"
Jean Jacques did not soften. His voice was harsh and grim. "Well, get on
with your praying, but don't talk. You are going to die," he added, his
hands gripping the lever tighter.
The master-carpenter had had the true inspiration in his hour of danger.
He had touched his appeal with logic, he had offered an argument. Jean
Jacques was a logician, a philosopher! That point made about the
difference between a murder and an execution was a good one. Beside it
was an acknowledgment, by inference, from his victim, that he was getting
what he deserved.
"Pray quick and have it over, pig of an adulterer!" added Jean Jacques.
The master-carpenter raised a protesting hand. "There you are mistaken;
but it is no matter. At the end of to-day I would have been an adulterer,
if you hadn't found out. I don't complain of the word. But see, as a
philosopher"--Jean Jacques jerked a haughty assent--"as a philosopher you
will want to know how and why it is. Carmen will never tell you--a woman
never tells the truth about such things, because she does not know how.
She does not know the truth ever, exactly, about anything. It is because
she is a woman. But I would like to tell you the exact truth; and I can,
because I am a man. For what she did you are as much to blame as she
. . . no, no--not yet!"
Jean Jacques' hand had spasmodically tightened on the lever as though he
would wrench the gates open, and a snarl came from his lips.
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