Perhaps; but it was simpler to suppose that he 
himself did not know why. 
I have been more than once a victim of 
these cries and impulses, which give ground 
for the belief that malicious demons may pos-
sibly be asleep within us and cause us to per-
form, unknown to ourselves, their maddest 
whims. 
One morning I got up in a bad temper, sad, 
tired of idleness, and impelled, it seemed to 
me, to do something big, a brilliant action; and 
I opened the window. Alas! 
(Observe, I beg you, that the spirit of mys-
tification which, with some people, is not the 
result of a preconceived plan but of a chance 
inspiration, participates very much, though it 
were but through the intensity of its desire, in 
this humour which doctors call hysteric, and 
which those who have a little more sense than 
doctors call Satanic, which compels us unre-
sisting towards a crowd of dangerous or incon-
venient actions.) 
The first person that I saw in the street was 
a glazier whose piercing and discordant cry 
came up to me through the heavy and con-
taminated atmosphere of Paris. It would be ut-
terly impossible for me ever to tell you why I 
was suddenly seized with a hatred, as sudden 
as it was despotic, against the poor man.