If this previous examination proves to them that for some reason or other they may act, they will always be calm, assured that they will feel no remorse, which is only the reproach of conscience." "Without doubt what you say is to the point, but it is impossible for me to accept it.

If I have never committed crimes, I have often been foolish and have committed faults, many of them deliberately, after the examination of which you speak.

I should have been, according to you, perfectly placid and free from the reproach of conscience; however, the next morning I woke unhappy, tormented, often overwhelmed, and unable to stifle the mysterious voice that accused me." "And in whose name did it speak, this voice, more vague than mysterious ?" "In the name of my conscience, evidently." "'Evidently' is too much, and you would be puzzled if called upon to demonstrate this evidence; whereas, nothing is more uncertain and elusive than the thing that is called conscience, which is in reality only an affair of environment and of education." "I do not understand." "Does your conscience tell you it is a crime to love me ?" "No, decidedly." "You see, then, that you have a personal way of understanding what is good and bad, which is not that of our country, where it is admitted, from the religious and from the social point of view, that a young girl is guilty when she has a lover.

Of course, you see, also, that conscience is a bad weighing-machine, since each one, in order to make it work, uses a weight that he has himself manufactured." "However it is, you did right not to strangle Cafflie." "Whom you, yourself, have condemned to death." "By the hand of justice, whether human or divine; but not by yours, any more than by Florentin's or mine, although we know better than any one that he does not deserve any mercy." "And you see I foresaw your objections, as I did not tighten his cravat." "Happily." "Is it necessary to say 'happily' ?".