I was mad, and of my madness was born this harsh brutality.
"You would talk of me and my affairs in a tavern, you hound!" I cried, out of breath both by virtue of my passion and my exertions.

"Let the memory of this act as a curb upon your poisonous tongue in future." "Monseigneur!" he screamed.

"Misericorde, monseigneur!" "Aye, you shall have mercy--just so much mercy as you deserve.

Have I trusted you all these years, and did my father trust you before me, for this?
Have you grown sleek and fat and smug in my service that you should requite me thus?
Sangdieu, Rodenard! My father had hanged you for the half of the talking that you have done this night.

You dog! You miserable knave!" "Monseigneur," he shrieked again, "forgive! For your sainted mother's sake, forgive! Monseigneur, I did not know--" "But you are learning, cur; you are learning by the pain of your fat carcase; is it not so, carrion ?" He sank down, his strength exhausted, a limp, moaning, bleeding mass of flesh, into which my whip still cut relentlessly.
I have a picture in my mind of that ill-lighted room, of the startled faces on which the flickering glimmer of the candles shed odd shadows; of the humming and cracking of my whip; of my own voice raised in oaths and epithets of contempt; of Rodenard's screams; of the cries raised here and there in remonstrance or in entreaty, and of some more bold that called shame upon me.