er! when I began to slaughter them, I don't
know what possessed me,--I was like a fury. My ears had singing in them,
and I saw everything _red_,--all was red; and I slashed, and slashed,
and slashed, until my knife fell from my hands! Thunder! what happiness!
Had I had millions, I could have paid them to have enjoyed my trade!"

"It is that which has given you the habit of stabbing," said Rodolph.

"Very likely; but when I was turned of sixteen, the passion became so
strong that when I once began slashing, I became mad; I spoiled my work;
yes, I spoiled the skins, because I slashed and cut them across and
across; for I was so furious that I could not see clearly. At last they
turned me out of the yard. I wanted employment with the butchers, for I
have always liked that sort of business. Well, they quite looked down
upon me; they despised me as a shoemaker does a cobbler. Then I had to
seek my bread elsewhere, and I didn't find it very readily; and this was
the time when my bread-basket was so often empty. At length I got
employment in the quarries at Montrouge; but, at the end of two years, I
was tired of going always around like a squirrel in his cage, and
drawing stone for twenty sous a day. I was tall and strong, and so I
enlisted in a regiment. They asked my name, my age, and my papers. My
name?--the Albino. My age?--look at my beard. My papers?--here's the
certificate of the master quarryman. As I was just the fellow for a
grenadier, they took me."

"With your strength, courage, and taste for chopping and slashing, you
ought, in war-time, to have been made an officer."

"Thunder and lightning! what do you say? What! to cut up English or
Prussians! Why, that would have been better than to cut up old horses;
but, worse luck, there was no war, but a great deal of discipline. An
apprentice tries to hit his master a thump; well, if he be the weaker,
why, he gets the worst of it; if he be the stronger, he has the best of
it; he is turned out-of-doors, perhaps put into the cage,--and that is
all. In the army it is quite a different thing. One day our sergeant had
bullied me a good deal, to make me more attentive,--he was right, for I
was very slow; I did not like a poke he gave me, and I kicked at him; he
pushed me again, I returned his poke; he collared me, and I gave him a
punch of the head. They fell on me, and then my blood was up in my eyes,
and I was enraged in a moment. I had my knife in my hand--I belonged to
t