Scarcely had she strength enough to stammer, in the voice of a child:
"They have taken everything! They have taken everything ... everything ... everything ... everything! Even the Louis XVI cruet."
While Madame was looking at the boxes as if she were looking at a dead child, Monsieur, scratching his neck, and rolling haggard eyes, moaned persistently in the far-away voice of a demented person:
"Name of a dog!
Ah! name of a dog!
Name of a dog of name of a dog!"
And Joseph, too, with atrocious grimaces, was exclaiming:
"The cruet of Louis XVI! The cruet of Louis XVI! Oh! the bandits!"
Then there was a minute of tragic silence, a long minute of prostration,—that silence of death, that prostration of beings and things, which follows the fracas of a terrible downfall, the thunder of a great cataclysm. And the lantern, swinging in Joseph's hands, cast a red, trembling, sinister gleam over the whole scene, over the dead faces and the empty boxes.
I had come down, in response to Joseph's call, at the same time as the masters.
In presence of this disaster, and in spite of the prodigious comicality of these faces, my first feeling was one of compassion.
It seemed to me that this misfortune fell upon me too, and that I was one of the family, sharing its trials and sorrows.
I should have liked to speak consoling words to Madame, whose dejected attitude it gave me pain to see. But this impression of solidarity or of servitude quickly vanished. _____
In crime there is something violent, solemn, justiciary, religious, which frightens me, to be sure, but which also leaves in me—how shall I express it?—a feeling of admiration. No, not of admiration, since admiration is a moral feeling, a spiritual excitement, whereas that which I feel influences and excites only my flesh. It is like a brutal shock throughout my physical being, at once painful and delicious,—a sorrowful and swooning rape of my sex.
It is curious, doubtless it is peculiar, perhaps it is horrible,—and I cannot explain the real cause of these strange and powerful sensations,—but in me every crime, especially murder, has secret relationships with love. Yes, indeed! A fine crime takes hold of me just as a fine man does. _____
I must say that further reflection suddenly transformed into a hilarious gaiety, a childish content, that grave, atrocious, and powerful enjoyment of crime which succeeded the impulse to pity that at first so inappropriately startled my heart. I thought:
"Here are two beings who live like moles, like larv?.
Like voluntary prisoners, they have voluntarily shut themselves up in the jail of these inhospitable walls.
All that constitutes the joy of life, the smile of a house, they repress as something superfluous.
Against everything that could excuse their wealth, and pardon their human uselessness, they guard as they would guard against filth.
They let nothing fall from their parsimonious table to satisfy the hunger of the poor; they let nothing fall from their dry hearts to relieve the pain of the suffering. They even economize in making provision for their own happiness. And should I pity them?
Oh! no.
It is justice that has overtaken them.
In stripping them of a portion of their goods, in giving air to the buried treasures, the good thieves have restored equilibrium. What I regret is that they did not leave these two maleficent beings totally naked and miserable, more destitute than the vagabond who so often begged at their door in vain, sicker than the abandoned creature dying by the roadside, within two steps of this hidden and accursed wealth."
This idea of my masters, with wallets on their backs, having to drag their lamentable rags and their bleeding feet over the stony highways, and to stand with outstretched hands at the implacable threshold of the evil-minded rich, enchanted me, and filled me with gaiety.
But my gaiety became more direct, and more intense, and more hateful, as I surveyed Madame, stranded beside her empty boxes, deader than if she had been really dead,—for she was conscious of this death, the most horrible death conceivable to a being who had never loved anything but the valuation in money of those invaluable things,—our pleasures, our caprices, our charities, our love, the divine luxury of the soul.
This shameful sorrow, this crapulous dejection, was also a revenge for the humiliations and severities that I have undergone, that came to me from her, in every word that issued from her mouth, in every look that fell from her eyes.
This deliciously grim enjoyment I tasted to the full.
I would have liked to cry out:
"Well done! Well done!"
And, above all, I would have liked to know these admirable and sublime thieves, in order to thank them in the name of all the ragamuffins, and to embrace them, as brothers.
Oh! good thieves, dear figures of justice and pity, through what a series of intense and delightful sensations you have made me pass!
Madame was not slow in recovering her self-possession. Her combative, aggressive nature suddenly reawakened in all its violence.
"And what are you doing here?" she said to Monsieur, in a tone of anger and supreme scorn.
"Why are you here?
How ridiculous you are, with your big puffy face, and in your shirt-tail!
Do you think that will get us back our silver service?
Come! shake yourself; stir yourself; try to understand.
Go for the police, for the justice of the peace.
Ought they not to have been here long ago?
Oh! my God! what a man!"
Monsieur, with bent back, started to go. She interrupted him:
"And how is it that you heard nothing?
What! they turn the house upside down, break in doors, force locks, empty walls and boxes, and you hear nothing?
What are you good for, big blockhead?"
Monsieur ventured to answer:
"But you, too, my pet, you did not hear anything."
"I?
It is not the same thing. Is it not a man's business to hear?
And besides, you provoke me. Clear out!"