The Torture Garden (Musaicum Must Classics). Octave Mirbeau

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      One day I distinctly saw the flame of murder glowing in his eyes. I was not alarmed, but firmly placed my hand upon his shoulder, like a gendarme does to a robber, and I said banteringly:

      “What of it? What will it get you? My corpse itself will accuse you. Don't be so stupid! I've let you get where you wanted. I've never crossed your ambition. To the contrary, I have worked for you as well as I was able... loyally, isn't it true? Do you think it's pleasant for me to see us—you on top, strutting in the limelight, and me at the bottom, stupidly floundering through the mire? And then, by a flip of the hand, this marvelous career, laboriously built up by us both—”

      “Oh! by us both... “ hissed Eugene.

      “Yes, by us both, swine!” I repeated, exasperated by this untimely correction. “Yes, by a flip of the hand... a breath... and you know it—I could destroy that marvelous career. I need only say one word, you cur, to hurl you from power to the workhouse; to make of the Minister you are—ah, so ironically!—the galley slave you might be if justice still existed and I weren't the basest of cowards. Well! I will not make that gesture, and I won't say the word. I leave you to receive the adulation of men and the esteem of foreign courts, because, you see... I find it stupendously amusing. Only, I want my share, you hear!... my share. And what do I ask? What I ask is ridiculous. Nothing—crumbs... although I might demand everything—everything! I beg you—don't exasperate me any further; don't drive me to the wall any longer. Don't force me to create melodramatic scenes. For the day I have had enough of life, enough, of the slime, that slime—your slime, whose intolerable odor I smell about me all the time... well, that day his Excellency Eugene Mortain won't laugh, my boy. I swear it!”

      Then, with an embarrassed smile, in which the folds around his drooping lips gave his face an expression of beastly fear and impotent lust to kill, Eugene said to me:

      “But you're crazy to tell me all this... and apropos of what? Have I refused you anything, you sorehead?”

      And, gaily, with a multiplicity of gesture and grimace which bewildered me, he comically added;

      “Do you want the Cross of the Legion of Honor, eh?”

      Yes, truly, he was a charming fellow.