But having to draw upon his memory for certain facts, he found that it did not obey him as usual; there were a hesitation, a fogginess, above all, extraordinary wanderings.

He wrestled with it and it obeyed, but only for a short time, and soon again it betrayed him a second time, then a third and fourth time.
Decidedly he was not in a normal state, and his will obeyed in place of commanding.
There were a name and a phrase that recurred to him mechanically from time to time.

The name was Caffie, and the phrase was, "Nothing easier." Why should this hypothesis to strangle Caffie, of which he had lightly spoken, and to which he had attached no importance at the moment when he uttered it, return to him in this way as a sort of obsession?
Was it not strange?
Never, until this day, had he had an idea that he could strangle a man, even as wicked as this one, and yet, in talking of it, he found very natural and legitimate reasons for the murder of this scamp.
Had not Phillis herself condemned him?
To tell the truth, she had added that Providence or justice should be his executor, but this was the scruple of a simple conscience, formed in a narrow environment, to which influence he would not submit.
Had he these scruples, this old man who coldly, and merely for the interest of so much a hundred on a dot, advised him to hasten the death of a woman by drunkenness, and that of an infant in any way he pleased?
When he reached this conclusion he stopped, and asked himself whether he were mad to pursue this idea; then immediately, to get rid of it, he set to work, which absorbed him for a certain time, but not so long a time as at first.
Then, finding that he could not control his will, he turned his thoughts to Caffie.
It was only too evident that if he had carried out the idea of strangling Caffie, all the difficulties against which he had struggled, and which would overwhelm him, if not the following day, at least in a few days, would have disappeared immediately.
No more sheriffs, no more creditors.

What a deliverance! Repose, the possibility of passing examinations with a calm spirit that the fever of material troubles would not disturb--in this condition he felt his success was assured.
And his experiments! He would run no danger of seeing them rudely interrupted.

His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the second-hand dealer's.