“Oh! I had no wish to see my mistress die. Poor girl, I loved her well. But perhaps I desired the death of the other, before I saw it.
“The child was born. In my little bachelor apartment was a family, a sham family with a child; an unnatural thing. The child was like all babies. I did not love it. Fathers, you know, do not love till later. They have not the natural passionate tenderness that belongs to mothers; their affections have to wake little by little, their souls come upon love little by little, through those bonds which each day draws closer between human beings who share each other’s lives.
“Another year went by; I was shunning now my cramped little house, littered with linen and swaddling-clothes and socks the size of gloves, a thousand objects of all kinds lying on a table, on the arms of a chair, everywhere. Above all I kept away so as not to hear him cry, for he cried on every occasion, when his clothes were changed, when he was washed, when he was put to bed, indeed always.
“I had made some friendships, and in a drawing room one day I met your mother. I fell in love with her, and the desire to marry her woke in my heart. I wooed her and asked her hand in marriage; it was granted me.
“And there I was, caught in a trap. I must marry this young girl I adored, already having a child of my own—or I must tell the truth and renounce her, my happiness, my future, everything; for her parents, who were very strict, would never have consented to the marriage if they had known all.
“I spent a terrible month of agonising moral torment, a month during which a thousand terrible thoughts haunted me. And ever growing within me I felt a hatred for my son, for that little scrap of living, weeping flesh who barred my way, cut my life in two, and condemned me to a cheerless existence without any one of the vague hopes which are the charm of youth.
“Then my mistress’ mother fell ill, and I was left alone with the child.
“It was December, and frightfully cold. What a night! My mistress had just gone; I had dined alone in the little parlour, and softly entered the room where the baby slept.
“I sat before the fire in an armchair. A dry, icy wind blew outside and rattled the windowpanes, and through the window I could see the stars glitter with that keen light they have on frosty nights.
“Then the obsession which for the last month had haunted me entered into my head anew. The moment I sat still it descended upon me and gnawed my brain. It gnawed me as fixed ideas do, as cancer must gnaw the flesh. I felt it there in my head, in my heart, in my whole body; it devoured me like a wild beast. I tried to hunt it down, to drive it away, to open my mind to other thoughts, to new hopes, as one opens a window in the morning to let out the tainted air of the night; but not for a single instant could I chase it from my brain. I do not know how to describe this torture. It nibbled at my soul, and I felt every movement of its teeth with horrible pain, a veritable anguish of body and soul.
“My life was over! How was I to escape from this dilemma? How draw back and how confess?
“And I loved your mother madly; that made the insurmountable obstacle still more frightful.
“A terrible rage grew in me, tightening my throat, a rage which was akin to madness … madness! Yes, I was mad, that night!
“The child was asleep. I rose and watched it sleeping. It was he, that abortion, that mite, that nothing, who condemned me to hopeless misery.
“He slept, with his mouth open, under a heap of blankets, in a cradle near the bed I could not sleep in.
“How did I do what I did? Do I know? What force led me on, what evil power possessed me? Oh, the temptation came to me without my realising how it made its presence known. I remember only that my heart beat furiously, so violently that I heard it like the strokes of a hammer from behind a wall. That is all I remember—my heart beating. In my head was a strange confusion, a tumult, a routing of all reason, all common sense. I was in one of those hours of terror and hallucination wherein man has no longer knowledge of his actions nor control of his will.
“Softly I raised the coverings which hid my child’s body; I threw them on the foot of the cradle, and saw him stark naked. He did not wake. Then I went to the window, softly, so softly; and I opened it.
“A blast of icy air rushed in like a murderer, so bitter cold that I fell back before it; and the two candles flickered. And I remained standing by the window, not daring to turn round, as if not to see what was happening behind me, and always feeling, gliding over my temples, my cheeks, my hands, the deathly air which flowed into the room in a steady stream. It went on a long time.
“I did not think, I considered nothing. Suddenly a little cough sent a dreadful shiver through me from head to foot, a shiver I can feel at this moment, in the roots of my hair. With a wild movement I slammed the window down and, turning round, ran to the cradle.
“He was still asleep, with open mouth, stark naked. I touched his legs; they were frozen, and I pulled up the coverings.
“My heart suddenly softened,
