Après s'être laissé aller à ses pulsions Hercule se "mettait en quatre" (ici beaucoup plus...) pour essayer d'expier, il acceptait les tâches les plus impossibles, les plus ingrates, pour trouver dans la mortification le pardon de ceux qu'il avait, aveuglement, cruellement, détruit.

After having let himself be driven by his instinct, Hercules “was cutting himself into four” (means doing his utmost in French) (here more than four…) to try to expiate, he was accepting the most impossible tasks, the most ungrateful in order to find in this mortification forgiveness from those he had blindly, cruelly, destroyed.