rail from the line in order to cause a derailment of his train. One morning, she seizes an opportunity, when Cabuche leaves his wagon and horses unattended, near the railway line. She leads the horses onto the line, shortly before the train arrives. In the resulting crash, numerous people are killed and Lantier is seriously injured. Séverine, however, remains unhurt. Wracked by guilt, Flore commits suicide by walking in front of a train. Séverine nurses Lantier back to health. She convinces him that they must kill Roubaud and Lantier finally gives in, and they concoct a plan to get away with it completely. However, Lantier's mania returns, and when Séverine tries to make love with him, just before Roubaud is due to arrive, he murders her. The unfortunate Cabuche is the first to find her body and is accused of killing her at the behest of Roubaud. Both are put on trial for this and the murder of Grandmorin. They are both convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Lantier begins driving again, but his new engine is just a number to him. He begins an affair with his fireman's girlfriend. The novel ends as Lantier is driving a train carrying troops towards the front at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. The resentment between Lantier and his fireman breaks out as the train is travelling at full steam. Both fall to their deaths as the train full of happy, drunken, patriotic and doomed soldiers hurtles driverless through the night. Publication history 1890, La Bête humaine (French), Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier 1901, The Monomaniac, translated and edited with a preface by Edward Vizetelly, London: Hutchinson & Co 1956: The Beast in Man, translated by Alec Brown (Elek) 1968, The Beast in Man (translated by Robert Godfrey Goodyear and P.J.R. Wright), London: Signet Classic 1977, La Bête humaine (translated by Leonard Tancock), London: Penguin, 1996, La Bête humaine (translated by Roger Pearson), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, The Beast Within (translated by Roger Whitehouse), London: Penguin, Film adaptations Die Bestie im Menschen, a 1920 German silent film, directed by Ludwig Wolff La Bête humaine, a 1938 movie directed by Jean Renoir Human Desire, 1954 movie based on the novel, and directed by Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford La Bestia humana, a 1957 Argentine movie, directed by Daniel Tinayre Cruel Train, a 1995 British TV movie, directed by Malcolm McKay External links (French) 1890 French