There are not many criminals who, in the face of a useless crime, practise the calm philosophy of the assassin in the old story, who found only a single sou in his victim's pocket, and observed: "A hundred like this will make five francs!" The absolute inutility of his murderous villainy did not even afford Chaffin the semi-insensibility which might have come from the possession of that little fortune which, added to the store already accumulated, would have given him a round twenty thousand francs a year.
Tormented by this fixed idea, he was beginning to exhibit symptoms of the acute mental alienation which incessant, poignant regret for an irreparable sin is likely to cause in a man of some education. He could no longer eat or sleep, read or write, attend to any business or remain quiet
