they spared me? Has anyone shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at my hands? No, madame, they struck me, always struck me!
“Woman, siren that you are, do you persist in fixing on me that fascinating eye, which reminds me that I ought to blush? Well, be it so; let me blush for the faults you know, and perhaps—perhaps for even more than those! But having sinned myself—it may be more deeply than others—I never rest till I have torn the disguises from my fellow-creatures, and found out their weaknesses. I have always found them; and more—I repeat it with joy, with triumph—I have always found some proof of human perversity or error. Every criminal I condemn seems to me living evidence that I am not a hideous exception to the rest. Alas, alas, alas; all the world is wicked; let us therefore strike at wickedness!”
Villefort pronounced these last words with a feverish rage, which gave a ferocious eloquence to his words.
“But,” said Madame Danglars, resolving to make a last effort, “this young man, though a murderer, is an orphan, abandoned by everybody.”
“So much the worse, or rather, so much the better; it has been so ordained that he may have none to weep his fate.”
“But this is trampling on the weak, sir.”
“The weakness of a murderer!”
“His dishonor reflects upon us.”
“Is not death in my house?”
“Oh, sir,” exclaimed the baroness, “you are without pity for others, well, then, I tell you they will have no mercy on you!”