Left alone in the silent house, Robert de Ligny relit the lamp. Serious
and even somewhat solemn voices were beginning to speak within him.
Moulded from childhood by the rules of moral responsibility, he now
experienced a sensation of painful regret, akin to remorse. Reflecting
that he had caused the death of this man, albeit without intending it or
knowing it, he did not feel wholly innocent. Shreds of his philosophic
and religious training came back to him, disturbing his conscience. The
phrases of moralists and preachers, learned at school, which had sunk to
the very depths of his memory, suddenly rose in his mind. Its inward
voices repeated them to him. They said, quoting some old religious
orator: "When we abandon ourselves to irregularities of conduct, even to
those regarded as least culpable in the opinion of the world, we render
ourselves liable to commit the most reprehensible actions. We perceive,
from the most frightful examples, that voluptuousness leads to crime."

These maxims, upon which he had never reflected, suddenly assumed for
him a precise and austere meaning. He thought the matter over seriously.
But since his mind was not deeply religious, and since he was incapable
of cherishing exaggerated scruples, he was conscious of only a passable
degree of edification, which was steadily diminishing. Before long he
decided that such scruples were out of place and that they could not
possibly apply to the situation. "When we abandon ourselves to
irregularities of conduct, even to those regarded as least culpable in
the opinion of the world.... We perceive, from the most frightful
examples...." These phrases, which only a little while ago had
reverberated through his soul like a peal of thunder, he now heard in
the snuffling and throaty voices of the professors and priests who had
taught them to him, and he found them somewhat ridiculous. By a natural
association of ideas he recalled a passage from an ancient Roman
history--which he had read, when in the second form, during a certain