A quarrel broke out every evening. It looked as though the murderers
sought opportunities to become exasperated so as to relax their rigid
nerves. They watched one another, sounded one another with glances,
examined the wounds of one another, discovering the raw parts, and
taking keen pleasure in causing each other to yell in pain. They lived
in constant irritation, weary of themselves, unable to support a word, a
gesture or a look, without suffering and frenzy. Both their beings
were prepared for violence; the least display of impatience, the
most ordinary contrariety increased immoderately in their disordered
organism, and all at once, took the form of brutality. A mere nothing
raised a storm that lasted until the morrow. A plate too warm, an open
window, a denial, a simple observation, sufficed to drive them into
regular fits of madness.
In the course of the discussion, they never failed to bring up the
subject of the drowned man. From sentence to sentence they came to
mutual reproaches about this drowning business at Saint-Ouen, casting
the crime in the face of one another. They grew excited to the pitch
of fury, until one felt like murdering the other. Then ensued atrocious
scenes of choking, blows, abominable cries, shameless brutalities.
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