After two years passed on the Orleans Railway, he became an
engineer of the first-class on the Western Railway. At twenty-six he
was a tall, handsome man, with dark hair and a clear complexion. From
childhood he had suffered from a complaint which the doctors did not
understand, a pain in the head, behind the ears, accompanied by fever
and an intense melancholy, which tempted him to hide like a suffering
animal. When about sixteen years of age he became affected by a curious
form of insanity, the desire to murder any woman of whom he became fond.
"On each occasion it seemed like a sudden outburst of blind rage, an
ever-recurring thirst to avenge some very ancient offence, the exact
recollection of which escaped him. Did it date from so far back, from
the harm women had done to his race, from the rancour laid up from male
to male since the first deceptions in the depths of the caverns?" Even
with his cousin Flore, who loved him from childhood, the same terrible
instinct arose, and could only be stilled by flight.
By chance, Jacques was a momentary witness of the murder of President
Grandmorin, and when suspicion fell upon the Roubauds he came to be
of opinion that it was well-founded, a belief which was confirmed by a
subsequent confession to him by Severine.
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