simple and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse and
yet a delicate mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which
might become intelligent and great.

There are only a few--so few--stages of development in this
world, from the oyster up to man. Why should there not be one
more, when once that period is accomplished which separates the
successive products one from the other?

Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense,
splendid flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements
beside fire, air, earth, and water? There are four, only four,
nursing fathers of various beings! What a pity! Why should not
there be forty, four hundred, four thousand! How poor everything
is, how mean and wretched--grudgingly given, poorly invented,
clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippopotamus, what power!
And the camel, what suppleness!

But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one
that should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose
shape, beauty, colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I
see it--it flutters from star to star, refreshing them and
perfuming them with the light and harmonious breath of its
flight! And the people up there gaze at it as it passes in an
ecstasy of delight!

What is the matter with me? It is He, the Horla who haunts me,
and who makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me,
He is becoming my soul; I shall kill him!