pity. There is nothing of that in
Derues, not even a trace of courage; nothing but a shameless cupidity,
exercising itself at first in the theft of a few pence filched from
the poor; nothing but the illicit gains and rascalities of a cheating
shopkeeper and vile money-lender, a depraved cowardice which dared
not strike openly, but slew in the dark. It is the story of an unclean
reptile which drags itself underground, leaving everywhere the trail of
its poisonous saliva.

Such was the man whose life we have undertaken to narrate, a man who
represents a complete type of wickedness, and who corresponds to the
most hideous sketch ever devised by poet or romance-writer: Facts
without importance of their own, which would be childish if recorded of
anyone else, obtain a sombre reflection from other facts which precede
them, and thenceforth cannot be passed over in silence. The historian is
obliged to collect and note them, as showing the logical development
of this degraded being: he unites them in sequence, and counts the
successive steps of the ladder mounted by the criminal.

We have seen the early exploit of this assassin by instinct; we find
him, twenty years later, an incendiary and a fraudulent bankrupt. What
had happened in the interval? With how much treachery and crime had he
filled this space of twenty years? Let us return to his infancy.

His unconquerable taste for theft caused him to be expelled by the
relations who had taken charge of him. An anecdote is told which shows
his impudence and incurable perversity. One day he was caught taking
some money, and was soundly whipped by his cousins. When this was over,
the child, instead of showing any sorrow or asking forgiveness, ran away
with a sneer, and seeing they were out of breath, exclaimed--

"You are tired, are you? Well, I am not!"

Despairing of any control over this evil disposition, the relations
refused to keep him, and sent him to Chartres, where two other cousins
agreed to have him, out of charity. They were simpleminded women, of
great and sincere piety, who imagined that good example and religious
teaching might have a happy influence on their young relation. The
result was contrary to their expectation: the sole fruit of their
teaching was that Derues learnt to be a cheat and a hypocrite, and to
assume the mask of respectability.

Here also repeated thefts insured him sound corrections. Knowing his
cousins' extreme economy, not to say avarice, h