"
And he considered Laurent, whose voice appeared to him more gentle,
while every gesture he made had a sort of elegance. The artist had
no idea of the frightful shock this man had received, and which had
transformed him, developing in him the nerves of a woman, along with
keen, delicate sensations. No doubt a strange phenomenon had been
accomplished in the organism of the murderer of Camille. It is difficult
for analysis to penetrate to such depths. Laurent had, perhaps, become
an artist as he had become afraid, after the great disorder that had
upset his frame and mind.
Previously, he had been half choked by the fulness of his blood, blinded
by the thick vapour of breath surrounding him. At present, grown
thin, and always shuddering, his manner had become anxious, while he
experienced the lively and poignant sensations of a man of nervous
temperament. In the life of terror that he led, his mind had grown
delirious, ascending to the ecstasy of genius. The sort of moral malady,
the neurosis wherewith all his being was agitated, had developed an
artistic feeling of peculiar lucidity. Since he had killed, his frame
seemed lightened, his distracted mind appeared to him immense; and, in
this abrupt expansion of his thoughts, he perceived exquisite creations,
the reveries of a poet passing before his eyes.
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