"Nothing is truer, I am sorry to say. For I really have wished to
have the revenge which I have dreamed of, and which I thought so
easy. Exasperated by that bad woman's insolence and confidence in
her own safety, I have several times made up my mind to kill her,
and have exerted all my energy and all my skill to make my knives
fly aside when I threw them to make a border round her neck. I
have tried with all my might to make them deviate half an inch,
just enough to cut her throat. I wanted to, and I have never
succeeded, never. And always the slut's horrible laugh makes fun
of me, always, always."

And with a deluge of tears, with something like a roar of
unsatiated and muzzled rage, he ground his teeth as he wound up:
"She knows me, the jade; she is in the secret of my work, of my
patience, of my trick, routine, whatever you may call it! She
lives in my innermost being, and sees into it more closely than
you do, or than I do myself. She knows what a faultless machine I
have become, the machine of which she makes fun, the machine
which is too well wound up, the machine which cannot get out of
order--and she knows that I CANNOT make a mistake."



THE HORLA

MAY 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on
the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree
which covers and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this
part of the country; I am fond of living here because I am
attached to it by deep roots, the profound and delicate roots