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 th