3.

The intermittent annihilation of human faculties. Whatever you might be inclined to suppose, these are no mere words. Or at least these are not words just like any others. let him who thought that, by asking an executioner to flay him alive, he was doing an act of justice, raise his hand. Let him who would expose his breast to the bullets of death hold up his head with a smile of delight. My eyes will seek out the mark of the scar; my ten fingers will concentrate the totality of their attention on carefully feeling this eccentric's flesh; I will check to see if the spatterings of his brain have spurted on to the satin of my brow. The man who would love such martyrdom is not to be found in their entire universe, is he? I do not know what laughter is, never having experienced it myself. And yet how imprudent it would be to maintain that my lips would not widen if it were granted to me to see him who claimed that, somewhere, that man exists. What no one would wish for himself has fallen to my share by an unfair stroke of fate. Not that my body is swimming in the lake of sorrow. Let us pa.s.s on then. But the mind dries up with the strain of continual and concentrated reflection; it croaks like the frogs on the marsh when a flight of ravenous flamingoes and starving herons swoops down to the rushes' edge. Happy is he who sleeps peacefully in his bead of feathers plucked from the eider's breast, without noticing that he is giving himself away. I have not slept for more than thirty years now. Since the unutterable day of my birth, I have sworn implacable hatred to the somniferous bedplanks. It was my own wish; let no one else be blamed. Quickly, abandon the abortive suspicion. Can you make out the pale garland on my brow? She who wreathed it, with her thin fingers, was tenacity. As long as any trace of searing sap flows in my bones like a torrent of molten metal, I shall not sleep. Every night I force my livid eyes to stare at the stars through the panes of my windows. To be surer of myself, a splinter of wood holds my two swollen eyelids apart. When dawn appears she finds me in the same position, my body upright against the cold plaster of the wall. However, I do sometimes happen to dream, but without for a moment losing the unshakeable consciousness of my personality and my capacity for freedom of movement; you must know that the nightmare which lurks in the phosphoric corners of the shadow, the fever which feels my face with its stump, each impure animal which raises its bleeding claw; well, it is my own will which makes them whirl around, to give a staple food to its perpetual activity. In fact free will, a mere atom avenging itself for its weakness, does not fear to affirm with powerful authority that it does not count brutishness among its sons: he who sleeps is less than an animal castrated the night before. Although insomnia drags these muscles, which already give off a scent of cypress, down into the pit, never will the white catacomb of my intellect open its sanctuaries to the eyes of the Creator. A secret and n.o.ble justice, into the arms of which I instinctively fling myself, commands me to track down this ign.o.ble punishment remorselessly. Dreadful enemy of my imprudent soul, at the hour when the lantern is lit on the coast, I forbid my wretched back to lie on the dew of the sward. Victoriously I repel the ambushes of the hypocritical poppy. Consequently, it is clear that in this strange struggle my heart has checked his plans, starving man who eats himself. Impenetrable as the giants, I have lived incessantly with my eyes staring wide open. It is obvious that, at least during the day, anyone can offer useful resistance to the Great Exterior Object (who does not know his name?); for then the will guards its defences with remarkable ferocity. But as soon as the veil of night mists comes down, even over condemned men about to be hanged, oh, to see one's intellect in the sacrilegious hands of a stranger! A pitiless scalpel probes among its undergrowth. Conscience utters a long rattle of curses; the veil of modesty is cruelly torn away. Humiliation! Our door is open to the wild curiosity of the Celestial Bandit. I have not deserved this ignominious punishment, hideous spy of my causality! If I exist, I am not another. I do not acknowledge this ambiguous plurality in myself. I wish to reside alone in my inner deliberations. Autonomy...or let me be changed into a hippopotamus. Engulf yourself beneath the earth, anonymous stigma, and do not reappear before my haggard indignation. My subjectivity and the Creator, that is too much for one brain. When night spreads darkness over the pa.s.sage of hours, who has not fought against the onset of sleep, in his bed soaking with glacial sweat? This bed, luring the dying faculties to her breast, is nothing but a tomb made of planks of squared fir. The will gradually gives way, as if in the presence of an invisible force. A viscous was forms a thick layer over the crystalline lens. The eyelids seek each other like two friends. The body is now no more than a breathing corpse. Finally, four huge stakes nail all the limbs on to the mattress. And observe, I beg of you, that the sheets are but shrouds. Here is the cresset in which the incense of religion burns. Eternity roars like a distant sea and approaches with large strides. The room has disappeared! Sometimes, vainly trying to overcome the imperfections of the organism in the midst of the deepest sleep, the hypnotized senses perceive with astonishment that it is now only a block of sepulchre-stone, and reason admirably, with incomparable subtlety: 'To get up from this bed is a more difficult problem than one might think. Sitting in a cart, I am being taken off towards the binarity of the guillotine posts. Strange to say, my inert arm has knowingly taken on the stiffness of a chimney stack. It is not at all good to dream that one is going towards the scaffold.' Blood flows in wide waves over the face. The breast repeatedly gives violent starts, heaves, and wheezes. The weight of an obelisk suppresses the free expression of rage. The real has destroyed the dreams of drowsiness! Who does not know that when the struggle continues between the ego, full of pride, and the terrible encroachment of catalepsy, the deluded mind loses its judgment? Gnawed by despair, it revels in its sickness, till it has conquered nature, and sleep, seeing its prey escape it, retreats, angry and ashamed, far away, never to return. Throw a few ashes on my flaming eyeb.a.l.l.s. Do not stare at my never-ending eyes. Do you understand the sufferings I endure? (However, pride is gratified.) As soon as night exhorts humans to rest, a man, whom I know, strides over the countryside. I fear my resolved will succ.u.mb to the onset of old age. Let it come, that fatal day when I fall asleep! When I awake, my razor, making its way across my neck, will prove that, in fact, nothing was more real.

4.

'But who can it be?...but who is it who dares like a conspirator to trail the rings of his body towards my black breast? Whoever you are, eccentric python, by what pretext do you excuse you ridiculous presence? Are you tormented by vast remorse? For you see, boa, your wild majesty does not, I suppose, make any exorbitant claim to exemption from the comparison I am going to make between it and the features of the criminal. This foaming whitish slime is for me the sign of rage. Listen to me: do you know that you eye is far from absorbing a ray of heavenly light? Do not forget that if your presumptuous brain thought me capable of offering you a few words of consolation, then the only motive for your mistake must be an abysmal ignorance of physiognomic science. For as long, of course, as is necessary, direct the light of your eyes towards that which I, as much as the next man, have the right to call my face! Can you not see how it is weeping? You were wrong, basilisk. you will have to seek elsewhere the miserable ration of comfort which my radical incapacity denies you, despite the numerous protestations of my good will. Oh, what force which can be expressed in sentences fatally brought you to your downfall? It is almost impossible for me to get used to the argument that you do not realize that, by flattening the fleeting curves of your triangular head with a click of my heels, I could knead an unmentionable putty with the gra.s.s of the savannah and the crushed victim's flesh.

'Out of my sight immediately, pallid criminal! The fallacious mirage of utter dread has shown you your own spectre! Dispel these insulting suspicions, unless you want me in turn to charge you and bring a counter-accusation against you which would certainly meet with the approval of the reptilivorous serpent. What monstrous aberration of the imagination prevents you from recognizing me? Don you not recall the important services I did for you, as a favour to an existence which I had brought out of chaos, and, on your part, the forever unforgettable vow that you would not desert my flag, that you would remain true to me till death? When you were a child (your intellect was then in its finest phase), you would be the first to climb the hill with the speed of the lizard to salute the multicoloured rays of the rising dawn with a motion of your little hand. The notes of your voice gushed forth from your sweet-sounding larynx like diamantine pearls resolving their collective personalities into the vibrant aggregation of a long hymn of adoration. Now you fling to your feet the forbearance which I have shown for too long. Grat.i.tude has seen its roots dry up like the bed of a pond; but in its place ambition has grown to proportions which it would be painful to describe. Who is he who is listening to me, that he should have so much confidence in his own excessive weakness?

'And who are you, audacious substance? No!...no!...I am not mistaken; and despite the multiple metamorphoses you have recourse to, your snake's head will always gleam before my eyes like a lighthouse of eternal injustice and cruel domination! He wanted to take the reins of command, but he cannot reign! He wanted to become an abomination to all the beings of creation, and in this he succeeded. He wanted to prove that he alone is monarch of the universe, and there it is that he is mistaken. Oh wretch! have you waited till this hour to hear the mutterings and the plots which, rising simultaneously from the surface of the spheres, come with wildly beating wings to graze the papillaceous sides of your destructible eardrum? The day is not far off when my hand will strike you down into the dust which you have infected with your breath, and, tearing the noxious life from your entrails, will leave your body writhing and contorted to teach the appalled traveler that this palpitating flesh which strikes his sight with astonishment and nails his dumb tongue to his palate, must not be compared, if one keeps one's composure, with the rotten trunk of an old tree which has decayed and fallen! What thought of pity can it be which makes me stay here, in your presence? You should rather retreat before me, I tell you, and go wash your immeasurable shame in the blood of a newborn baby: such are your practices. They are worthy of you. So on...keep walking straight ahead. I condemn you to become a wanderer. I condemn you to remain alone and without a family. Wander forever on your way, so that your feet can no longer hold you. Cross the sands of the desert till the end of the world engulfs the stars in nothingness. When you pa.s.s near the tiger's lair, he will rush to escape so as to avoid seeing, as in a mirror, his character mounted on the pedestal of ideal perversity. But when overmastering weariness commands you to halt before the flagstones of my palace covered with brambles and thistles, be careful with your tattered sandals and pa.s.s through the elegant vestibule on tiptoe. It is not a futile injunction. You could wake my young wife and my infant son, sleeping in the leaden vaults which run along by the foundations of the ancient castle. If you did not take these preliminary precautions, they could make you turn pale with their subterranean howling. When your inscrutable will deprived them of life, they knew how dreadful your power was, and were in no doubt at all on that point; but they did not expect (and their last adieux to me confirmed their belief) that your Providence would prove so merciless! Be that as it may, cross rapidly these abandoned and silent rooms with their emerald paneling, but tarnished armorial bearings, in which the glorious statues of my ancestors are kept. These marble bodies are incensed with you; avoid their gla.s.sy looks. It is a word of advice from the tongue of their one and only descendant. See how their arms are raised in a provocative att.i.tude of defence, their heads thrust back proudly. Surely they have guessed the wrong you have done me; and, if you pa.s.s within range of the chill pedestals which support these sculpted blocks, vengeance awaits you there. If there is anything you need to say in your own defence, speak. It is too late for weeping now. You ought to have wept earlier, on more fitting occasions, when you had the opportunity. If your eyes have at last been opened, judge for yourself the consequences of your action. Adieu! I am going to breathe the sea-breeze on the cliffs; for my half-suffocated lungs are crying out for a sight more peaceful and more virtuous than the sight of you!

5.

Oh incomprehensible pederasts, I shall not heap insults upon your great degradation; i shall not be the one to pour scorn on your infundibuliform a.n.u.s. It is enough that the shameful and almost incurable maladies which besiege you should bring with them their unfailing punishments. Legislators of stupid inst.i.tutions, founders of a narrow morality, depart from me, for I am an impartial soul. And you, young adolescents, or rather young girls, explain to me how and why (but keep a safe distance, for I, too, am unable to control my pa.s.sions), vengeance has so sprouted in your hearts that you could leave such a crown of sores on the flanks of mankind. You make it blush at its sons by your conduct (which I venerate!); your prost.i.tution which offers itself to the first comer, taxes the logic of the deepest thinkers, while your extreme sensibility crowns the stupefaction of woman herself. Are you of a more or less earthly nature than your fellow-beings? Do you possess a sixth sense which we lack? Do not lie, and say what you think. This is not a question I am putting to you; for since as an observer I have been frequenting the sublimity of your intelligence, I know how matters stand. Blessed be you by my left hand and sanctified by my right hand, angels protected by my universal love. I kiss your faces, I kiss your b.r.e.a.s.t.s, I kiss, with my smooth lips, the different parts of your harmonious and perfumed bodies. Why did you not tell me immediately what you were, crystallizations of superior moral beauty? I had to guess for myself the innumerable treasures of tenderness and chast.i.ty hidden by the beatings of your oppressed hearts. b.r.e.a.s.t.s bedecked with rose-garlands and vetiver. I had to open your legs to know you, I had to place my mouth over the insignia of your shame. But (I must stress this), do not forget to wash the skin of your lower parts with hot water every day for, if you do not, venereal chancres will infallibly grow on the commissures of my unsatisfied lips. Oh! if, instead of being a h.e.l.l, the universe had only been an immense celestial a.n.u.s, look at the motion I am making with my loins: yes, I would have thrust my verge into its bleeding sphincter, shattering, with my jerking movements, the very walls of its pelvis! Misery would not then have blown into my blinded eyes from entire dunes of moving sand; I should have discovered the subterranean place where truth lies sleeping and the rivers of my viscous sperm would thus have found an ocean into which they could gush. But why do I find myself regretting an imaginary state of affairs which will never bear the stamp of final accomplishment? Let us not trouble to construct fleeting hypotheses. Meanwhile, let him who burns with ardour to share my bed come and find me; but I make one condition for my hospitality: he must not be more than fifteen years old. Let him not, on his part, think that I am thirty; what difference does that make? Age does not lessen the intensity of emotions, far from it; and though my hair has become white as snow, it is not from age: on the contrary, it is for the reason you know. I do not like woman! nor even hermaphrodites! I need beings who are the same as me, on whose brows human n.o.bility is graven in more distinct, ineffaceable characters. Are you sure that those whose hair is long are of the same nature as I? I do not believe so, and I will abandon my opinion. Bitter saliva is flowing from my mouth, I do not know why. Who will suck it for me, that I may be rid of it? It is rising...it is still rising! I have noticed that when I suck blood from the throats of those who sleep beside me (the supposition that I am a vampire is false, since that is the name given to the dead who rise from their graves; whereas I am living), I throw up part of it on the following day: this is the explanation of the vile saliva. What do you expect me to do, now that my organs, weakened by vice, refuse to accomplish the functions of digestion? But do not reveal these confidences to anyone. It is not for my own sake that I am telling you this; it is for yourself and the others, that the influence of the secret I have imparted should keep within the bounds of duty and virtue those who, magnetized by the electricity of the unknown, would be tempted to imitate me. Be so good as to look at my mouth (for the moment I have no time to use a longer formula of politeness); at first sight it strikes you by its appearance; there is no need to bring the snake into your comparison; it is because I am contracting the tissue as far as it will possibly go, to give the impression that I am cold of temperament. But you really know that the diametrical opposite is true. If only I could see the face of him who is reading me through these seraphic pages. If he has not pa.s.sed p.u.b.erty, let him approach. Hold me tight against you, and do not be afraid of hurting me; let us contract our muscles. More. I feel it is futile to continue. The opacity of this piece of paper, remarkable in more ways than one, is a most considerable obstacle to our complete union. I have always had a perverse fancy for schoolboys and the emaciated children of the factories. My words are not the recollections of a dream, and I would have too many memories to disentangle if I were obliged to describe all those events which by their evidence could corroborate the veracity of my woeful statement. Human justice has not yet caught me in the act, despite the expertise of its policemen. I even murdered (not long ago!) a pederast who was not responding adequately to my pa.s.sion; I threw his body down a disused well, and there is no decisive evidence against me. Why are you quivering with fear, young adolescent reading me? Do you think I want to do the same thing to you? You are being extremely unjust...You are right: do not trust me, especially if you are handsome. My s.e.xual parts perpetually offer the lugubrious spectacle of turgescence; no one can claim (and how many have approached!) that he has ever seen them in the normal flaccid state, not even the s...o...b..ack who stabbed me there in a moment of ecstasy! The ungrateful wretch! I change my clothes twice a week; cleanliness, however, is not the princ.i.p.al motive for my resolution. If I did not act thus, the members of mankind would disappear after a few days, in prolonged struggles. In fact, whatever country I am in, they continually hara.s.s me with their presence, and come and lick the surface of my feet. But what power can my drops of sperm possess, that they attract everything which breathes through olfactory nerves to them! They come from the banks of the Amazon, they cross the valleys watered by the Ganges, they abandon the polar lichen on long journeys in search of me, they ask the unmoving cities whether they have glimpsed, pa.s.sing along their ramparts, him whose sacred sperm sweetens the mountains, the lakes, the heaths, the promontories, the immensity of the seas! Despair at not being able to find me (I secretly hide in the most inaccessible places to inflame their ardour) drives them to the most deplorable acts. They stand, three hundred thousand on each side, and the roaring of the cannons serves as a prelude to the battle. Each flank moves at the same time, like a single warrior. Squares are formed and then immediately fall, never to rise again. The terrified horses flee in all directions. Cannonb.a.l.l.s plough up the ground like implacable meteors. The scene of the battle is now but a field of carnage, when night reveals its presence and the silent moon appears through a break in the clouds. Pointing out a s.p.a.ce of several leagues strewn with corpses, the vaporous crescent of that star orders me to consider for a moment, as the subject of meditative reflections, the fatal consequences which the inexplicable enchanted talisman that Providence granted me, leaves in its wake. Unfortunately it will take many more centuries before the human race completely perishes as a result of my perfidious snare. Thus it is that a clever but by no means bombastic mind uses, to achieve its ends, the very means which would at first appear to present an insuperable obstacle to their achievement. My intelligence always soars towards this imposing question, and you yourself are witness that it is no longer possible for me to remain within the bounds of the modest subject which I had planned to deal with at the outset. A final word...it was a winter night. While the cold wind whistled through the firs, the Creator opened his doors in the darkness and showed a pederast in.

6.

Silence! a funeral procession is pa.s.sing by you. Bend both your knee-caps to the ground and intone a song from beyond the grave (if you consider my words rather as a simple form of the imperative than as a formal order which is out of place, you will be showing your wit, which is of the best). It is possible that you will thus succeed in extremely gladdening the dead man's soul, which is going to rest from this life in a grave. As far as I am concerned, the fact is certain. Note that I do not say that your opinion might not to a certain extent be the opposite of mine; but what is extremely important is to have exact notions of the bases of morality, so that everyone should be imbued with the principle which commands us to do unto others what one would perhaps like to have done unto oneself. The priest of religions is the first to begin the march, holding in one hand a white flag, sign of peace, and in the other a golden emblem representing the genitals of man and woman, as if to indicate that these carnal members are, most of the time, all metaphor apart, very dangerous instruments in the hands of those who use them, when the blindly manipulate them for mutually conflicting ends, instead of bringing about a timely reaction against the well-known pa.s.sion which causes almost all our ills. To the small of his back is attached (artificially, of course) a horse-tail with thick hair, which sweeps the dust of the ground. It means that we should not by our behaviour debase ourselves to the level of animals. The coffin knows its way and follows behind the floating tunic of the comforter. The parents and friends of the dead person, to judge from their position, have decided to bring up the rear of the cortege. It advances majestically like a vessel on the open sea, cleaving the waves, unafraid of the phenomenon of sinking; for at the present moment, tempests and reefs are conspicuous by their explicable absence. Crickets and toads follow the funeral, at some paces' distance; they, too, are not unaware that their humble presence at the obsequies of whoever it is will one day be counted in their favour. They converse in undertones in their picturesque language (do not be so presumptuous, permit me to give you this disinterested piece of advice, as to believe that you alone possess the precious capacity of conveying your thoughts and feelings), about him whom they had often seen running over the green meadows and plunging the sweat of his limbs in the bluish waves of the arenaceous gulfs. At first, life seemed to smile on him without any hidden intentions; and crowned him with flowers, magnificently; but since your intelligence itself perceives, or rather guesses, that he has been cut off at the bounds of childhood, I do not need, until the appearance of a truly necessary retraction, to continue the prolegomena of my rigorous demonstration. Ten years. A number that can be exactly counted on the fingers of both hands. It is a little and it is a lot. In the case which now preoccupies us I shall rely on your love of truth for you to p.r.o.nounce with me, without a second's delay, that it is a little. And when I briefly reflect on these dark mysteries by which a human being disappears from the earth as easily as a fly or a dragon-fly, without a hope of returning, I find myself brooding with bitter regret on the fact that I shall probably not live long enough to explain to you what I cannot claim to understand myself. But since it is proven that by some extraordinary chance I have not yet lost my life, since the distant moment when, filled with terror, I began the previous sentence, I reckon that it will not be futile to compose here a complete confession of my total incapacity, especially when, as at present, it is a question of this imposing and intractable problem. It is, generally speaking, a strange thing, this captivating tendency which leads us to seek out (and then to express) the resemblances and differences which are hidden in the most natural properties of objects which are sometimes the least apt to lend themselves to sympathetically curious combinations of this kind, which, on my word of honour, graciously enhance the style of the writer who treats himself to this personal satisfaction, giving him the ridiculous and unforgettable aspect of an eternally serious owl. Let us therefore follow the current which is carrying us along. The royal kite has wings which are proportionally longer than a buzzard's, and a far more effortless flight: so he spends his life in the air. He hardly ever rests, and every day covers immense distances; and this vast movement is not at all a hunting exercise, nor the pursuit of prey, nor even a journey of discovery; for he does not hunt; but it seems that flying is his natural state, his favorite condition. One cannot help admiring the way in which he carries it out. His long narrow wings do not seem to move; the tail thinks it is directing operations, and it is not mistaken: it is moving incessantly. He soars without effort; he swoops as if he were gliding down an inclined plane; he seems to be swimming rather than flying. He speeds up his career, he slows down and remains hanging, hovering in the same place for hours on end. One cannot perceive the least movement of his wings; you can open your eyes as wide as a furnace door, it will do you no good. Everyone will have the good sense to confess without demure (though a little grudgingly) that he cannot at first sight perceive the relation, however distant it might be, which I am trying to point out between the beauty of the royal kite's flight and that of the child's face, rising like a water-lily piercing the surface of the water; and that is precisely in what the unforgivable fault consists: the fault of permanent impenitence about the deliberate ignorance in which we wallow. This relation of calm majesty between the two terms of my arch comparison is already a too common and even a sufficiently comprehensible symbol for me to be surprised any more at what can only be excused by that very quality of vulgarity which calls down upon everything it touches a deep feeling of unjust indifference. As if we ought to wonder less at the things we see every day! At the entrance to the cemetery, the procession is anxious to stop; its intention is to go no further. The gravedigger puts the final touches to the grave; the coffin is lowered into it with all the precautions normally taken in such cases; a few shovelfuls of earth over the child's body. The priest of religions, amid the deeply-moved audience, p.r.o.nounces a few words to bury the boy even more in the imaginations of those present. 'He says he is very surprised that so many tears are being shed over such an insignificant act. Those are his exact words. But he fears he cannot adequately describe what he claims is an unquestionable happiness. If he had believed, in his innocence, that death was so fearsome, he would have renounced this duty, so as not to increase the rightful sorrow of the many relatives and friends of the dead child; but a secret voice warns him to give them some words of consolation, which will not be without effect, even if they only give them a glimpse of the hope of a reunion in heaven between the dead child and those who survived him.' Maldoror was racing along at full gallop and seemed to be heading for the walls of the cemetery. The steed's hooves raised a false crown of dust around its master. You cannot know the name of this horseman; but I do. He was coming nearer and nearer; his platinum face was beginning to be visible, although its lower half was completely enveloped in a cloak which the reader has taken care not to let slip from his memory, and which meant that only his eyes could be seen. In the middle of his speech, the priest of religions suddenly turns pale, for his ear recognizes the fitful gallop of the famous horse which never abandoned its master. 'Yes,' he added once more, 'I have great confidence that you will meet again; then we will understand better than ever before how to interpret the temporary separation of body and soul. Whoever believes that he is truly living on this earth is lulling himself with an illusions which it is essential to dispel, and quickly.' The sound of the gallop grew louder and louder; and as the horseman, hugging the horizon, came into the field of vision of the cemetery gate, rapid as a tornado, the priest of religions, in more solemn tones, resumed: 'You do not seem to realize that this child, whom sickness allowed to know only the first phases of life, and whom the grave has just taken to its breast, is indubitably living; but let me tell you that he whose equivocal outline you see riding on a sinewy horse, and on whom I ask you as soon as possible to fix your eyes, for he is now but a dot and will soon disappear into the heath, though he has lived long, is the only dead man.'

7.

Every night, at the hour when sleep has reached its highest degree of intensity, an old spider of the large species slowly protrudes its head from a hole in the ground at one of the intersections of the angles of the room. It listens carefully, to hear if any rustling sound is still moving its mandibles in the atmosphere. Given its insect conformation, it can do no less, if it means to increase the treasures of literature with brilliant personifications, than to attribute the mandibles to the rustling sound. When it has ascertained that silence reigns all around, it draws out, one after the other, without the help of meditation, the several parts of its body, and advances with slow, deliberate steps towards my bed. And a remarkable thing happens! I, who can repulse sleep and nightmares, feel paralysed through my entire body when with its long ebony legs it climbs along my satin bed. It clasps my throat with its legs and with its abdomen it sucks my blood. As simple as that! How many litres of deep reddish liquor, the same of which you know well, has it not drunk, since it started going through this same procedure with perseverance worthy of a n.o.bler cause. I do not know what I have done to it that it should act in this way towards me. Did I inadvertently tread on one of its legs? Did I take away from some of its little ones? These two hypotheses, which are both highly suspect, do not bear serious scrutiny; it is even quite easy for them to make me shrug my shoulders and bring a smile to my lips, though one ought never to laugh at anyone. Take care, black tarantula; if your behaviour does not have an irrefutable syllogism to justify it, one night I will awaken with a start, and with a final effort of my dying will, I shall break the spell by which you paralyse my limbs, and crush you between the bones of my fingers like a piece of pulpy substance. Yet I vaguely recall that I have been given permission for your legs to climb over my breast; and from there on to the skin which covers my face; that consequently I have no right to do violence to you. Oh, who will untangle my disordered memories? As a reward I will give him whatever is left of my blood; including the last drop, there will be at least enough to fill the baccha.n.a.l cup. He speaks, and takes off his clothes as he does so. He rests one leg on the mattress and, pressing down on the sapphire floor with the other in order to raise himself up, he is now in a horizontal position. He has resolved not to close his eyes, to await his enemy unflinchingly. But does he not make the same resolution each time and is it not each time frustrated by the inexplicable image of his fatal promise? He says no more, and sadly resigns himself to what is to come; for to him his oath is sacred. He swathes himself majestically in the folds of his silk, disdains to tie together the ta.s.sels of his curtains and, resting the wavy ringlets of his long black hair on the velvet of his pillow, touches the wound on his neck where the tarantula has got into the habit of residing as a second nest, his face breathing satisfaction all the while. He is hoping that the present night (hope with him!) will see the last performance of the immense suction; for his only wish is that his torturer should put an end to his existence; death, that is all he asks. Look at this old spider of the large species, slowly protruding its head from a hole in the ground at one of the intersections of the room. We are no longer in the narrative. It listens carefully to hear if any rustling sound is still moving its mandibles in the atmosphere. Alas! We have now come to reality as far as the tarantula is concerned and, though one could perhaps put exclamation marks at the end of each sentence, that is perhaps not a reason for dispensing with them altogether! It has ascertained that silence reigns all around; now look at it, drawing out, one after the other, without the help of meditation, the several parts of its body, and advancing with slow, deliberate steps towards the solitary man's bed. Briefly it pauses; but its moment of hesitation is short. It says that the time has not yet come for it to cease its tortures and that it must first give the condemned man some plausible reasons to explain what determined the perpetuality of his punishment. It has climbed up to the beside the sleeping man's ear. If you do not wish to miss a single word of what it is about to say, exclude all the irrelevant occupations which block up the portico of your mind and be thankful at least for the interest I am showing in you by enabling you to be present at dramatic scenes which seem to me to be truly worthy of arousing your attention, for what could stop me keeping to myself the events I am recounting? 'Awaken, amorous flame of bygone days, fleshless skeleton. The time has come to hold back the arm of justice. We will not keep you waiting long for the explanation you desire. You can hear us, can you not? But do not move your limbs; today you are still under our magnetic power and your encephalic atony persists: it is the last time. What impression does the face of Elsseneur make on your imagination? You have forgotten it! And that Reginald, with his proud bearing, have you graven his features on your retentive brain? Look at him hiding in the folds of the curtains; his mouth is moving down towards your brow; but he does not dare speak to you, for he is more timid than I. I am going to recount to you an episode from your youth, and put you back on the path of memory...' A long time before this the spider's abdomen had opened up and from it two youths in blue robes had sprung out, each with a flaming sword in his hand, and they had gone to take up their position at the side of the bed, as if from that moment on to guard the sanctuary of sleep. 'The latter, who still has not taken his eyes off you, for he loved you very much, was the first of us two to whom you gave your love. But you often hurt him by the hardness and abruptness of your character. For his part he continually made every effort to avoid giving you any cause for complaint: no angel would have succeeded in this. You asked him, one day, if he would like to come swimming with you near the sea-sh.o.r.e. Like two swans, both at the same time, you plunged from the high cliff. Eminent divers, you glided into the watery ma.s.s, your outstretched hands joined. For some minutes you swam underwater. You reappeared far from there, your hair wet and tangled, streaming with salt water. But what mysterious event could have taken place underwater that a long trail of blood should be seen on the waves? Resurfacing, you continued to swim, and pretended not to notice the growing weakness of your companion. He was rapidly losing strength, and you only lengthened your strokes towards the misty horizon, which appeared as a watery blur. The wounded man was uttering cries of distress, and you pretended you were deaf. Reginald called out your name three times, so that its syllables echoed over the sea, and three times you answered with a cry of delight. He was too far from the sh.o.r.e to reach it and was vainly struggling to follow in your wake, in order to reach you and rest his hand on your shoulder for a moment. The fruitless pursuit continued for an hour, with his strength failing and yours perceptibly increasing. Giving up all hope of keeping up with you, he said a short prayer, and gave himself up into G.o.d's hands, then turned his back as we do when we are floating, so that his heart could be seen beating violently against his breast. In this way he waited for death to arrive, that he might have to wait no more. At this moment your powerful limbs had disappeared from sight and were still moving away, rapid as a plummeting sound-line. A boat which had been casting nets came into those parts. The fishermen a.s.sumed that Reginald had been shipwrecked and hauled him, unconscious, into their little vessel. The presence of a wound on his right side was noted: every one of those experienced sailors expressed the opinion that no jagged reef or splinter of rock was capable of piercing a hole at once so microscopic and so deep. Only a cutting weapon such as a stiletto of the sharpest kind could claim the paternity of such a fine wound. He himself always refused to tell of the several phases of the dive into the bowels of the waves and he has kept his secret until now. Tears now flow along his rather discoloured cheeks, and fall on the sheets: recollection is often more bitter than the thing itself. But I shall feel no pity: that would be showing too much respect for you. Do not roll your wild eyes in their sockets. Remain calm. You know you cannot move. Besides, I have not finished my tale. Lift up your sword, Reginald, and do not so easily forget revenge. Who knows? Perhaps one day it could come and reproach you.--Later you imagined yourself afflicted with remorse, the existence of which must have been ephemeral; you resolved to atone for your sin by choosing another friend, whom you would revere and honour. By this expiatory means, you were to efface the stains of the past and lavish on him who was to become your second victim the affection you had not been able to show to the first. A vain hope; character does not change from one day to the next, and your will remained consistent with itself. I, Elsseneur, saw you for the first time and from that moment on I could not forget you. We looked at each other for a few seconds, and you started to smile. I lowered my eyes, for I saw a supernatural flame burning in yours. I wondered if, under cover of blackest night, you had not secretly descended to us from the surface of a star; for I must confess, now that there is no need for dissimulation, that you were not at all like the boars of mankind; but a halo of glittering rays surrounded by the periphery of your brow. I would have wished to enter into intimate relations with you; but I did not dare approach the striking novelty of this strange n.o.bility, and an unrelenting terror prowled around me. Why did I not listen to these warnings of conscience? Well-founded presentiments. Noticing my hesitation, you blushed in turn and held out your arms. I bravely put my hand in yours and after this action I felt stronger; thenceforward the breath of your intelligence had pa.s.sed into me. With our hair blowing in the wind and inhaling the breath of the breeze, we walked on through groves thick with lentiscus, jasmine, pomegranate and orange-trees, the scents of which intoxicated us. A boar in full flight brushed against our clothes as it rushed past, and a tear fell from its eyes when it saw me with you; I could not explain its behaviour. At nightfall we arrived at the gates of a populous city. The outlines of the domes, the spires of the minarets and the marble b.a.l.l.s of the belvederes stood out with their sharp indentations in the darkness against the deep blue of the sky. But you did not wish to rest in that place, although we were overwhelmed with fatigue. We slunk along the lower part of the outer fortifications, like jackals of the night; we avoided the sentinels on watch; and we managed, by the opposite gate, to get clear of that solemn gathering of reasonable animals, civilized as beavers. The flight of the lantern-fly, the crackling of dry gra.s.s, the intermittent howls of a distant wolf accompanied us in the darkness of our dubious walk across the countryside. What were the valid motives for fleeing the hives of men? With a certain anxiety I asked myself this question; besides my legs were beginning to give way under me, having borne me up for too long. At last we reached the edge of a thick wood, the trees of which were entwined in a ma.s.s of high, inextricable bindweed, parasite plants, and cacti with monstrous spikes. You stopped in front of a birch. You told me to kneel down and prepare to die; you granted me a quarter of an hour to leave this earth. Some furtive glances you had secretly stolen while I was not observing you during our long walk, as well as certain strange and unaccountable gestures, immediately came to mind, like the open pages of a book. My suspicions had been confirmed. As I was too weak to put up a struggle, you knocked me to the ground, as the hurricane blows down the leaves of the aspen. With one of your knees on my breast and the other on the damp gra.s.s, while one of your hands clasped my two arms in its vice, I saw your other hand take a knife from the sheath which hung from your belt. My resistance was negligible, and I closed my eyes. The dull thud of cattle's hooves could be heard in the distance, the sound carried by the wind. It was advancing like a train, goaded on by the herdsman's stick and the barking jaws of a dog. There was no time to lose, and you knew it; fearing you would not be able to achieve your ends, since the unexpected arrival of help had increased my muscular strength, and seeing that you could only pin down one of my arms at a time, you merely cut off my right hand with a flick of the steel blade. The hand, precisely severed, fell to the ground. You took flight, while I was blinded with pain. I shall not tell of how the herdsman came to my a.s.sistance, nor how long I took to recover. Suffice it to know that this treacherous act which I had not expected made me wish to seek death. I took part in battles, to expose my breast to fatal blows. I won fame on the fields of battle; my name struck fear into the very bravest, such carnage and destruction did my artificial arm sow in the enemy ranks. However, one day, when the sh.e.l.ls were thundering far louder than usual and the squadron of horse, drawn away from their ranks, were whirling around like straws beneath the tornado of death, a horseman, fearless in his bearing, came towards me to fight for the palm of victory. The two armies stopped fighting and stood rooted to teh spot in silent contemplation of us. We fought for a long time, riddled with wounds, our helmets smashed. By common accord, we ceased the struggle in order to rest and then to take it up again with renewed ferocity. Filled with admiration for his adversary, each one raises his visor: 'Elsseneur!' 'Reginald!' those were the simple words that our panting hearts uttered, both at once. The latter, having fallen into despairing and inconsolable gloom, had taken up arms as I had done, and he too had been spared by the bullets. In what strange circ.u.mstances we were now reunited! But your name was not p.r.o.nounced! He and I swore eternal friendship; but it was most a.s.suredly different from the first two occasions, on which you were the main actor! An archangel from heaven, the Lord's messenger, commanded us to change into a single spider and come to suck your throat every night, until an order from on high should put an end to your punishment. For nearly ten years we have stayed by your bedside, and from today you are delivered from our persecution. The vague promise of which you spoke was not made to us but to the Being who is stronger than you: you yourself understood that it was better to submit to this irrevocable decree. Awake, Maldoror! The hypnotic spell which has weighed on your cerebro-spinal system for two l.u.s.tra is broken.' He awakens as ordered and sees two celestial forms disappearing into the sky, holding hands. He does not attempt to go back to sleep. Slowly, moving one limb after the other, he gets out of bed. He goes over to his gothic fireplace, to warm his body by the embers of the fire. He is wearing only a shirt. He looks around for the crystal carafe, that he may moisten his dry palate. He opens the shutters of the window. He leans on the window-sill. He contemplates the moon which sheds on his breast a cone of ecstatic rays which flutter like moths with silver beams of ineffable softness. He waits for morning with its change of scenery to bring its derisory relief to his shattered heart.

SIXTH BOOK.

1.

You whose enviable composure can do no more than embellish your appearance, do not think it is still a matter of uttering, in strophes of fourteen or fifteen lines, like a third-form schoolboy, exclamations which will be considered untimely, the resounding clucks of cochin-china fowl, as grotesque as one could possibly imagine, if one took the trouble. But it is more advisable to prove by facts the propositions I am putting to you. Would you then a.s.sert that because I have insulted man, the Creator, and myself in my explicable hyperboles, and with such whimsicality, that my mission is accomplished? No; the the most important part of my work is nonetheless before me, a task remaining to be done. Henceforward the strings of the novel will move the three characters mentioned above; they will thus be endowed with a less abstract power. Vitality will surge into the stream of their circulatory system and you will see how startled you will be when you encounter, where at first you had only expected to see ent.i.ties belonging to the realm of pure speculation, on the one hand the corporeal organism with its ramifications of nerves an mucous membranes and, on the other, the spiritual principle which governs the physiological functions of the flesh. It is beings powerfully endowed with life who, their arms folded and holding their breath, will stand prosaically (but I am sure the effect will be very poetic) before your eyes, only a few paces away from you, so that the sun's rays, falling first upon the tiles of the roofs and the lids of the chimneys, will then come and visibly shine on their earthly and material hair. But they will no longer be anathemata possessing the special quality of exciting laughter; fictive personalities who would have done no better to remain in the author's brain; or nightmares too far removed from ordinary existence. Note that this very fact will make my poetry finer. You will touch with your own hands the ascending branches of the aorta and the adrenal capsules; and then the feelings! The first five songs have not been useless; they were the frontispiece to my work, the foundation of the structure, the preliminary explanation of my future poetic: and I owed it to myself, before strapping up my suitcases and setting off for the lands of the imagination, to warn sincere lovers of literature with a rapid sketch, a clear and precise general picture, of the goal I had resolved to pursue. Consequently, it is my opinion that the synthetic part of my work is now complete and has been adequately amplified. In this part you learnt that I had set myself the task of attacking man and Him who created man. For the moment, and for later, you need to know no more. New considerations seem to me superfluous, for they would only repeat, admittedly in a fuller, but identical, form, the statement of the thesis which will have its first exposition at the end of this day. It follows from the preceding remarks that from now on my intention is to start upon the a.n.a.lytic part; so true, indeed, is this that only a few minutes ago I expressed the ardent wish that you should be imprisoned in the sudoriferous glands of my skin in order to prove the sincerity of what I am stating with full knowledge of the facts. It is necessary, I know, to underpin with a large number of proofs the argument of my theorem; well, these proofs exist and you know that I do not attack anyone without good reason. I howl with laughter to think that you will reproach me for spreading bitter accusations against mankind of which I am a member (this remark alone would prove me right!), and against Providence. I shall not retract one of my words; but, telling what I have seen, it will not be difficult for me, with no other object than truth, to justify them. Today I am going to fabricate a little novel of thirty pages; the estimated length will, in the event, remain unchanged. Hoping to see the establishment of my theories quickly accepted one day by some literary form or another, I believe I have, after some groping attempts, at last found my definitive formula. It is the best: since it is the novel! This hybrid preface has been set out in a fashion which will not perhaps appear natural enough, in the sense that it takes, so to speak, the reader by surprise, and he cannot well see quite what the author is trying to do with him; but this feeling of remarkable astonishment, from which one must generally endeavour to preserve those who spend their time reading books and pamphlets, is precisely what I have made every effort to produce. In fact, I could do no less, in spite of my good intentions: and only later, when a few of my novels have appeared, will you be better able to understand the preface of the fuliginous renegade.

2.

Before I begin, I must say that I find it absurd that is should be necessary (I do not think that everyone will share my opinion, if I am wrong) for me to place beside me an open inkstand and a sheet of vellum. In this way I shall be enabled to begin the sixth song in the series of instructive poems which I am eager to produce. Dramatic episodes of unrelenting usefulness! Our hero perceived that by frequenting caves and taking refuge in inaccessible places, he was transgressing the laws of logic by arguing in a vicious circle. For if, on the one hand, he was indulging his loathing of mankind by the compensation of solitude and remoteness and was pa.s.sively circ.u.mscribing his limited horizon amid the stunted bushes, brambles and wild vines, on the other hand his activity no longer found sustenance to feed the minotaur of his perverse instincts. Consequently, he resolved to approach the great cl.u.s.ters of population, convinced that, among so many ready-made victims, his several pa.s.sions would find objects of satisfaction in abundance. He knew that the police, that shield of civilization, had for many years, doggedly and single-mindedly, been looking for him, and that a veritable army of agents and informers was continually at his heels. Without, however, managing to catch him. Such was his staggering skill that, with supreme style, he foiled tricks which ought indisputably to have brought success, and arrangements of the most cunning meditation. He had a particular gift for taking on forms which were unrecognizable to the most experienced eyes. Superior disguises, if I speak as an artist. Truly base accoutrements, speaking from a moral standpoint. In this respect his talent bordered on genius. Have you not observed the slenderness of the charming cricket, moving with agile grace in the drains of Paris? It was Maldoror! Mesmerizing the towns with a noxious fluid, he brings them into a state of lethargy in which they are unable to be as watchful as they ought to be. A state which is all the more dangerous because they do not realize they are in it. Today he is in Madrid; tomorrow he will be in Saint Petersburg; yesterday he was in Peking. But to make a precise statement as to the place which this poetic Rocambole is at present terrorizing with his exploits is a task beyond the possible strength of my dull ratiocination. That bandit is perhaps seven hundred leagues from land; perhaps he is a few paces away from you. It is not easy to kill off completely the whole of mankind, and the laws are there; but, with a little patience, the humanitarian ants can be exterminated, one by one. Now since the first days of my infancy when I lived among the first ancestors of our race and was still inexperienced in setting traps; since those distant times before recorded history when, in subtle metamorphoses, I would at different periods ravage the nations of the globe by conquests and carnage, and spread civil war among the citizens, have I not already crushed underfoot, individually or collectively, entire generations, the precise sum of which it would not be impossible to conceive? The dazzling past has given brilliant promises to the future: they will be kept. To rake my sentences together, I shall perforce use the natural method of going back to the savages, that I may learn from them. Simple and imposing gentlemen, their gracious mouths enn.o.ble all that flows from their tattooed lips. I have just proved that there is nothing ridiculous on this planet. Adopting a style which some will find naive (when it is so profound), I shall use it to interpret ideas which will not perhaps appear awe-inspiring! In this very way, throwing off the frivolous and sceptical manner of ordinary conversation and prudent enough not to put...but I have forgotten what I was going to say, for I do not recall the beginning of the sentence. But let me tell you that poetry is everywhere where the oafishly mocking smile of man, with his duck's face, is not to be found. First of all, I am going to blow my nose, because I need to; and then, powerfully a.s.sisted by my hand, I shall pick up the penholder which my fingers had dropped. How can the Carroussel bridge maintain its relentless neutrality when it hears the harrowing cries which the sack seems to be uttering!

3.

The shops of the Rue Vivienne display their riches to wondering eyes. Lit by numerous gas-lamps, the mahogany caskets and gold watches shed showers of dazzling light through the windows. Eight o'clock has struck by the clock of the Bourse: it is not late! Scarcely has the last stroke of the gong been heard than the street, the name of which has already been mentioned, starts to tremble, and is shaken to its foundations from the Place Royale to the Boulevard Montmartre. Those who are out walking quicken their steps and thoughtfully retire to their houses. A woman faints and falls on the pavement. n.o.body helps her up; everyone is anxious to get away from those parts...Shutters are closed with a slam, and the inhabitants bury themselves under their blankets. One would think that the bubonic plague had broken out. Thus, while the greater part of the town is getting ready to plunge into the revels of night, the Rue Vivienne is suddenly frozen in a kind of petrifaction. Like a heart which has ceased to love, the life has gone out of it. But soon the news of the phenomenon spreads to other parts of the populace, and a grim silence hovers over the august capital. What has happened to the gas-lamps? What has become of the street-walkers? Nothing...dark and empty streets! A screech owl, its leg broken, flying in a rectilinear direction, pa.s.ses over the Madelaine and soars up towards the Trone, shrieking: 'Woe to us.' Now in that place which my pen (that true friend, who acts as my accomplice) has just shrouded in mystery, if you look in the direction where the Rue Colbert turns into the Rue Vivienne, you will see, in the angle formed by the intersection of those two streets, the profile of a character moving with light footsteps towards the boulevards. But if you come closer, in such a way as not to attract the attention of this pa.s.ser-by, you will observe with a pleasant surprise that he is young! From a distance one would in fact have taken him for a mature man. The total number of days no longer counts when it is a matter of appreciating the intellectual capacity of a serious face. I am an expert at judging age from the physiognomic lines of the brow: he is sixteen years and four months of age. He is as handsome as the retractility of the claws in birds of prey; or, again, as the unpredictability of muscular movement in sores in the soft part of the posterior cervical region; or, rather, as the perpetual motion rat-trap which is always reset by the trapped animal and which can go on catching rodents indefinitely and works even when it is hidden under straw; and, above all, as the chance juxtaposition of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table! Mervyn, that son of fair England, has just had a fencing lesson from his teacher, and, wrapped in his Scotch plaid, is returning home to his parents. It is eight-thirty, and he hopes to be home by nine. It is a great presumption on his part to pretend to know the future. Who knows what unforeseen obstacle might stop him on the way? And however uncommon this circ.u.mstance might be, ought he to take it upon himself to consider it an exception? Should he not rather consider as an abnormal fact the capacity he has shown up to now to feel completely free of anxiety, and, so to speak, happy? By what right, in fact, would he claim to reach his abode unscathed when someone is in fact lying in wait for him and following his intended prey? (I would be showing little knowledge of my profession as a sensational writer if I did not, at least, bring in the restrictive limitations which are immediately followed by the sentence I am about to complete.) You have recognized the imaginary hero for who a long time has been shattering my intellect by the pressure of his individuality. Now Maldoror approaches Mervyn, to fix in his memory the features of the youth; now, backing away, he recoils like an Australian boomerang in the second phase of flight, or rather like a b.o.o.by-trap. Undecided as to what he should do. But his consciousness feels not the slightest trace of the most embryonic emotion, as you would mistakenly suppose. For a moment I saw him moving off in the opposite direction; was he overwhelmed with remorse? But he turned back with renewed eagerness. Mervyn does not know why his temporal veins are beating so violently and he hurries on, obsessed with a dread of which he, and you, vainly seek the cause. He must be given credit for the determination he shows in trying to solve the riddle. But why does he not turn round? Then he would understand everything. Does one ever think of the simplest means of putting an end to an alarming state of mind? When a loiterer goes through the outskirts of town with a salad-bowl full of wine in his gullet and a tattered shirt, if in some shady corner he should see a sinewy cat, contemporary of the b.l.o.o.d.y revolutions witnessed by our fathers, melancholically contemplating the moonbeams which fall on the sleeping plain, he slinks forward in a curved line and gives a sign to a mangy dog, which leaps. The n.o.ble animal of the feline race bravely awaits in its adversary and fights dearly for its life. Tomorrow a rag-and-bone man will buy its electrifiable skin. Why did it not flee? It would have been so easy. But in the case which concerns us at the moment, Mervyn compounds the danger of his own ignorance. He has, as it were, a few exceedingly rare glimmerings, it is true, the vagueness of which I shall not now stop to demonstrate; yet it is impossible for him to guess the reality. He is no prophet, I do not deny it, and he makes no claims to be one. Arriving on the main arterial road, he turns right and crosses the Boulevard Poissniere and Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. At this point along his way he goes into the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, leaving behind him the platform of Strasbourg railway station, and stops before a raised portal, before reaching the perpendicular superposition of the Rue Lafayette. Since you advise me to end the first strophe at this point, I am quite willing, this once to accede to your wish. Do you know that when I think of the iron ring hidden under a stone by a maniac's hand, an uncontrollable shudder runs through my hair?

4.

He pulls the copper k.n.o.b, and the gate to the modern town house turns on its hinges. He strides across the courtyard, strewn with fine sand, and mounts the eight steps leading up to the front door. The two statues on each side, like guardians of the aristocratic villa, do not bar his way. He who has denied everything, father, mother, Providence, love, and the ideal, in order to think only of himself, has taken good care to follow the steps which went before him. He saw him enter a s.p.a.cious ground-floor salon, with cornelian wainscoting. The son of the family flings himself on the sofa, and emotion chokes his speech. His mother, in a long flowing dress, smothers him with her loving attention, taking him in her arms. His brothers, younger than he, stand around the sofa, their hearts heavy; they do not know life well enough to be able to form a precise notion of the scene before them. At last the father raises his cane and looks with great authority at those present. His hands on the arm of the chair, he slowly gets up and, moving away from his accustomed seat, advances anxiously, though weakened by years, towards the motionless body of his first born. He speaks in a foreign language and they all listen to him in devout and respectful silence: 'Who did this to you, my boy? The foggy Thames will shift a notable amount of mud yet before my strength is completely exhausted. Protective laws do not seem to exist in this inhospitable land. If I knew who was responsible, he would feel the force of my hand. Though I have retired and am now far from the scene of maritime combat's, my commodore's sword on the wall is not yet rusty. Besides, it is easy to sharpen the blade. Mervyn, be calm. I shall give orders for the servants to start tracking down him who, henceforward, I intend to seek and kill with my own hands. Wife, begone from here, go and weep in a corner; your eyes move me, and you would do better to close up the ducts of your lachrymal glands. My son, I implore you, come to your senses, recognize your family. This is your father speaking to you...' His mother stands apart and in obedience to her master's orders has taken up a book and is trying to remain calm in face of the danger facing the son to whom her womb gave birth. 'Children, go and play in the park and take care, as you admire the swans swimming, not to fall into the water...' The brothers, their arms dangling by their sides, remain silent; they all, with feathers of the Carolina fern-owl in their hats, velvet breeches to the knees and red silk stockings, take one another by the hand and leave the room, taking care to touch the parquet floor only with the tips of their toes. I am sure they will not have much fun, but will walk solemnly between the plane-trees. They are precociously intelligent. So much the better for them. 'All my loving care is in vain, I lull you in my arms and you are impervious to my supplications. Will you lift up your head? I will kiss your knees, if necessary. But no...his head falls back again, inert.' 'My gentle master, if you will permit your slave, I