And, albeit this site was a great deal more advantageous for his trade in planks of firwood, Pere Sorel, as they have begun to call him now that he is rich, contrived to screw out of the impatience and landowning mania which animated his neighbour a sum of 6,000 francs.
I have committed a murderous assault, and I am rightly condemned, but, short of murder only, the Valenod who condemned me is a hundred times more injurious to society.
Where is Truth? In religion … Yes,' he added with a bitter smile of the most intense scorn, 'in the mouths of the Maslons, the Frilairs, the Castanedes … Perhaps in true Christianity, whose priests would be no more paid than were the Apostles?
But what God? Not the God of the Bible, a petty despot, cruel and filled with a thirst for vengeance … but the God of Voltaire, just, good, infinite … '
Ah, how much wiser I should be,' he said to himself, 'to remove the marks from my linen, and retire to some lonely forest, twenty leagues from Paris, there to end this accursed existence! A stranger to the countryside, my death would remain unknown for a fortnight, and who would think of me after a fortnight had passed?' This reasoning was extremely sound. But next day, a glimpse of Mathilde's arm, seen between her sleeve and her glove, was enough to plunge our young philosopher in cruel memories, which, at the same time, made him cling to life. 'Very well!' he would then say to himself, 'I shall follow out this Russian policy to the end. How is it going to end?
