. Our makeup is so weak, so awkwardly conceived;
our body is encumbered with organs that are always tired, always being
strained like locks that are too complicated; it lives like a plant and
like an animal nourishing itself with difficulty on air, herbs, and
flesh; it is a brute machine which is a prey to maladies, to
malformations, to decay; it is broken-winded, badly regulated, simple
and eccentric, ingeniously yet badly made, a coarse and yet a delicate
mechanism, in brief, the outline of a being which might become
intelligent and great.

There are only a few--so few--stages of development in this world, from
the oyster up to man. Why should there not be one more, when once that
period is accomplished which separates the successive products one from
the other?

Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees with immense, splendid
flowers, perfuming whole regions? Why not other elements beside fire,
air, earth, and water? There are four, only four, nursing fathers of
various beings! What a pity! Why should not there be forty, four
hundred, four thousand! How poor everything is, how mean and
wretched--grudgingly given, poorly invented, clumsily made! Ah! the
elephant and the hippopotamus, what power! And the camel, what
suppleness!

But the butterfly, you will say, a flying flower! I dream of one that
should be as large as a hundred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty,
colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I see it--it flutters
from star to star, refreshing them and perfuming them with the light
and harmonious breath of its flight! And the people up there gaze at it
as it passes in an ecstasy of delight!

What is the matter with me? It is He, the Horla who haunts me, and who
makes me think of these foolish things! He is within me, He is becoming
my soul; I shall kill him!

August 20. I shall kill Him. I have seen Him! Yesterday I sat down at
my table and pretended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well
that He would come prowling round me, quite close to me, so close that
I might perhaps be able to touch him, to seize him. And then--then I
should have the strength of desperation; I should have my hands, my
knees, my chest, my forehead, my teeth to strangle him, to crush him,
to bite him, to tear him to pieces. And I watched for him with all my
overexcited nerves.

I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax candles on my mantelpiece,
as if, by this light I should discover Him.

My bed, my old