nothing but the illicit gains and rascalities of a cheating shopkeeper
and vile money-lender, a depraved cowardice which dared not strike
openly, but slew in the dark. It is the story of an unclean reptile
which drags itself underground, leaving everywhere the trail of its
poisonous saliva.

Such was the man whose life we have undertaken to narrate, a man who
represents a complete type of wickedness, and who corresponds to the most
hideous sketch ever devised by poet or romance-writer: Facts without
importance of their own, which would be childish if recorded of anyone
else, obtain a sombre reflection from other facts which precede them, and
thenceforth cannot be passed over in silence. The historian is obliged
to collect and note them, as showing the logical development of this
degraded being: he unites them in sequence, and counts the successive
steps of the ladder mounted by the criminal.

We have seen the early exploit of this assassin by instinct; we find him,
twenty years later, an incendiary and a fraudulent bankrupt. What had
happened in the interval? With how much treachery and crime had he
filled this space of twenty years? Let us return to his infancy.

His unconquerable taste for theft caused him to be expelled by the
relations who had taken charge of him. An anecdote is told which shows
his impudence and incurable perversity. One day he was caught taking
some money, and was soundly whipped by his cousins. When this was over,
the child, instead of showing any sorrow or asking forgiveness, ran away
with a sneer, and seeing they were out of breath, exclaimed--

"You are tired, are you? Well, I am not!"