onscience."

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It is the first crime that costs
Repeated and explained what he had already said and explained
You love me, therefore you do not know me

CONSCIENCE

By HECTOR MALOT

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XXXVI

CONSCIENCE ASSERTS ITSELF

During the first years of his sojourn in Paris, Saniel had published in a
Latin Quarter review an article on the "Pharmacy of Shakespeare"--the
poison of Hamlet, and of Romeo and Juliet; and although since his choice
of medicine he read but little besides books of science, at that time he
was obliged to study the plays of his author. From this study there
lingered in his memory a phrase that for ten years had not risen to his
lips, and which all at once forced itself uppermost in his mind with
exasperating persistency. It was the words of Macbeth:

"Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds."

He also had lost it, "the innocent sleep, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt
minds." He had never been a great sleeper; at least he had accustomed
himself to the habit, hard at first, of passing only a few hours in bed.
But he employed these few hours well, sleeping as the weary sleep, hands
clenched, without dreaming, waking, or moving; and the thought that
occupied his mind in the evening was with him on waking in the morning,
not having been put to flight by others, any more than by dreams.

After Caffie's death this tranquil and refreshing sleep continued the
same; but suddenly, after Madame Dammauville's death, it became broken.

At first it did not bother him. He did not sleep, so much the better! He
would work more. But one can no more work all the time than one can live
without eating. Saniel knew better than any one that the life of every
organ is composed of alternate periods of repose and activity, and he did
not suppose that he would be able to work indefinitely without sleep. He
only hoped that after some days of twenty hours of work daily, overcome
by fatigue, he would have, in spite of everything, four hours of solid
sleep, that Shakespeare called "sore labor's bath."

He had not had these four hours, and the law that every state of
prolonged excitement brings exhaustion that should be refreshed by a
functional rest, was proved false in his case. After a hard d