“These lamentable doctrines, nowadays acclaimed in debating-societies, have ruined this man. He has listened to men of the republican party, yes! and even women too, demanding the blood of Monsieur Gambetta, the blood of Monsieur Grévy; his diseased brain has succumbed, he has thirsted for blood, the blood of nobility!
“It is not this man, gentlemen, whom you should condemn, it is the Commune!”
Murmurs of approval ran to and fro. It was generally felt that counsel for the defence had won his case. The public prosecutor did not reply.
Then the judge asked the prisoner the customary question:
“Prisoner at the bar, have you nothing to add in your defence?”
The man rose.
He was small in stature, with flaxen hair and grey eyes, steady and bright. A strong, frank, sonorous voice came from the throat of this slender youth, and his very first words altered at once the view that had been formed of him.
He spoke loudly, in a declamatory tone, but so clearly that his slightest words carried to the ends of the large court:
“Your Worship, as I do not wish to go to a madhouse, and even prefer the guillotine, I will tell you all.
“I killed the man and the woman because they were my parents.
“Now hear me and judge me.
“A woman, having given birth to a son, sent him out to nurse. It had been well if she had known to what district her accomplice had carried the little creature, innocent, but condemned to lasting misery, to the shame of illegitimate birth, to worse than that: to death, since he was abandoned, since the nurse, no longer receiving the monthly allowance, might well have left him, as such women often do, to pine away, to suffer from hunger, to perish of neglect.
“The woman who suckled me was honest, more honest, more womanly, greater of soul, a better mother, than my own mother. She brought me up. She was wrong to do her duty. It is better to leave to their death the wretches who are flung out into provincial villages, as rubbish is flung out at the roadside.
“I grew up with the vague impression that I was the bearer of some dishonour. One day the other children called me ‘bastard.’ They did not know the meaning of the word, which one of them had heard at home. Neither did I know its meaning, but I sensed it.
“I was, I can honestly say, one of the most intelligent children in the school. I should have been an honest man, Your Worship, perhaps a remarkable man, if my parents had not committed the crime of abandoning me.
“And it was against me that this crime was committed. I was the victim, they were the guilty ones. I was defenceless, they were pitiless. They ought to have loved me: they cast me out.
“I owed my life to them—but is life a gift? Mine, at any rate, was nothing but a misfortune. After their shameful desertion of me, I owed them nothing but revenge. They committed against me the most inhuman, the most shameful, the most monstrous crime that can be committed against a human being.
“A man insulted strikes; a man robbed takes back his goods by force. A man deceived, tricked, tormented, kills; a man whose face is slapped, kills; a man dishonoured, kills. I was more grievously robbed, deceived, tormented, morally slapped in the face, dishonoured, than all the men whose anger you condone.
“I have avenged myself, I have killed. It was my lawful right. I took their happy lives in exchange for the horrible life which they imposed on me.
“You will call it parricide! Were they my parents, those people to whom I was an abominable burden, a terror, a mark of infamy; to whom my birth was a calamity and my life a threat of shame? They sought their selfish pleasure; they brought forth the child they had not counted on. They suppressed that child. My turn has come to repay them in kind.
“And yet, even at the eleventh hour, I was prepared to love them.
“It is now two years, as I have already told you, since the man, my father, came to my house for the first time. I suspected nothing. He ordered two articles of furniture. I learnt later that he had obtained information from the village priest, under the seal of a secret compact.
“He often came; he gave me work and paid me well. Sometimes he even chatted with me on various subjects. I felt some affection for him.
“At the beginning of this year he brought his wife, my mother. When she came in she was trembling so violently that I thought she was the victim of a nervous disorder. Then she asked for a chair and a glass of water. She said nothing; she stared at my stock with the expression of a lunatic, and to all the questions he put to her she answered nothing but yes and no, quite at random! When she had gone, I thought her not quite right in the head.
“She came back the following month. She was calm, mistress of herself. They remained talking quite a long time that day, and gave me a big order. I saw her again three times without guessing anything; but one day, lo and behold! she began to talk to me about my life, my childhood, and my parents. I answered: ‘My parents, madame, were wretches who abandoned me.’ At that she set her hand to her heart and dropped senseless. I thought at once: ‘This is my mother!’ but was careful not to give myself away. I wanted her to go on coming.
“So I in my turn made inquiries.
