I took it. I returned; I raised it like a club,
and with one blow of the edge I cleft the fisherman’s
head. Oh! he bled, this one! Rose-colored
blood. It flowed into the water, quite gently.
And I went away with a grave step. If I had been
seen! Ah! ah! I should have made an excellent
assassin.
25th October. The affair of the fisherman makes
a great stir. His nephew, who fished with him,
is charged with the murder.
26th October. The examining magistrate affirms
that the nephew is guilty. Everybody in town
believes it. Ah! ah!
27th October. The nephew makes a very poor witness.
He had gone to the village to buy bread and cheese,
he declared. He swore that his uncle had been
killed in his absence! Who would believe him?
28th October. The nephew has all but confessed,
they have badgered him so. Ah! ah! justice!
15th November. There are overwhelming proofs
against the nephew, who was his uncle’s heir.
I shall preside at the sessions.
25th January. To death! to death! to death!
I have had him condemned to death! Ah! ah!
The advocate-general spoke like an angel! Ah!
ah! Yet another! I shall go to see him executed!
10th March. It is done. They guillotined
him this morning. He died very well! very well!
That gave me pleasure! How fine it is to see a
man’s head cut off!
Now, I shall wait, I can wait. It would take
such a little thing to let myself be caught.
The manuscript contained yet other pages, but without
relating any new crime.
Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been
submitted declare that there are in the world many
undiscovered madmen as adroit and as much to be feared
as this monstrous lunatic.
There was a masquerade ball at the Elysee-Montmartre
that evening. It was the ‘Mi-Careme’,
and the crowds were pouring into the brightly lighted
passage which leads to the dance ball, like water flowing
through the open lock of a canal. The loud call
of the orchestra, bursting like a storm of sound,
shook the rafters, swelled through the whole neighborhood
and awoke, in the streets and in the depths of the
houses, an irresistible desire to jump, to get warm,
to have fun, which slumbers within each human animal.
The patrons came from every quarter of Paris; there
were people of all classes who love noisy pleasures,
a little low and tinged with debauch. There were
clerks and girls—girls of every description,
some wearing common cotton, some the finest batiste;
rich girls, old and covered with diamonds, and poor
girls of sixteen, full of the desire to revel, to
belong to men, to spend money. Elegant black evening
suits, in search of fresh or faded but appetizing
novelty, wandering through the excited crowds, looking,
searching, while the masqueraders seemed moved above
all by the desire for amusement. Already the far-famed
