His supreme pleasure was seeking out, in the most rugged and virile of his fellow men, any secret thread of weakness. Once detected he would mine away carefully like some silent weevil until the hard shell had been pierced and the hidden kernel of frailty had been reached; and then, with expert timing, he would expose it to the cruel light of day and derision, and so destroy. In exposing the flaws beneath splendid façades he could expiate his own happily. He never applied this form of destruction and torture to women, whom he considered far too easily crushed, and appallingly weak in any event, but addressed himself particularly to the most masculine, strong and courageous of men. This destruction, when it came, as inevitably it did, was greatly rewarding to him, as rewarding as dynamiting skyscrapers, felling great trees, or sending a battleship to the depths with one slender torpedo. Each capitulation gave him intense physical pleasure, akin indeed to sexual release, and at the same time each one armoured him, and made him feel strong. Applying the same tactics to a woman would have given him no greater pleasure than treading on a fledgling.

The only women whom he could countenance, with any degree of comfort, near him, were those like Lilli Scarlatti or Minerva Volturino whom he considered to be half-male in any case, and un-real, living half-lives: he easily crushed the feminine side in them, and their male-side amused him. So. But women in general he detested for their passivity, passivity being as unforgivable as weakness or indecision. There could be no physical, or mental, pleasure in any operation directed against creatures such as they for they offered no challenge.

Which was why he was presently so anguished on his way to luncheon at the Colombe d’Or by the blunder which he had very probably made in choosing Wolf Hagel as his next, and most interesting, subject for vivisection.

At first sight he had appeared to be exactly the right material. Male, handsome, strong, with just a hint of grace which was so essential for the envisaged role of l’Aiglon. Clean-limbed, determined, innocent. Innocence above all. How splendid then to take this glowing creature and mould him carefully into shape, to build him, to lavish him with learning, train him, develop his quite unaware nature, give him self-pride, arrogance, ambition, make him aware of envy, avarice, greed and power. To make him, in short, a true Man, drape a cloak of brilliance and glory about him and permit him to swagger in his splendours for a time.

And then gently unpick the seams.