Laziness, that brutish existence which had been his dream, proved his punishment.

At moments, he ardently hoped for some occupation to draw him from his thoughts.
Then he lost all energy, relapsing beneath the weight of implacable fatality that bound his limbs so as to more surely crush him.
In truth, he only found some relief when beating Therese, at night.

This brutality alone relieved him of his enervated anguish.
But his keenest suffering, both physical and moral, came from the bite Camille had given him in the neck.

At certain moments, he imagined that this scar covered the whole of his body.

If he came to forget the past, he all at once fancied he felt a burning puncture, that recalled the murder both to his frame and mind.
When under the influence of emotion, he could not stand before a looking-glass without noticing this phenomenon which he had so frequently remarked and which always terrified him; the blood flew to his neck, purpling the scar, which then began to gnaw the skin.
This sort of wound that lived upon him, which became active, flushed, and biting at the slightest trouble, frightened and tortured him.