the brush in that dark stuff within, to produce
with it a portrait of candour; to fawn, to restrain and suppress one's
self, to be ever on the _qui vive_; watching without ceasing to mask
latent crimes with a face of healthy innocence: to transform deformity
into beauty; to fashion wickedness into the shape of perfection; to
tickle, as it were, with the point of a dagger, to put sugar with
poison, to keep a bridle on every gesture and keep a watch over every
tone, not even to have a countenance of one's own--what can be harder,
what can be more torturing. The odiousness of hypocrisy is obscurely
felt by the hypocrite himself. Drinking perpetually of his own imposture
is nauseating. The sweetness of tone which cunning gives to scoundrelism
is repugnant to the scoundrel compelled to have it ever in the mouth;
and there are moments of disgust when villainy seems on the point of
vomiting its secret. To have to swallow that bitter saliva is horrible.
Add to this picture his profound pride. There are strange moments in the
history of such a life, when hypocrisy worships itself. There is always
an inordinate egotism in roguery. The worm has the same mode of gliding
along as the serpent, and the same manner of raising its head. The
treacherous villain is the despot curbed and restrained, and only able
to attain his ends by resigning himself to play a secondary part. He is
summed-up littleness capable of enormities. The perfect hypocrite is a
Titan dwarfed.

Clubin had a genuine faith that he had been ill-used. Why had not he the
right to have been born rich? It was from no fault of his that it was
otherwise. Deprived as he had been of the higher enjoyments of life, why
had he been forced to labour--in other words, to cheat, to betray, to
destroy? Why had he been condemned to this torture of flattering,
cringing, fawning; to be always labouring for men's respect and
friendship, and to wear night and day a face which was not his own? To
be compelled to dissimulate was in itself to submit to a hardship. Men
hate those to whom they have to lie. But now the disguise was at an end.
Clubin had taken his revenge.

On whom? On all! On everything!

Lethierry had never done him any but good services; so much the greater
his spleen. He was revenged upon Lethierry.

He was revenged upon all those in whose presence he had felt constraint.
It was his turn to be free now. Whoever had thought well of him was his
enemy. He had felt himself