their mission is to shed human blood; They drag
through the streets their instruments of death, that the passer-by, clad
in black, looks on with envy. For to kill is the great law set by nature
in the heart of existence! There is nothing more beautiful and honorable
than killing!

30th June. 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.

2d July. A human being--what is a human being? Through thought it is
a reflection of all that is; through memory and science it is an abridged
edition of the universe whose history it represents, a mirror of things
and of nations, each human being becomes a microcosm in the macrocosm.

3d July. It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill; to have
there before one the living, thinking being; to make therein a little
hole, nothing but a little hole, to see that red thing flow which is the
blood, which makes life; and to have before one only a heap of limp
flesh, cold, inert, void of thought!

5th August. I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing by
the spoken word, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by the
knife, I, I, if I should do as all the assassins have done whom I have
smitten, I--I--who would know it?

10th August. Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, me, me,
especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away
with?

15th August. The temptation has come to me. It pervades my whole being;
my hands tremble with the desire to kill.

22d August. I could resist no longer. I killed a little creature as an
experiment, for 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; this was atrocious and delicious. I was near choking it. But
I could not see the blood.

Then I took scissors, short-nail scissors, and I cut its throat with
three slits, 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, I
washed my hands. I sprinkled water and took the body, the corpse, to the
garden to hide it. I b