June 20, 1851. I have just left court. I have condemned Blondel to
death! Now, why did this man kill his five children? Frequently one
meets with people to whom killing is a pleasure. Yes, yes, it should be
a pleasure--the greatest of all, perhaps, for is not killing most like
creating? To make and to destroy! These two words contain the history
of the universe, the history of all worlds, all that is, all! Why is it
not intoxicating to kill?
June 25. To think that there is a being who lives, who walks, who runs.
A being? What is a being? An animated thing which bears in it the
principle of motion, and a will ruling that principle. It clings to
nothing, this thing. Its feet are independent of the ground. It is a
grain of life that moves on the earth, and this grain of life, coming I
know not whence, one can destroy at one's will. Then nothing nothing
more. It perishes; it is finished.
June 26. Why, then, is it a crime to kill? Yes, why? On the contrary,
it is the law of nature. Every being has the mission to kill; he kills
to live, and he lives to kill. The beast kills without ceasing, all
day, every instant of its existence. Man kills without ceasing, to
nourish himself; but since in addition he needs to kill for pleasure,
he has invented the chase! The child kills the insects he finds, the
little birds, all the little animals that come in his way. But this
does not suffice for the irresistible need of massacre that is in us.
It is not enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too. Long ago this
need was satisfied by human sacrifice. Now, the necessity of living in
society has made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin!
But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious
instinct of death, we relieve ourselves from time to time, by wars.
Then a whole nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood,
a feast that maddens armies and intoxicates the civilians, women and
children, who read, by lamplight at night, the feverish story of
massacre.
And do we despise those picked out to accomplish these butcheries of
men? No, they are loaded with honors. They are clad in gold and in
resplendent stuffs; they wear plumes on their heads and ornaments on
their breasts; and they are given crosses, rewards, titles of every
kind. They are proud, respected, loved by women, cheered by the crowd,
solely because their mission is to shed human blood! They drag through
the streets their instruments of death, and the passer-by, clad in
black, looks on with envy. For to kill is the great law put by nature
in the heart of existence! There is nothing more beautiful and
honorable than killing!
June 30. To kill is the law, because Nature loves eternal youth. She
seems to cry in all her unconscious acts: "Quick! quick! quick!" The
more she destroys, the more she renews herself.
July 2. It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill to
place before you a living, thinking being; to make therein a little
hole, nothing but a little hole, and to see that red liquid flow which
is the blood, which is the life; and then to have before you only a
heap of limp flesh, cold, inert, void of thought!
August 5. I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing by
words pronounced, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by the
knife, if I should do as all the assassins whom I have smitten have
done, I, I--who would know it?
August 10. Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, especially
if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away with?
August 22. I could resist no longer. I have killed a little creature as
an experiment, as a beginning. Jean, my servant, had a goldfinch in a
cage hung in the office window. I sent him on an errand, and I took the
little bird in my hand, in my hand where I felt its heart beat. It was
warm. I went up to my room. From time to time I squeezed it tighter;
its heart beat faster; it was atrocious and delicious. I was nearly
choking it. But I could not see the blood.
Then I took scissors, short nail scissors, and I cut its throat in
three strokes, quite gently. It opened its bill, it struggled to escape
me, but I held it, oh! I held it--I could have held a mad dog--and I
saw the blood trickle.
And then I did as assassins do--real ones. I washed the scissors and
washed my hands. I sprinkled water, and took the body, the corpse, to
the garden to hide it. I buried it under a strawberry-plant. It will
never be found. Every day I can eat a strawberry from that plant. How
one can enjoy life, when one knows how!
My servant cried; he thought his bird flown. How could he suspect me?
Ah!
August 25. I must kill a man! I must!
August 30. It is done. But what a little thing! I had gone for a walk
in the forest of Vernes. I was thinking of nothing, literally nothing.
See! a child on the road, a little child eating a slice of bread and
butter. He stops to see me pass and says, "Good day, Mr. President."