Yes, journey over the world and watch the swarming of the innumerable and nameless human beings. Nameless? Aye, there’s the rub! To kill is a crime because we have enumerated human beings. When they are born, they are registered, named, baptised. The law takes charge of them. Very well, then! The man who is not registered is of no account: kill him in the desert, kill him in the hills or in the plain, what does it matter! Nature loves death: she will not punish it.
What is verily sacred, is the social community. That’s it! It is that which protects man. The individual is sacred because he is a member of the social community. Homage to the social state, the legal God. On your knees!
The State itself can kill because it has the right to alter the social community. When it has had two hundred thousand men butchered in a war, it erases them from the community, it suppresses them by the hands of its registrars. That is the end of it. But we who cannot alter the records of the town halls, we must respect life. Social community, glorious divinity who reigns in the temples of the municipalities, I salute you. You are stronger than nature. Ah! Ah!
July 3rd. To kill must be a strange pleasure and of infinite relish to a man. To have there, standing before him, a living thinking being: to thrust in him a little hole, only a little hole, to see pouring out that red stuff which we call blood, which makes life, and then to have in front of one only a lump of nerveless flesh, cold, inert, emptied of thought.
August 5th. I who have spent my life in judging, condemning, in killing by uttered words, in killing by the guillotine such as have killed by the knife, I, I, if I did as do all the assassins whom I have struck down, I, I, who would know it?
August 10th. Who would ever know it? Who would suspect me, me, especially if I chose a creature in whose removal I have no interest?
August 15th. The temptation. The temptation has entered into me like a worm that crawls. It crawls, it moves, it roves through my whole body, in my mind, which thinks only of one thing—to kill; in my eyes which lust to see blood, to see something die; in my ears, where there sounds continually something strange, monstrous, shattering, and stupefying, like the last cry of a human creature; in my legs which tingle with desire to go, to go to the spot where the thing could come to pass; in my hands which tremble with lust to kill. What a glorious act it would be, a rare act, worthy of a free man, greater than other men, captain of his soul, and a seeker after exquisite sensations!
August 22nd. I could resist no longer. I have killed a small beast just to try, to begin with.
Jean, my man, had a goldfinch in a cage hung in a window of the servant’s room. I sent him on an errand and I took the little bird in my hand, in my hand where I felt the beating of his heart. He was warm. I went up to my room. From time to time, I clutched him harder, his heart beat faster; it was frightful and delicious. I all but choked him. But I should not have seen the blood.
Then I took the scissors, short nail-scissors, and I cut his throat in three strokes, so cleverly. He opened his beak, he struggled to escape me, but I held him fast, oh, I held him; I would have held a mad bulldog, and I saw the blood run. How beautiful blood is, red, gleaming, clear! I longed to drink it. I wetted the end of my tongue with it. It was good. But he had so little of it, the poor little bird! I have not had time to enjoy the sight of it as I would have liked. It must be glorious to see a bull bleed to death.
And then I did all that assassins do, that real ones do. I washed the scissors, I washed my hands, I threw out the water, and I carried the body, the corpse, into the garden to bury it. I hid it in the strawberry bed. It will never be found. Every day I shall eat a strawberry from that plant. In very truth, how one can enjoy life when one knows how!
My man wept; he supposed that his bird had flown. How could he suspect me? Ah! Ah!
Aug. 25th. I must kill a man. I must.
Aug. 30th. It is done. What a simple thing it is!
I went to take a walk in the Bois de Vernes. I was thinking of nothing, no, of nothing. And there was a child on the road, a little boy eating a slice of bread and butter.
He stood still to let me pass and said:
“Good day, Monsieur le président.”
And the thought came into my head: “Suppose I were to kill him?”
I replied:
“Are you all alone, my boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All alone in the wood?”
“Yes, sir.”
The desire to kill intoxicated me like strong drink. I approached him stealthily, sure that he would run away. And then I seized him by the throat … I squeezed him, I squeezed him with all my strength. He looked at me with terrified eyes. What eyes! Quite round, fathomless, clear, terrible. I have never experienced so savage an emotion … but so
