Why should this hypothesis to strangle Caffie, of which he had lightly spoken, and to which he had attached no importance at the moment when he uttered it, return to him in this way as a sort of obsession?

Was it not strange?

Never, until this day, had he had an idea that he could strangle a man, even as wicked as this one, and yet, in talking of it, he found very natural and legitimate reasons for the murder of this scamp.

Had not Phillis herself condemned him?

To tell the truth, she had added that Providence or justice should be his executor, but this was the scruple of a simple conscience, formed in a narrow environment, to which influence he would not submit.

Had he these scruples, this old man who coldly, and merely for the interest of so much a hundred on a dot, advised him to hasten the death of a woman by drunkenness, and that of an infant in any way he pleased?

When he reached this conclusion he stopped, and asked himself whether he were mad to pursue this idea; then immediately, to get rid of it, he set to work, which absorbed him for a certain time, but not so long a time as at first.

Then, finding that he could not control his will, he turned his thoughts to Caffie.

It was only too evident that if he had carried out the idea of strangling Caffie, all the difficulties against which he had struggled, and which would overwhelm him, if not the following day, at least in a few days, would have disappeared immediately.

No more sheriffs, no more creditors.  What a deliverance!

Repose, the possibility of passing examinations with a calm spirit that the fever of material troubles would not disturb—­in this condition he felt his success was assured.

And his experiments!  He would run no danger of seeing them rudely interrupted.  His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the second-hand dealer’s.  He continued this train of thought to the results that he desired for him, glory; for humanity, the cure of one, and perhaps two, of the most terrible maladies with which it was afflicted.

The question was simple: 

On one side, Caffie;

On the other side, humanity and science;

An old rascal who deserved twenty deaths, and who would, anyhow, die naturally in a short time;

And humanity, science, which would profit by a discovery of which he would be the author.

He saw that the perspiration stood out on his hands, and he felt it run down his neck.

Why this weakness?  From horror of the crime, the possibility of which he admitted?  Or from fear of seeing his experiments destroyed?

He would reflect, think about it, be upon his guard.

He had told Phillis that intelligent men, before engaging in an action, weigh the pro and con.

Against Caffie’s death he saw nothing.