The Wicker-Work Woman by Anatole France

M. Bergeret's first impulse at this shameful sight was to act violently, like a plain man, even with the ferocity of an animal. Born as he was of a long line of unknown ancestors, amongst whom there were, of course, many cruel and savage souls, heir as he was of those innumerable generations of men, apes, and savage beasts from whom we are all descended, the professor had been endowed, along with the germ of life, with the destructive instinct of the older races. Under this shock these instincts awoke. He thirsted for slaughter and burned to kill M. Roux and Madame Bergeret. But his desire was feeble and evanescent. With the four canine teeth which he carried in his mouth and the nails of the carnivorous beast which armed his fingers, M. Bergeret had inherited the ferocity of the beast, but the original force of this instinct had largely disappeared. He did, it is true, feel a desire to kill M. Roux and Madame Bergeret, but it was a very feeble one.

He felt fierce and cruel, but the sensation was so short-lived and so weak that no act was born of the thought, and even the expression of the idea was so swift that it entirely escaped the notice of the two witnesses who were most concerned in its manifestation. In less than a second M. Bergeret had ceased to be purely instinctive, primitive, and destructive, without, however, ceasing at the same time to be jealous and irritated. On the contrary, his indignation went on increasing. In this new frame of mind his thoughts were no longer simple; they began to centre round the social problem; confusedly there seethed in his mind fragments of ancient theologies, bits of the Decalogue, shreds of ethics, Greek, Scotch, German and French maxims, scattered portions of the moral code which, by striking his brain like so many flint stones, set him on fire. He felt patriarchal, the father of a family after the Roman style, an overlord and justiciar.