with impatience I ordered her to leave the room in such a tone that she at once opened the door and threw me a kiss before going out.

At the same moment some one rang the bell of the outer door.  I arose precipitately, and had only time to open the closet door and motion the creature into it, when Desgenais entered the room with two friends.

The great currents that are found in the middle of the ocean resemble certain events in life.  Fatality, Chance, Providence, what matters the name?  Those who quarrel over the word admit the fact.  Such are not those who, speaking of Napoleon or Caesar, say: 

“He was a man of Providence.”  They apparently believe that heroes merit the attention which Heaven shows them, and that the color of purple attracts gods as well as bulls.

As to what rules the course of these little events, or what objects and circumstances, in appearance the least important, lead to changes in fortune, there is not, to my mind, a deeper cause and opportunity for thought.  For something in our ordinary actions resembles the little blunted arrows we shoot at targets; little by little we make of our successive deeds an abstract and regular entity that we call our prudence or our will.  Then comes a gust of wind, and lo! the smallest of these arrows, the very lightest and most ineffective, is wafted beyond our vision, beyond the very horizon to the dwelling-place of God himself.