r.

Do harm, whatever happens.

To plan evil for others is mingled with an acceptance of some hazy
responsibility. We risk ourselves in the danger which we impel towards
another, because the chain of events sometimes, of course, brings
unexpected accidents. This does not stop the man who is truly malicious.
He feels as much joy as the patient suffers agony. He is tickled by the
laceration of the victim. The malicious man blooms in hideous joy. Pain
reflects itself on him in a sense of welfare. The Duke of Alva used to
warm his hands at the stake. The pile was torture, the reflection of it
pleasure. That such transpositions should be possible makes one shudder.
Our dark side is unfathomable. _Supplice exquis_ (exquisite
torture)--the expression is in Bodin[12]--has perhaps this terrible
triple sense: search for the torture; suffering of the tortured; delight
of the torturer.

Ambition, appetite--all such words signify some one sacrificed to some
one satiated. It is sad that hope should be wicked. Is it that the
outpourings of our wishes flow naturally to the direction to which we
most incline--that of evil? One of the hardest labours of the just man
is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to
efface. Almost all our desires, when examined, contain what we dare not
avow.

In the completely wicked man this exists in hideous perfection. So much
the worse for others, signifies so much the better for himself. The
shadows of the caverns of man's mind.

Josiana, in a plenitude of security the fruit of ignorant pride, had a
contempt for all danger. The feminine faculty of disdain is
extraordinary. Josiana's disdain, unreasoning, involuntary, and
confident. Barkilphedro was to her so contemptible that she would have
been astonished had any one remarked to her that such a creature
existed. She went, and came, and laughed before this man who was looking
at her with evil eyes. Thoughtful, he bided his time.

In proportion as he waited, his determination to cast a despair into
this woman's life augmented. Inexorable high tide of malice.

In the meantime he gave himself excellent reasons for his determination.
It must not be thought that scoundrels are deficient in self-esteem.
They enter into details with themselves in their lofty monologues, and
they take matters with a high hand. How? This Josiana had bestowed
charity on him! She had thrown some crumbs of her enormous wealth to
him, as to a beggar. Sh