“I soon caught up with them. It was now
pitch dark. I was creeping up behind them softly,
that they might not hear me. My mother was still
crying. My father was saying: ’It’s
all your own fault. Why did you wish to see him?
It was absurd in our position. We could have helped
him from afar, without showing ourselves. Of
what use are these dangerous visits, since we can’t
recognize him?’
“Then I rushed up to them, beseeching.
I cried:
“’You see! You are my parents.
You have already rejected me once; would you repulse
me again?’
“Then, your honor, he struck me. I swear
it on my honor, before the law and my country.
He struck me, and as I seized him by the collar, he
drew from his pocket a revolver.
“The blood rushed to my head, I no longer knew
what I was doing, I had my compass in my pocket; I
struck him with it as often as I could.
“Then she began to cry: ‘Help! murder!’
and to pull my beard. It seems that I killed
her also. How do I know what I did then?
“Then, when I saw them both lying on the ground,
without thinking, I threw them into the Seine.
“That’s all. Now sentence me.”
The prisoner sat down. After this revelation
the case was carried over to the following session.
It comes up very soon. If we were jurymen, what
would we do with this parricide?
Dr. Bonnet, my old friend—one sometimes
has friends older than one’s self—had
often invited me to spend some time with him at Riom,
and, as I did not know Auvergne, I made up my mind
to visit him in the summer of 1876.
I arrived by the morning train, and the first person
I saw on the platform was the doctor. He was
dressed in a gray suit, and wore a soft, black, wide-brimmed,
high-crowned felt hat, narrow at the top like a chimney
pot, a hat which hardly any one except an Auvergnat
would wear, and which reminded one of a charcoal burner.
Dressed like that, the doctor had the appearance of
an old young man, with his spare body under his thin
coat, and his large head covered with white hair.
He embraced me with that evident pleasure which country
people feel when they meet long-expected friends,
and, stretching out his arm, he said proudly:
“This is Auvergne!” I saw nothing before
me except a range of mountains, whose summits, which
resembled truncated cones, must have been extinct
volcanoes.
Then, pointing to the name of the station, he said:
“Riom, the fatherland of magistrates, the pride
of the magistracy, and which ought rather to be the
fatherland of doctors.”
“Why?” I, asked.
“Why?” he replied with a laugh. “If
you transpose the letters, you have the Latin word
‘mori’, to die. That is the reason
why I settled here, my young friend.”
And, delighted at his own joke, he carried me off,
rubbing his hands.
