Men usually pay too high a price for their desires.

In order to carry out his scheme he conceived and accomplished--with a strange cunning, which develops, I am told, after crime--a clever ruse." Madame turned and looked at me for a moment.
"We must think of him, Madame," I explained, "as one suffering from a mental disease; for the love of money in its acute stages is nothing else, lacking, as it assuredly does, common sense.

The most singular part of his mental condition was the rapidity and skill with which he turned events to his own advantage, and seized each opportunity for the furtherance of his ends.

The Baron Giraud died at the Hotel Clericy--here was a chance.

The Vicomte, with a cunning which was surely unnatural--you remember his strange behaviour at that time, how he locked himself in his study for hours together--took therefore the Baron's body from the coffin, dressed it in his own garments, placed in the clothing his own purse, and pocket-book, and cast the body into the Seine.