Beneath the pressure of torments such as these the
feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil
thoughts became my sole intimates—the darkest and most
evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper
increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while
from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a
fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my
uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and the most
patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household
errand, into the cellar of the old building which our poverty
compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep
stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to
madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the
childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a
blow at the animal, which, of course, would have proved
instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow
was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by the
interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew
my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She
fell dead upon the spot without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself
forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of
concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from
the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being
observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind.
At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute
fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I
resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again,
I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard—about
packing it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usual
arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the
house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it up in
the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to
have walled up their victims.