Henriette.  It was no chance.  It was something that had to be said, something I cannot tell you—­probably because I have no right to appear spotless in your eyes, seeing that I am not spotless.

Adolphe.  All this is beyond me.

Henriette.  Let us talk of something else—­Do you believe there are many unpunished criminals at large among us, some of whom may even be our intimate friends?

Adolphe. [Nervously] Why?  What do you mean?

Henriette.  Don’t you believe that every human being at some time or another has been guilty of some kind of act which would fall under the law if it were discovered?

Adolphe.  Yes, I believe that is true, but no evil act escapes being punished by one’s own conscience at least. [Rises and unbuttons his coat] And—­nobody is really good who has not erred. [Breathing heavily] For in order to know how to forgive, one must have been in need of forgiveness—­I had a friend whom we used to regard as a model man.  He never spoke a hard word to anybody; he forgave everything and everybody; and he suffered insults with a strange satisfaction that we couldn’t explain.  At last, late in life, he gave me his secret in a single word:  I am a penitent! [He sits down again.]

(Henriette remains silent, looking at him with surprise.)

Adolphe. [As if speaking to himself] There are crimes not mentioned in the Criminal Code, and these are the worse ones, for they have to be punished by ourselves, and no judge could be more severe than we are against our own selves.

Henriette. [After a pause] Well, that friend of yours, did he find peace?

Adolphe.  After endless self-torture he reached a certain degree of composure, but life had never any real pleasures to offer him.  He never dared to accept any kind of distinction; he never dared to feel himself entitled to a kind word or even well-earned praise:  in a word, he could never quite forgive himself.

Henriette.  Never?  What had he done then?

Adolphe.  He had wished the life out of his father.  And when his father suddenly died, the son imagined himself to have killed him.  Those imaginations were regarded as signs of some mental disease, and he was sent to an asylum.  From this he was discharged after a time as wholly recovered—­as they put it.  But the sense of guilt remained with him, and so he continued to punish himself for his evil thoughts.

Henriette.  Are you sure the evil will cannot kill?

Adolphe.  You mean in some mystic way?

Henriette.  As you please.  Let it go at mystic.  In my own family—­I am sure that my mother and my sisters killed my father with their hatred.  You see, he had the awful idea that he must oppose all our tastes and inclinations.  Wherever he discovered a natural gift, he tried to root it out.  In that way he aroused a resistance that accumulated until it became like an electrical battery charged with hatred.  At last it grew so powerful that he languished away, became depolarised, lost his will-power, and, in the end, came to wish himself dead.