"
--So The Butcher is stooping heavily upon Surplice and slicing and
gashing busily and carelessly, his thick lips stuck a little pursewise,
his buried pig's eyes glistening--and in a moment he cries "_Fini!_" and
poor Surplice rises unsteadily, horribly slashed, bleeding from at least
three two-inch cuts and a dozen large scratches; totters over to his
couch holding on to his face as if he were afraid it would fall off any
moment; and lies down gently at full length, sighing with pleasurable
surprise, cogitating the inestimable delights of cleanness....
It struck me at the time as intensely interesting that, in the case of a
certain type of human being, the more cruel are the miseries inflicted
upon him the more cruel does he become toward anyone who is so
unfortunate as to be weaker or more miserable than himself. Or perhaps I
should say that nearly every human being, given sufficiently miserable
circumstances, will from time to time react to those very circumstances
(whereby his own personality is mutilated) through a deliberate
mutilation on his own part of a weaker or already more mutilated
personality. I daresay that this is perfectly obvious. I do not pretend
to have made a discovery. On the contrary, I merely state what interested
me peculiarly in the course of my sojourn at La Ferte: I mention that I
was extremely moved to find that, however busy sixty men may be kept
suffering in common, there is always one man or two or three men who can
always find time to make certain that their comrades enjoy a little extra
suffering.
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