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Les Chants de Maldoror | Le Comte de Lautréamont

by Le Comte de Lautréamont

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CHANT PREMIER

Isidore Lucien Ducasse - Le Comte de Lautréamont

Would to heaven that the reader, emboldened and momentarily ferocious as he reads, finds his wild and savage path through the desolate marshes of these dark and poisonous pages, without disorientation; for, unless he brings in his reading a rigorous logic and a tension of mind equal at least to his distrust, the mortal emanations of this book will soak his soul, as water sugar. It is not good for everybody to read the pages that follow; some alone will savor this bitter fruit without danger. Therefore, timid soul, before penetrating farther into such unexplored heaths, directs your heels back and not forward. Listen well to what I say to you: run your heels back and not forward, like the eyes of a son who, deviates respectfully from the august contemplation of the maternal side; or, rather, as an endless angle of chilly cranes of great meditation, which, during the winter, flies powerfully through the silence, with all sails stretched, towards a fixed point of the horizon, whence suddenly leaves a strange and strong wind, precursor of the storm. The oldest crane, which alone forms the vanguard, seeing this, shakes the head like a reasonable person, consequently its beak also that it makes slap, and is not content (I, too, I would not be in his place), while his old neck, stripped of feathers and the contemporary of three generations of cranes, stirs up in irritated undulations that presage the storm that is approaching more and more. After having looked in cold blood several times on all sides, with eyes which contain the experience, prudently, the first (for it is she who has the privilege of showing the feathers of her tail to the other inferior cranes in intelligence ), with its vigilant cry of melancholy sentinel, in order to repel the common enemy, it flexes the point of the geometrical figure flexibly (it is perhaps a triangle, but we do not see the third side which, or to starboard, as a skilful captain; and, maneuvering with wings which do not appear larger than those of a sparrow, because it is not stupid, it thus assumes another philosophical and surer path. (for it is she who has the privilege of showing the feathers of her tail to the other inferior cranes in intelligence), with her vigilant cry of melancholy sentinel, to repel the common enemy, she flexibly the point of the geometrical figure (it is perhaps a triangle, but we do not see the third side which these curious birds of passage form in space), either to port or starboard, like a skilful captain; and, maneuvering with wings which do not appear larger than those of a sparrow, because it is not stupid, it thus assumes another philosophical and surer path. (for it is she who has the privilege of showing the feathers of her tail to the other inferior cranes in intelligence), with her vigilant cry of melancholy sentinel, to repel the common enemy, she flexibly the point of the geometrical figure (it is perhaps a triangle, but we do not see the third side which these curious birds of passage form in space), either to port or starboard, like a skilful captain; and, maneuvering with wings which do not appear larger than those of a sparrow, because it is not stupid, it thus assumes another philosophical and surer path. with its vigilant cry of melancholy sentinel, to repel the common enemy, it flexes the point of the geometrical figure (it is perhaps a triangle, but we do not see the third side formed by space curious birds of passage), either to port or starboard, as a skilful captain; and, maneuvering with wings which do not appear larger than those of a sparrow, because it is not stupid, it thus assumes another philosophical and surer path. with its vigilant cry of melancholy sentinel, to repel the common enemy, it flexes the point of the geometrical figure (it is perhaps a triangle, but we do not see the third side formed by space curious birds of passage), either to port or starboard, as a skilful captain; and, maneuvering with wings which do not appear larger than those of a sparrow, because it is not stupid, it thus assumes another philosophical and surer path.

Reader, it is perhaps the hatred which you wish me to invoke in the beginning of this work! Who tells you that you will not sniff, bathed in innumerable voluptuousness, as long as you like, with your proud nostrils, wide and thin, throwing you from belly, like a shark, in beautiful black air , as if you understood the importance of this act and the not less importance of your legitimate appetite, slowly and majestically, the red emanations? I assure you, they will rejoice the two shapeless holes in your hideous muzzle, O monster, if you ever applied yourself to breathing three thousand times in succession the cursed conscience of the Lord! Your nostrils, which will be disproportionately dilated with ineffable contentment, immobile ecstasy, will not ask for something better, which had become embalmed like perfumes and incense; for they shall be satisfied with complete happiness, like the angels who dwell in the magnificence and peace of the pleasant heavens.

I will state in a few lines how Maldoror was good during his early years, where he lived happily; it is done. He then perceived that he was born wicked: extraordinary fatality! He hid his character as long as he could, for a great many years; but in the end, because of this concentration which was not natural to him, every day the blood rose to his head; until, unable to endure such a life, he threw himself resolutely into the career of evil-a gentle atmosphere!

Who would have said it! when he embraced a little child, with a pink face, he would have liked to take his cheeks with a razor, and he would have done so very often, if Justice, with his long train of punishments, had never prevented him . He was not a liar, he admitted the truth and said he was cruel. Humans, have you heard? he dares to repeat it with that trembling feather! So then, he is a power stronger than the will ... Curse! The stone would want to escape the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible, if evil wished to ally itself with good. That is what I said above.

There are some who write to seek human applause, by means of noble qualities of the heart which the imagination invents or which they may have. I have my genius serve to paint the delights of cruelty! Delights not transient, artificial; but, who have begun with man, will end with him. Can not genius ally itself with cruelty in the secret resolutions of Providence? or, because one is cruel, can one not have genius? This will be proved in my words; it is up to you to listen to me, if you will. Pardon, it seemed to me that my hair had stood on my head; but it is nothing, for with my hand I have easily succeeded in restoring them to their first position. He who sings does not pretend that his cavatines are an unknown thing; on the contrary, he praises himself that the haughty and wicked thoughts of his hero are in all men.

I have seen, throughout my life, without excepting one, men, with narrow shoulders, doing stupid and numerous acts, stupefying their fellows, and perverting souls by all means. They call the motives of their actions: glory. When I saw these spectacles, I wanted to laugh like the others; but this strange imitation was impossible. I took a penknife whose blade had a sharp edge, and split the flesh at the places where the lips meet. For a moment I thought I had reached my goal. I looked in a mirror at my mouth, wounded by my own will! It was a mistake! The blood which flowed abundantly from the two wounds also made it impossible to distinguish whether it was really the laughter of the others. But after a few moments of comparison, I saw that my laughter did not resemble that of humans, that is, I did not laugh. I have seen men with ugly heads and terrible eyes sunk in the dark orbit, surpassing the hardness of the rock, the rigidity of molten steel, the cruelty of the shark, the insolence of youth, the fury the betrayals of the hypocrite, the most extraordinary comedians, the power of character of the priests, and the most hidden beings outside, the coldest of worlds and of heaven; weary the moralists to discover their hearts, and bring down upon them the implacable wrath from above. I saw them all at once, sometimes the strongest fist directed towards heaven, like that of a child already perverse to his mother, probably excited by some spirit of hell, with their eyes full of remorse, bitter and hateful, in a frigid silence, they dared not utter the vast and ungrateful meditations which their bosom contained, so full of injustice and horror, and saddened with compassion, God of mercy; sometimes, at every moment of the day, from the beginning of childhood to the end of old age, by spreading incredible anathemas, which had not common sense, against all that breathes, against themselves and against Providence, to prostitute women and children, and thus dishonor the parts of the body devoted to modesty. Then the seas lift up their waters, swallow up the planks in their abysses; hurricanes and earthquakes overturn the houses; the plague, various diseases decimate the praying families. But men do not realize it. I have also seen them blushing, pale with shame for their conduct on this earth; rarely. Storms, hurricane sisters; firmament bluish, whose beauty I do not admit; hypocritical sea, image of my heart; earth, in the mysterious bosom; inhabitants of the spheres; universe; God, who created it with magnificence, it is you whom I invoke: show me a man who is good! But let your grace multiply my natural strength; for at the spectacle of this monster, I may die of astonishment; in the mysterious bosom; inhabitants of the spheres; universe; God, who created it with magnificence, it is you whom I invoke: show me a man who is good! But let your grace multiply my natural strength; for at the spectacle of this monster, I may die of astonishment; in the mysterious bosom; inhabitants of the spheres; universe; God, who created it with magnificence, it is you whom I invoke: show me a man who is good! But let your grace multiply my natural strength; for at the spectacle of this monster, I may die of astonishment;

We must let our nails grow for a fortnight. Oh! how sweet it is to snatch a child from his bed, who has nothing on his upper lip, and, with his eyes open, pretend to pass his hand sweetly on his forehead, tilting his hands hair! Then, suddenly, at the moment when he least expected it, to push the long nails into his soft breast, so that he did not die; for if he died, one would not later have the appearance of his miseries. Then the blood is drunk by licking the wounds; and during this time, which should last as long as eternity lasts, the child weeps. Nothing is so good as his blood, extracted as I have just said, and still warm, if not his tears, bitter as salt. Male, Have you ever tasted your blood, when by chance you cut your finger? How good it is, is not it; for he has no taste. Besides, do not you remember one day, in your gloomy reflections, carried your hand, hollowed in the depths, on your diseased ligure wet by what was falling from your eyes; which then went fatally towards the mouth, which drew long lines in this cup, trembling like the teeth of the pupil who looks obliquely at the one who was born to oppress him, tears? How good they are, are they not? for they have the taste of vinegar. One would say the tears of the one who loves most; but the tears of the child are better on the palate. He does not betray, not yet knowing the evil: the one who loves most betrays sooner or later ... I guess by analogy, though I do not know what friendship is, or love (it is probable that I will never accept them, at least on the part of the human race). So, since your blood and tears do not disgust you, feed, feed with confidence the tears and blood of the adolescent. Bend his eyes, while you tear his palpitating flesh; and after hearing long hours his sublime cries, like the piercing groaning in a battle the throats of the dying wounded, then, having thrown you as an avalanche, throw yourself into the next room, and you will pretend to to come to his rescue. You will untie his hands, with the nerves and the swollen veins, you will render the sight to his eyes lost, restoring you to lick his tears and his blood. As then repentance is true! The the divine spark which is in us, and appears so rarely, shows itself; too late! As the heart overflows with being able to console the innocent one who has been harmed: "Adolescent, who has just suffered cruel pains, who has been able to commit a crime on you which I know not what name to call! Unhappy that you are! How you must suffer! And if your mother knew this, she would not be nearer to death, so abhorred by the guilty than I am now. Alas! what is good and evil? Is it the same thing by which we rage our impotence, and the passion of reaching to infinity by even the most insane means? Or are they two different things? Yes ... that it is rather the same thing ... for, if not, what will become of me on the day of judgment? Teenager, forgive me; it is he who is before your noble and sacred face, who has broken your bones and torn the flesh that hangs in different parts of your body. Is it a delirium of my sick reason, is it a secret instinct that does not depend on my reasoning, like that of the eagle rending its prey, which prompted me to commit this crime; and yet, as much as my victim, I was suffering! Adolescent, forgive me. Once I have emerged from this passing life, I want to be interwoven for eternity; to form but one being, my mouth stuck to your mouth. Even so, my punishment will not be complete. Then you will tear me, without ever stopping, with teeth and nails at the same time. I shall wrap my body with balmy garlands for this atoning sacrifice; and we shall both suffer, to be torn, you, to tear me ... my mouth glued to your mouth. O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! be torn, you, tear me ... my mouth stuck to your mouth. O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! be torn, you, tear me ... my mouth stuck to your mouth. O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! to tear me ... my mouth stuck to your mouth. O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! to tear me ... my mouth stuck to your mouth. O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! O teenager, with fair hair and so sweet eyes, will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! will you do what I advise you? In spite of you, I want you to do it, and you will make my conscience happy. "After speaking thus, at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is happiness greater than can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is the greatest happiness that can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! at the same time you will have harmed a human being, and you will be loved by the same being: it is the greatest happiness that can be conceived. Later, you can put him in the hospital; for the perclus will not be able to make a living. You will be called good, and laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O you, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the sanctity of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist! and the laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O thou, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the holiness of crime, I know that your forgiveness was as immense as the universe. But I still exist! and the laurel wreaths and gold medals will hide your bare feet, scattered over the great tomb, with the old face, O thou, whose name I do not want to write on this page which consecrates the holiness of crime, I know that your forgiveness was as immense as the universe. But I still exist!

I made a pact with prostitution in order to sow disorder in families. I remember the night before this dangerous liaison. I saw a tomb before me. I heard a shining worm, as big as a house, and said, "I will enlighten you." Read the inscription. It is not from me that this supreme order comes. "A vast blood-colored light, at the sight of which my jaws slammed and my arms fell inert, spread in the air to the horizon. I leaned against a ruined wall, for I was about to fall, and I read: "Here lies a teenage boy who died of breast. You know why." Do not pray for him. "Many men might not have had as much courage as me. Meanwhile a beautiful naked woman came to lie down at my feet. I, to her, with a sad face: "You can get up." I held out the hand with which the fratricide slaughters his sister. The shining worm, to me: "You, take a stone and kill it; -Why? said I. "He, to me," Take heed to you; the weaker, because I am the stronger. This is calledProstitution"Tears in my eyes, rage in my heart, I felt an unknown force in me. I took a large stone; after much effort, I lifted it with difficulty to the height of my breast; I put it on the shoulder with my arms. I climbed a mountain up to the summit; from there I crushed the shining worm. His head sank beneath the ground with a great man; the stone bounces to the height of six churches. She fell back into a lake, whose waters drooped for a moment, whirling, and digging a huge cone overturned. Calm reappeared on the surface; the light of blood no longer shone. "Alas! Alas! exclaimed the beautiful naked woman; what have you done? "I to her:" I prefer you to him; because I have pity for the unfortunate. It is not your fault, if eternal justice has created you. She, to me: "One day men will do me justice; I tell you no more. Let me go, to go and hide from the bottom of the sea my infinite sadness. Only you and the hideous monsters swarm in these dark abysses, which do not despise me. You are good. Farewell, you who have loved me! "To her:" Adieu! Again, goodbye! I will always love you! ... From this day forth I give up virtue. "Therefore, O people, when you hear the winter wind moaning on the sea and near its shores, above the great cities, which for a long time have mourned for me, or through the cold polar regions, say, "It is not the spirit of God that passes; prostitution, united with the grave groans of the Montevidean. "Children, is I who tell you. Then, kneel down with mercy; and that men, more numerous than the lice, should make long prayers.

In the light of the moon, near the sea, in the isolated places of the country, we see, plunged in bitter reflections, all things assuming yellow, indecisive, and fantastic forms. The shadow of the trees, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, runs, comes, comes back, by various forms, flattening itself, clinging to the ground. In time, when I was carried away on the wings of youth, it made me dream, seemed strange to me; now I am used to it. The wind moaned through the leaves its languorous notes, and the owl sings its grave lament, which causes the hair to be set up for those who hear it. Then the dogs, made furious, break their chains, and escape from distant farms; they run in the country, here and there, a prey to madness. Suddenly they stop, look on all sides with a fierce anxiety, the eye on fire; and, just as the elephants, before dying, cast a last look into the desert, desperately raising their trunk, leaving their ears inert, so the dogs leave their ears inert, raise their heads, swell the terrible neck, and begin to bark in turn, either as a child crying out of hunger, or as a cat wounded in the stomach above a roof, or as a woman who is about to give birth, or as a dying man in the hospital, or as a young girl who sings a sublime air, against the stars to the north, against the stars to the east, against the stars to the south, against the stars to the west; against the moon; against the mountains, similar in the distance to giant rocks, lying in obscurity; against the cold air which they aspire to full lungs, which makes the interior of their nostrils red, burning; against the silence of the night; against the owls, whose oblique flight shaves their muzzle, carrying a rat or a frog in the beak, food alive, sweet to the little ones; against the hares, which disappear in the twinkling of an eye; against the thief, who fled at the gallop of his horse after committing a crime; against the serpents, stirring the heaths, which make them tremble the skin, grind their teeth; against their own barking, which frightens them to themselves; against the toads which they crush with a single jaw (why have they moved away from the marsh?); against the trees, whose leaves, softly cradled, are so many mysteries that they do not understand, they want to discover with their fixed, intelligent eyes; against the spiders, hanging between their long legs, climbing the trees to save themselves; against the ravens who have not found food to eat during the day, and who return to the shelter with their tired wings; against the rocks of the shore; against fires, which appear on the masts of invisible vessels; against the muffled sound of the waves; against the great fish, which, swimming, show their black back, and then sink into the abyss; and against the man who makes them slaves. After which they set out again to run in the country, jumping from their bloody paws over the ditches, the roads, the fields, the grass, and the steep stones. They would be said to be afflicted with rage, seeking a vast pond to quell their thirst. Their prolonged screams terrify nature. Woe to the traveler! The friends of the cemeteries will throw themselves upon him, tear him, eat him, with their mouths from which blood falls; for they do not have spoiled teeth. The wild animals, not daring to approach to take part in the meal of flesh, flee as far as the eye can see, trembling. After a few hours the dogs, exhausted from running about here and there, almost dead, their tongues out of their mouths, rushing over each other, without knowing what they are doing, and tearing themselves into a thousand shreds, incredible speed. They do not act thus out of cruelty. One day, with glassy eyes, my mother said to me: "When you are in your bed, you will hear the barking of dogs in the country, hide in your blanket, do not deride what they do: they thirst insatiably for the infinite, like you, like me, like the rest of humans, with a pale, long face. I even permit you to stand before the window to contemplate this spectacle, which is quite sublime. "Since that time, I have respected the wish of the dead woman. I, like dogs, feel the need of the infinite. I can not, I can not satisfy this need! I am the son of man and woman, as I have been told. It surprises me ... I thought I was more! Besides, what does it matter to me whence I come? If I could have depended on my will, I would rather have been the son of the female of the shark, whose hunger is a friend of storms, and of the tiger, of recognized cruelty: I should not be so wicked. You, who look at me, Be away from me, for my breath exhales a poisonous breath. No one has yet seen the green wrinkles of my forehead; nor the protruding bones of my thin face, like the bones of some great fish, or the rocks covering the shores of the sea, or the abrupt alpine mountains, which I often traversed, another color. And when I prowl round the dwellings of men, during stormy nights, with burning eyes, hair flagellated by the wind of storms, isolated like a stone in the middle of the road, I cover my withered face with a piece of velvet, black as the soot that fills the interior of the chimneys: it is not necessary that the eyes be witnesses of the ugliness that the Supreme Being, with a smile of powerful hatred, has placed on me. Each morning, when the sun rises for others, spreading salutary joy and warmth in nature, while none of my features move, looking fixedly at the space full of darkness, squatting towards the bottom of my beloved cave, in a despair which intoxicates me like wine, I bruised my ragged breasts with my powerful hands. Yet, I feel that I am not suffering from rabies! Yet, I feel that I am not the only one who suffers! Yet, I feel I breathe! Like a condemned man who tries his muscles and reflects on their fate, and who is soon to ascend to the scaffold, standing on my bed of straw with his eyes closed, I slowly turn my neck from right to left, from left to right , for hours at a time; I do not fall dead stiff. From moment to moment, when my neck can not continue to turn in the same direction, when it stops, to start turning in an opposite direction, I suddenly look at the horizon, through the rare interstices left by the thick brush that cover the entrance: I see nothing! Nothing ... if it is not the countryside that dances in swirls with the trees and with the long lines of birds that cross the air. It disturbs my blood and my brain... Who on the head gives me blows from an iron bar like a hammer striking the anvil? if it is not the countryside that dances in vortices with the trees and with the long lines of birds that cross the air. It disturbs my blood and my brain... Who on the head gives me blows from an iron bar like a hammer striking the anvil? if it is not the countryside that dances in vortices with the trees and with the long lines of birds that cross the air. It disturbs my blood and my brain... Who on the head gives me blows from an iron bar like a hammer striking the anvil?

I propose, without being moved, to declaim in a loud voice the serious and cold stroke you are about to hear. Beware of what it contains, and beware of the painful impression which it will not fail to leave, like a wilting, in your troubled imaginations. Do not think that I am on the point of dying, for I am not yet a skeleton, and old age is not stuck to my forehead. Let us therefore set aside any idea of ??comparison with the swan, at the moment when its existence is flying, and see before you only a monster, of which I am glad you can not see the face; but less horrible than her soul. However, I am not a criminal ... Enough about this. Not long ago I saw the sea again, and trampled the bridge of the ships, and my memories are perennial as if I had left the day before. Be nevertheless, if you can, as calm as I am, in this reading which I am already repenting of offering you, and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is. O octopus, with silk eyes! you, whose soul is inseparable from mine; you, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by a common accord, an indestructible bond, the gentle communicative virtue and the divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore! had left the day before. Be nevertheless, if you can, as calm as I am, in this reading which I am already repenting of offering you, and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is. O octopus, with silk eyes! you, whose soul is inseparable from mine; you, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by a common accord, an indestructible bond, the gentle communicative virtue and the divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore! had left the day before. Be nevertheless, if you can, as calm as I am, in this reading which I am already repenting of offering you, and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is. O octopus, with silk eyes! you, whose soul is inseparable from mine; you, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by a common accord, an indestructible bond, the gentle communicative virtue and the divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore! in this reading which I already repent of offering you, and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is. O octopus, with silk eyes! you, whose soul is inseparable from mine; you, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by mutual agreement, an indestructible bond, gentle communicative virtue and divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore! in this reading which I already repent of offering you, and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is. O octopus, with silk eyes! you, whose soul is inseparable from mine; you, the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by mutual agreement, an indestructible bond, gentle communicative virtue and divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore! the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by mutual agreement, an indestructible bond, gentle communicative virtue and divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore! the most beautiful of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe, and who commands a seraglio of four hundred cups; in whose noble seat, as in their natural abode, by mutual agreement, an indestructible bond, gentle communicative virtue and divine graces, why are you not with me, your belly of mercury against my chest Aluminum, sitting on a rock on the shore, to contemplate this spectacle which I adore!

Old ocean, with waves of crystal, you resemble proportionally to those azure marks that one sees on the bruised back of the mosses; you are an immense blue, applied to the body of the earth: I love this comparison. Thus, at your first sight, a prolonged breath of sadness, which one would think would be the murmur of your sweet breeze, passes, leaving ineffaceable traces, on the soul deeply shaken, and you recall to the memory of your lovers, let us always realize it, the rude beginnings of man, where he becomes acquainted with pain, who never leaves him. I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, your harmoniously spherical shape, which rejoices the grave face of geometry, reminds me only too much of the little eyes of man, like those of the wild boar for smallness, and those of the night birds for circular perfection of the contour. However, man has believed himself beautiful in all ages. I suppose rather that man believes in his beauty only through self-love; but that he is not really beautiful and that he suspects it, for why does he look at the face of his fellow with so much contempt? I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity: always equal to yourself. You do not vary in an essential way, and if your waves are somewhere furious, farther, in some other zone, they are in complete calm. You are not like the man, who stops in the street, to see two ball-masts clutching his neck, but which does not stop when a funeral passes; which is this morning accessible and this evening in a bad mood; who laughs today and weeps to-morrow. I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, there would be nothing impossible to conceal in your bosom of future utilities for man. You've already given him the whale. You can not easily guess at the avid eyes of the natural sciences the thousand secrets of your intimate organization: you are modest. The man boasts endlessly, and for minutiae. I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, the different species of fish that you fed have not sworn brotherhood among them. Each species lives on its side. The temperaments and conformations which vary in each of them, explain in a satisfactory manner what at first appears only an anomaly. It is the same with man, who does not have the same excuse. A piece of land is occupied by thirty million human beings, who consider themselves obliged not to interfere with the existence of their neighbors, fixed as roots on the piece of land that follows. In descending from the great to the small, every man lives like a savage in his lair, and rarely goes out to visit his fellow, crouched similarly in another den. The great universal family of humans is a utopia worthy of the most mediocre logic. Moreover, from the spectacle of your fertile breasts, the notion of ingratitude emerges; for one immediately thinks of those numerous parents who are ungrateful towards the Creator and abandon the fruit of their miserable union. I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, your material greatness can only be compared to the measure one takes of what has been required of active power to engender the totality of your mass. We can not kiss you at a glance. To contemplate you, the view must turn its telescope by a continuous motion towards the four points of the horizon, just as a mathematician, in order to solve an algebraic equation, is obliged to examine separately the various cases before deciding the difficulty. Man eats nourishing substances, and makes other efforts, worthy of a better fate, to appear fat. Let her swell as much as she likes, that adorable frog. Be quiet, it will not equal you in size; I suppose, at least. I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, your waters are bitter. It is exactly the same taste as the gall that criticism distills on the fine arts, on the sciences, on everything. If someone has genius, he is considered an idiot; if some other is handsome in body, it is a hideous hunchback. Of course, man must feel strongly his imperfection, of which three quarters, moreover, are due only to himself, to criticize him thus! I greet you, old ocean!

Old men, notwithstanding the excellence of their methods, have not yet arrived, assisted by the means of investigation of science, to measure the dizzying depth of your abysses; you have that the longest, the most heavy probes have recognized inaccessible. To fish ... it is allowed to them: not to men. Often, I wondered what was the easiest to recognize: the depth of the ocean or the depth of the human heart! Often the hand on the forehead, standing on the ships, while the moon was dangling between the masts in an irregular manner, I surprised myself, disregarding all that was not the object I pursued, striving to solve this difficult problem! Yes, what is the most profound, the most impenetrable of the two: ocean or human heart? If thirty years of life experience can, to some extent, tip the balance towards one or the other of these solutions, I may be allowed to say that, despite the depth of the ocean, it can not not to put itself in lineage, as to the comparison on this property, with the depth of the human heart. I have been in contact with men who have been virtuous. They died at the age of sixty, and every one did not fail to exclaim: "They have done good on this earth, that is to say, they have practiced charity: that is all, it is not smart "Everyone can do the same." Who will understand why two lovers who were idolized the day before, for a misinterpreted word, diverge, one towards the east, the other toward the west, with the spurts of the hatred, vengeance, love, and remorse, and no longer see each other, each draped in its solitary pride? It is a miracle that is renewed every day and is none the less miraculous. Who will understand why we savor not only the general disgrace of his fellow-creatures, but also the particulars of his dearest friends, while we are afflicted at the same time? An unquestionable example to close the series: the man says hypocritically yes and thinks no. This is why the marcasers of humanity have so much confidence in one another and are not selfish. There remains much to be done in psychology. I greet you, old ocean! is a miracle that is renewed every day and is none the less miraculous. Who will understand why we savor not only the general disgrace of his fellow-creatures, but also the particulars of his dearest friends, while we are afflicted at the same time? An unquestionable example to close the series: the man says hypocritically yes and thinks no. This is why the marcasers of humanity have so much confidence in one another and are not selfish. There remains much to be done in psychology. I greet you, old ocean! is a miracle that is renewed every day and is none the less miraculous. Who will understand why we savor not only the general disgrace of his fellow-creatures, but also the particulars of his dearest friends, while we are afflicted at the same time? An unquestionable example to close the series: the man says hypocritically yes and thinks no. This is why the marcasers of humanity have so much confidence in one another and are not selfish. There remains much to be done in psychology. I greet you, old ocean! are we afflicted at the same time? An unquestionable example to close the series: the man says hypocritically yes and thinks no. This is why the marcasers of humanity have so much confidence in one another and are not selfish. There remains much to be done in psychology. I greet you, old ocean! are we afflicted at the same time? An unquestionable example to close the series: the man says hypocritically yes and thinks no. This is why the marcasers of humanity have so much confidence in one another and are not selfish. There remains much to be done in psychology. I greet you, old ocean!

Old ocean, you are so powerful, that men have learned it at their own expense. They may employ all the resources of their genius, incapable of dominating you. They found their master. I say they found something stronger than them. This something has a name. This name is: the ocean! The fear you inspire is such, that they respect you. In spite of this, you make waltzing their heaviest machines with grace, elegance and ease. You give them gymnastic leaps to the sky, and admirable dives to the depths of your domains: a mountebank would be jealous of them. Blessed are they, when you do not envelop them definitively in your bubbling folds, to go and see, without railway, in your aquatic entrails, how are the fish, and especially how they are themselves. The man said, "I am more intelligent than the ocean." It is possible, it is true enough; but the ocean is more formidable to him than he is to the ocean: that is what it is not necessary to prove. This observing patriarch, who was contemporaneous with the first epochs of our suspended globe, smiled with pity when he witnessed the naval battles of nations. Here are a hundred leviathans who have come out of the hands of humanity. The emphatic orders of the superiors, the cries of the wounded, the cannon-shot, is a noise made purposely to annihilate a few seconds. It seems that the drama is over, and that the ocean has put everything in its belly. The mouth is terrific. It must be great down, in the direction of the unknown! To crown at last the stupid comedy, which is not even interesting, one sees, in the midst of the air, some stork, arrested by fatigue, which begins to cry, without stopping the span of its flight: "Tiens !. .. I find it bad! There were black spots below; I closed my eyes: they disappeared. "I greet you, old ocean!

O old ocean, O great bachelor, when you pass through the solemn solitude of your phlegmatic kingdoms, you are rightly proud of your native magnificence, and of the true praises I hasten to give you. Balanced voluptuously by the mists of your majestic slowness, which is the grandest among the attributes with which the sovereign power has bestowed you, you unfold, in the midst of a sombre mystery, all your sublime surface, your incomparable waves, with the calm feeling of your eternal power. They are parallel, separated by short intervals. Scarcely one diminishes, when another grows to meet him, accompanied by the melancholy sound of foam melting, to warn us that everything is foaming. (Thus, human beings, these living waves, one after the other, in a monotonous manner; but without leaving foamy noise). The bird of passage rests upon them with confidence, and lets themselves be abandoned to their movements, full of a proud grace, until the bones of its wings have recovered their usual vigor to continue their aerial pilgrimage. I wish that human majesty was only the incarnation of the reflection of yours. I ask a lot, and this sincere wish is glorious for you. Your moral greatness, the image of the infinite, is immense as the reflection of the philosopher, as the love of woman, as the divine beauty of the bird, as the meditations of the poet. You are more beautiful than the night. Answer me, ocean, will you be my brother? Stir with impetuosity ... more ... more, if you want me to compare you to the vengeance of God; extend your livid claws by making your way into your own breast ... it's good. Unroll your terrible waves, hideous ocean, understood by me alone, and before which I fall, prostrate to your knees. The majesty of man is borrowed; he will not impose on me: you, yes. Oh! when you advance, the high and terrible crest, surrounded by your tortuous folds like a court, magnetizing and fierce, rolling your waves one over the other, with the awareness of what you are, while you grow, from the depths of your breast, as overwhelmed with intense remorse that I can not discover, that perpetual roar which men so much fear, even when they contemplate you safely and trembling on the shore, it does not m ' belongs not, the right insignia to tell me your equal. That is why, in the presence of your superiority, I would give you all my love (and no one knows the amount of love that my aspirations bring to the beautiful), if you did not make me painfully think of my fellow men, you the most ironic contrast, the most cowardly antithesis that has ever been seen in creation: I can not love you, I detest you. Why do I return to thee for the thousandth time, to thy friendly arms, which parted, to caress my burning brow, which saw the fever disappear from their contact! I do not know your hidden destiny; I am interested in everything that concerns you. Tell me, then, if you are the dwelling-place of the Prince of Darkness. Tell me, tell me, ocean (to me alone, not to sadden those who do not, have known only illusions), and if the breath of Satan creates the storms that raise your salty waters to the clouds. You must tell me, because I would rejoice to know the hell so close to man. I want this to be the last stanza of my invocation. Therefore, once more, I want to salute you and bid you farewell! Old ocean, with waves of crystal ... My eyes get wet with abundant tears, and I have not the strength to pursue; for I feel that the moment has come to return among men, with a brutal aspect; but ... courage! Let us make a great effort, and accomplish, with the feeling of duty, our destiny on this earth. I greet you, old ocean! You must tell me, because I would rejoice to know the hell so close to man. I want this to be the last stanza of my invocation. Therefore, once more, I want to salute you and bid you farewell! Old ocean, with waves of crystal ... My eyes get wet with abundant tears, and I have not the strength to pursue; for I feel that the moment has come to return among men, with a brutal aspect; but ... courage! Let us make a great effort, and accomplish, with the feeling of duty, our destiny on this earth. I greet you, old ocean! You must tell me, because I would rejoice to know the hell so close to man. I want this to be the last stanza of my invocation. Therefore, once more, I want to salute you and bid you farewell! Old ocean, with waves of crystal ... My eyes get wet with abundant tears, and I have not the strength to pursue; for I feel that the moment has come to return among men, with a brutal aspect; but ... courage! Let us make a great effort, and accomplish, with the feeling of duty, our destiny on this earth. I greet you, old ocean! Old ocean, with waves of crystal ... My eyes get wet with abundant tears, and I have not the strength to pursue; for I feel that the moment has come to return among men, with a brutal aspect; but ... courage! Let us make a great effort, and accomplish, with the feeling of duty, our destiny on this earth. I greet you, old ocean! Old ocean, with waves of crystal ... My eyes get wet with abundant tears, and I have not the strength to pursue; for I feel that the moment has come to return among men, with a brutal aspect; but ... courage! Let us make a great effort, and accomplish, with the feeling of duty, our destiny on this earth. I greet you, old ocean!

They will not see me, at my last hour (I write this on my deathbed), surrounded by priests. I want to die, cradled by the wave of the tempestuous sea, or standing on the mountain ... my eyes up, no: I know that my annihilation will be complete. Besides, I would have no grace to hope for. Who opens the door of my funeral chamber? I said no one would come in. Whoever you are, move away; but if you think you perceive any sign of pain or fear on my hyena's face (I use this comparison, though the hyena is more beautiful than I, and more agreeable to see), be undeceived; approaches. We are in a winter night, while the elements are clashing on all sides, that man is afraid, a teenager meditates some crime on one of his friends, if he is what I was in my youth. May the wind, whose plaintive whistles sadden humanity, since the wind and humanity exist a few moments before the last agony, carries me on the bones of its wings throughout the world, impatient of my death. I will again secretly enjoy many examples of human wickedness (a brother, without being seen, likes to see the acts of his brothers). The eagle, the raven, the immortal pelican, the wild duck, the traveling crane, awakened, shivering with cold, will see me pass by the gleam of lightning, a ghastly specter. They will not know what that means. On the earth, the viper, the big eye of the toad, the tiger, the elephant; in the sea, the whale, the shark, the hammer, the tooth of the polar seal, will wonder what is this derogation from the law of nature. The man, trembling, will stick his forehead against the earth in the midst of his groans. "Yes, I surpass you all by my innate cruelty, cruelty which it has not depended on me to erase. Is it for this reason that you stand before me in this prostration? or is it because you see me traversing, a new phenomenon, like a frightful comet, bloodstained space? (There falls a rain of blood from my vast body, like a black cloud that the hurricane pushes before you). Do not be afraid, children, I do not want to curse you. The evil you have done to me is too great, too great the evil that I have done you, to make it voluntary. You, you have walked in your path, I, in mine, both alike, both perverse. Necessarily, we had to meet, in this similarity of character; the shock which has resulted has been reciprocally fatal to us. "Then, the men will gradually raise their heads, taking courage, to see him who speaks thus, stretching his neck like the snail. Suddenly, their burning, decomposed face, showing the most terrible passions, will grimace in such a way that the wolves will be afraid. They will rise at once as an immense spring. What imprecations! what voice tears! They recognized me. Here the animals of the earth unite to the men, make their odd clamors heard. More reciprocal hatred; the two hatreds are turned against the common enemy; we are approached by a universal assent. winds who support me, raise me higher; I fear perfidy. Yes, let us gradually disappear from their eyes, witness once more of the consequences of the passions, a satisfying complement. I thank you, O Rhinolopher, for having awakened me with the movement of your wings, nose is surmounted by a crest in the shape of a horseshoe: I perceive, indeed, that this was unfortunately only a transient malady, and I feel with disgust reborn to life. Some say that you came to me to suck me the little blood that is in my body: why is this hypothesis not the reality? to have awakened with the movement of your wings, whose nose is surmounted by a crest in the shape of a horseshoe: I perceive, indeed, that this was unfortunately only a passing illness, and I meaning with disgust reborn to life. Some say that you came to me to suck me the little blood that is in my body: why is this hypothesis not the reality? to have awakened with the movement of your wings, whose nose is surmounted by a crest in the shape of a horseshoe: I perceive, indeed, that this was unfortunately only a transient malady, and I meaning with disgust reborn to life. Some say that you came to me to suck me the little blood that is in my body: why is this hypothesis not the reality?

A family surrounds a lamp placed on the table:

"My son, give me the scissors that are placed on this chair."

"They are not there, mother."

"Go and look for them in the other room." Do you recall that time, my sweet master, in which we made vows, to have a child, in whom we would be reborn a second time, and who would be the support of our old age?

"I remember her, and God has answered us. We do not have to complain about our lot on this earth. Every day we bless Providence with its blessings. Our Edward possesses all the graces of his mother.

"And the male qualities of his father."

"Here is the scissors, mother; I finally found them.

He resumed his work ... But someone came to the front door and contemplated for a few moments the picture that was before him:

"What does this show mean?" There are many people who are less happy than those. What is their reasoning for loving life? Move away, Maldoror, from this peaceful hearth; your place is not here.

He retired!

"I do not know how it is done; but I feel the human faculties which engage in struggle in my heart. My soul is anxious, and without knowing why; the atmosphere is heavy.

"Woman, I feel the same impressions as you; I tremble lest some misfortune happen to us. Let us trust in God; in him is the supreme hope.

"Mother, I breathe hardly. My head hurts."

-You too my son! I'll wet your forehead and temples with vinegar.

-No, good mother ...

See, he presses his body on the back of the chair, tired.

"Something turns into me, which I can not explain. Now, the least object annoys me.

"How pale you are!" The end of this vigil will not pass without some disastrous event plunging us all into the lake of despair!

I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most poignant pain.

-My son!

Ah! mother! -I am afraid!

"Tell me quickly if you suffer."

"Mother, I do not suffer ... I'm not telling the truth.

The father does not return from his astonishment:

There are cries which are heard sometimes in the silence of the nights without stars. Though we heard these cries, nevertheless, the one who pushes them is not near here; for one can hear these groans three leagues distant, transported by the wind from one city to another. I had often been told of this phenomenon: but I had never had occasion to judge for myself of its veracity. Woman, you spoke of misfortune; if more real misery existed in the long spiral of time, it is the misfortune of him who now disturbs the sleep of his fellows.

I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most poignant pain.

-Heaven might not be born a calamity for his country, which has driven him from his bosom. He goes from country to country, abhorred everywhere. Some say that he is overwhelmed with a kind of original madness since his childhood. Others believe he is of extreme and instinctive cruelty, of which he himself is ashamed, and that his parents have died of grief. There are those who pretend that he was branded with a nickname in his youth: that he remained inconsolable for the rest of his life, because his wounded dignity saw in it a blatant proof of the wickedness of men, which shows itself in the first years, and then increases. This nickname was the vampire ! ...

I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most poignant pain.

"They add that days and nights, without rest or repose, horrible nightmares make him bleed the blood through his mouth and ears; and that specters sit at the bedside of his bed, and throw him in the face, pushed in spite of themselves by an unknown force, sometimes in a soft voice, sometimes in a voice like the roars of the battles, with an implacable persistence , this nickname always perennial, always hideous, and which will perish only with the universe. Some have even asserted that love has reduced it to this state; or that these cries testify to the repentance of some crime buried in the night of its mysterious past. But the greater number think that an incommensurable torture, as formerly Satan, and that he wanted to equal God ...

I hear in the distance prolonged cries of the most poignant pain.

"My son, there are exceptional confidences: I pity your age for having heard them, and I hope you will never imitate this man."

Speak, O my Edward; answer that you will never imitate this man.

O beloved mother, to whom I owe the day, I promise you, if the holy promise of a child has any value, never to imitate this man.

"That is perfect, my son; we must obey his mother in whatever.

No moaning is heard.

"Woman, have you finished your work?"

"I miss a few points in this shirt, although we extended the night before.

"I, too, have not finished a chapter begun." Let us enjoy the last light of the lamp; because there is almost no oil left, and we all finish our work ...

The child exclaimed,

"If God allows us to live!"

A radiant Angel, come to me. You will walk in the meadow from morning till evening. You will not work. My magnificent palace is built with silver walls, gold columns and diamond doors. Thou shalt lie down when thou wilt, at the sound of heavenly music, without making thy prayer. When, in the morning, the sun will show its shining rays and the joyful lark will carry with it its cry, as far as the eye can see, in the air, you can stay in bed until it tires you. You will walk on the most precious carpets; you will be constantly enveloped in an atmosphere composed of the fragrant essences of the most fragrant flowers.

-It's time to rest the body and mind. Arise, mother of a family, on your muscular ankles. It is just that your stiffened fingers abandon the needle of exaggerated labor. Extremes are not good.

-Oh! that thy life shall be sweet! I will give you an enchanted ring; when you return the ruby, you will be invisible, like princes, in fairy tales.

-Remove your daily weapons in the protective cupboard, while, for my part, I arrange my things.

"When you place it in its ordinary position, you will reappear as Nature has formed you, O young magician. This is because I love you and I aspire to make you happy.

"Go away, whoever you are; do not take me by the shoulders.

"My son, do not fall asleep, lulled by the dreams of childhood. Prayer in common has not yet begun, and your clothes are not yet carefully placed on a chair. Eternal creator of the universe, you show inexhaustible goodness even in the smallest things.

"So you do not like limpid streams, where thousands of little red, blue and silver fishes slip? Thou shalt take them with such a fine net, that he shall draw them of himself, until it be filled. From the surface you will see bright pebbles, more polished than marble.

Mother, see these claws; I mistrust him; but my conscience is calm, for I have nothing to reproach myself with.

- You see, prostrate at your feet, overwhelmed with the feeling of your greatness. If some proud thought creeps into our imagination, we immediately reject it with the saliva of disdain, and make it the unpardonable sacrifice.

"You will bathe there with little girls, who will embrace you with their arms." Once they leave the bath, they will crown you with crowns of roses and carnations. They will have transparent wings of butterfly and hair of a wavy length, which float around the kindness of their forehead.

"Even if your palace would be more beautiful than the crystal, I would not leave this house to follow you." I believe that you are only an impostor, since you speak to me so softly, for fear of making yourself heard. Abandoning one's parents is a bad thing. I would not be an ungrateful son. As for your little girls, they are not as beautiful as the eyes of my mother.

All our lives have been exhausted in the songs of your glory. So far we have been, as we shall be, until we receive from you an order to leave this earth.

"They will obey you at your slightest sign and will only dream of pleasing you." If you want the bird that never rests, they will bring it to you. If you want the snow car, which carries to the sun in the twinkling of an eye, they will bring it to you. What would not they bring you! They would even bring you the kite, as large as a tower, which has been hidden in the moon, and at whose tail silk bands are suspended by birds of all kinds. Pay attention to you ... listen to my advice.

"Do what you will: I do not want to interrupt my prayer, to call for help." Though your body evaporates, when I want to remove it, know that I do not fear you.

"Before you, nothing is great, except the flame of a pure heart.

"Think about what I told you, if you do not want to repent."

"Heavenly Father, conjure, conjures up the misfortunes which may fall upon our family.

"Do not you want to go away, you bad spirit?"

"Conserving that beloved wife, who consoled me in my discouragement."

"Since you refuse me, I will make you cry and grind your teeth like a hanged man."

And this loving son, whose chaste lips barely open to the kisses of the dawn of life.

Mother, he chokes me ... Father, help me ... I can not breathe ... Your blessing!

A cry of immense irony rose in the air. See how the eagles, stunned, fall from the clouds, rolling over themselves, literally struck by the column of air.

His heart is no longer beating. And this one is dead, at the same time as the fruit of his entrails, a fruit which I no longer recognize, so disfigured is it. My wife! I remember a distant time when I was married and father.

He had said to himself, before the picture which was before him, that he would not endure this injustice. If it is effective, the power given to it by the infernal spirits, or rather that it draws from itself, this child, before the night flows, should no longer be.

He who does not know how to cry (for he has always repressed suffering within) noticed that he was in Norwegian. In the Faeroe Islands he watched the nests of sea-birds in the perpendicular crevasses, and was astonished that the 300-meter-long rope, which holds the explorer over the precipice, such solidity. He saw there, whatever may be said, a striking example of human goodness, and he could not believe his eyes. If it were he who ought to have prepared the rope, he would have made cuts in several places, that it might be cut, and throw the hunter into the sea! One evening he went to a cemetery, and the teenagers, who find pleasure in violating the corpses of beautiful women who had died lately, were able, if they wished, to hear the following conversation,

"Do you not want to talk with me, gravedigger?" A sperm whale grows up little by little from the bottom of the sea, and shows its head above the waters, to see the ship passing in its solitary parts. Curiosity was born with the universe.

- Ami, it is impossible for me to exchange ideas with you. The marble of the tombs has been shining for a long time with the gentle rays of the moon. It is the silent hour when more than one human being dreams that he sees women in chains, dragging their shrouds, covered with bloodstains, like a black sky, with stars. He who sleeps grows moaning like a condemned man until he wakes up and realizes that reality is three times worse than dream. I must finish digging this pit, with my tireless spade, so that it is ready tomorrow morning. To do a serious job, do not do two things at once.

-It believes that digging a pit is a serious job! You think digging a pit is a serious job?

When the savage pelican resolves to give his breast to devour his young, having as witness only he who knew how to create such a love, in order to make men ashamed, although the sacrifice is great, this act is understood. When a young man sees in the arms of his friend a woman whom he idolizes, he begins to smoke a cigar; he does not go out of the house, and knots himself with an indissoluble friendship with pain; this act is understandable. When an internal pupil, in a school, is governed for years, which are centuries, from morning till evening and evening till the next day, by an outcast of civilization, who constantly has eyes on him, he feels the tumultuous waves of a perennial hatred, rise like a thick smoke, to his brain, which seems to him to burst. From the moment when the has thrown into the prison, as far as the one who comes near, where it comes out, an intense fever yellowing his face, brings his eyebrows together, and digs his eyes. At night he ponders, because he does not want to sleep. In the daytime, his thought rushes over the walls of the abode, until it escapes, or is rejected as a plague, from that eternal cloister; this act is understandable. Digging a pit often exceeds the forces of nature. How, stranger, do you want the pickax to move this earth, which first nourishes us, and then gives us a convenient bed, preserved from the wind of winter blowing furiously in these cold countries, when the one who holds the pick , with his trembling hands, after having all day convulsively touched the cheeks of the old living who are returning to his kingdom, sees in the evening before him, written in letters of flame, on each wooden cross the statement of the frightful problem which mankind, has not yet solved: mortality or the immortality of the soul. The creator of the universe, I have always preserved my love for him; but if, after death, we should no longer exist, why do I see, most nights, every tomb open, and their inhabitants gently raise the leaden lids, to breathe fresh air? The creator of the universe, I have always preserved my love for him; but if, after death, we should no longer exist, why do I see, most nights, every tomb open, and their inhabitants gently raise the leaden lids, to breathe fresh air? The creator of the universe, I have always preserved my love for him; but if, after death, we should no longer exist, why do I see, most nights, every tomb open, and their inhabitants gently raise the leaden lids, to breathe fresh air?

"Stop in your work." Emotion takes away your strength; you seem to me as weak as a reed; it would be a great folly to continue. I am strong: I will take your place. Put yourself aside; you will give me advice if I do not do well.

"That his arms are muscular, and that there is pleasure in watching him dig the earth with so much ease!"

-There is no need for an unnecessary doubt to torment your thoughts: all these tombs, scattered in a cemetery, like flowers in a meadow, a comparison which lacks truth, are worthy of being measured with the serene compass of the philosopher . Dangerous hallucinations may come during the day; but they come especially at night. Therefore, do not be surprised at the fantastic visions that your eyes seem to perceive. During the day, when the mind is at rest, question your conscience; she will tell you with certainty that the God who created man with a piece of his own intelligence possesses unlimited goodness and will receive this masterpiece in his bosom after earthly death. Gravedigger, why are you crying? Why these tears, like those of a woman? Remember the good; we are on this ship dismasted to suffer. It is a merit for man that God has judged him capable of overcoming his most severe sufferings. Speak, and since, according to your dearest wishes, you would not suffer, say what virtue would then consist in, an ideal that everyone strives to achieve, if your tongue is made like that of other men .

-Where am I? Have I not changed my character? I feel a powerful breath of consolation brush my reassured brow, as the breeze of spring revives the hope of the old. Who is this man whose sublime language has said things that the first comer would not have uttered? What beauty of music in the incomparable melody of his voice! I prefer to hear him speak, than to sing others. However, the more I observe him, the more frank his face is. The general expression of his features contrasts singularly with those words which the love of God alone has inspired. His forehead, wrinkled with some folds, is marked with an indelible stygmate. This stygmate, which has grown old before age, is it honorable or is it infamous? Should his wrinkles be looked at with reverence? I ' ignore and I fear to know. Though he says what he does not think, I believe, nevertheless, that he has reasons to act as he has done, excited by the tattered remains of a charity destroyed in him. He is absorbed in meditations which are unknown to me, and he redoubles his activity in an arduous labor which he is not accustomed to undertake. The sweat wet his skin: he does not notice it. It is sadder than the feelings inspired by the sight of a child in the cradle. Oh! how dark it is! Where do you come from? Stranger, permit me to touch, and let my hands, which rarely clasp those of the living, impose themselves upon the nobility of your body. Whatever happens, I know what to do with it. This hair is the most beautiful that I have touched in my life.

"What do you want of me when I dig a grave?" The lion does not wish to be annoyed when he feeds. If you do not know, I'll tell you. Come, hurry up; accomplish what you desire.

-That that shivers at my touch, making me shiver myself, is flesh, no doubt. It's true ... I do not dream! Who are you, then, who leans over you to dig a grave, while, like a slothful man who eats the bread of others, I do nothing? It is time to sleep, or to sacrifice his repose to science. In any case, no one is absent from his house, and is careful not to let the door open, in order not to let the thieves in. He shuts himself up in his room as best he can, while the ashes of the old fireplace can still warm the room with heat. You do not like other people; your clothes indicate an inhabitant of some distant country.

"Though I am not fatigued, it is useless to dig the pit more." Now, undress me; then, you will put me in.

"The conversation, which we have both had for a few moments, is so strange that I do not know what to say to you. I think he wants to laugh."

"Yes, yes, it is true, I wanted to laugh; do not pay attention to what I said.

He collapsed, and the gravedigger hastened to support him!

-What have you?

-Yes, yes, it was true, I had lied ... I was tired when I gave up the pick ... it is the first time I was doing this work ... do not pay attention to what I said.

-My opinion takes more and more of consistency: it is someone who has terrible sorrows. May heaven take away the thought of questioning her. I prefer to remain in uncertainty, as it inspires me with pity. Then he would not answer me, that is certain: it is suffering twice to communicate his heart in this abnormal state.

"Leave me out of this cemetery; I shall continue my journey.

"Your legs do not support you; you would go astray, while you were walking. My duty is to offer you a coarse bed; I have no other. Trust me; for hospitality will not require the violation of your secrets.

"Oh, venerable, you whose body is devoid of elytra, one day you blamed me for not accepting your sublime intelligence sufficiently, which can not be read: perhaps you were right, since I do not meaning not even recognition for it. Fanal de Maldoror, where do you guide his steps?

-Home. That you are a criminal, who has not had the precaution to wash his right hand, with soap, after committing his crime, and easily recognizable by the inspection of that hand; or a brother who has lost his sister; or some dispossessed monarch, fleeing from his kingdoms, my palace truly grandiose, is worthy of receiving you. It was not built with diamonds and precious stones, for it is only a poor cottage, badly built; but, this famous cottage has a historical past that the present renews and continues unceasingly. If she could speak, she would astonish you, you do not seem surprised at anything. How often, at the same time, I saw the funerary beers in front of me, containing bones soon more worm-eaten than the back of my door, pressed. My countless subjects increase every day. I do not need to make any census at fixed times to see it. Here it is as with the living; each pays a tax, proportional to the wealth of the dwelling he has chosen; and, if some miser refused to deliver his share, I have ordered, in his person, to act like the ushers: there is no shortage of jackals and vultures who wish to make a good meal. I have seen the man who was handsome under the colors of death; the one who, after his life, has not been disheartened; the man, the woman, the beggar, the sons of kings; the illusions of youth, the skeletons of old men; genius, madness; laziness, its opposite; the one that was false, the one that was true; the mask of the proud, the modesty of the humble; the crowned vice with flowers and innocence betrayed.

"No, I do not refuse your bed, which is worthy of me, until the dawn comes, which will not be long." I thank you for your benevolence. Gravedigger, it is beautiful to contemplate the ruins of the cities; but it is more beautiful to contemplate the ruins of humans!

The brother of the leech walked slowly through the forest. He stops repeatedly, opening his mouth to speak. But each time his throat tightens, and pushes back the aborted effort. Finally, he exclaims: "Man, when you meet a dead dead dog, leaning against a lock that prevents him from leaving, do not, like the others, take with your hand the worms that come out of his belly puffed up, to look at them with astonishment, to open a knife, and then to cut a large number of them, by telling you that you, too, will not be more than this dog. What mystery are you looking for? Neither I, nor the four feet of the sea bear of the Boreal Ocean, could find the problem of life. Take care, the night approaches, and you have been there since morning. What will your family say, with your little sister, to see you so late? Wash your hands, take the road that goes where you sleep ... Who is that being down there on the horizon, and dares to approach me without fear, with oblique and tormented leaps; and what majesty, mingled with a serene sweetness! His gaze, though gentle, is deep. His enormous eyelids play with the breeze, and seem to live. It is unknown to me. In fixing her monstrous eyes, my body trembles; this is the first time since I sucked the dry breasts of what is called a mother. There is like a halo of dazzling light around him. When he spoke, all was silent in nature, and experienced a great thrill. Since it pleases you to come to me, as attracted by a magnet, I will not oppose it. How handsome he is! It hurts me to say it. You must be powerful; for thou hast a figure more than human, sad as the universe, beautiful as suicide. I abhor you as much as I can; and I prefer to see a serpent, intertwined around my neck since the beginning of the centuries, that not your eyes ... How! ... it is you, toad! ... toad! ... unfortunate toad! ... Forgive! ... forgive! ... What are you doing on this earth where are the cursed? But what have you done with your viscous and fetid pustules, to look so sweet? When you descended from above, by a superior order, with the mission of consoling the various races of existing beings, you fell upon the earth, with the rapidity of the kite, the not fatigued wings of this long, magnificent race ; I saw you! Poor Toad! As then I thought of the infinite, to my weakness. "One more which is superior to those of the earth," I said to myself, "by the divine will. Me, why not so? What is the use of injustice in supreme decrees? Is it foolish, the Creator; yet the strongest, whose anger is terrible! "Since you have appeared to me, monarch of ponds and swamps! covered with a glory which belongs only to God, you have partly consoled me; but my wavering reason is degraded before so great a magnitude! Who are you? Stay ... oh! still remains on this earth! Fold your white wings, and do not look up, with worried eyelids ... If you leave, let's go together! "The toad sat on the back thighs (which look so much like those of a man!) And , while the slugs, fled at the sight of their mortal enemy, spoke in these words: "Maldoror, listen to me." Note my figure, calm as a mirror, and I think I have an intelligence equal to yours. One day, you called me the support of your life. Since then, I have not denied the confidence you have shown me. I am only a simple inhabitant of the reeds, it is true; but, thanks to your own contact, taking only what was beautiful in you, my reason has grown, and I can speak to you. I have come to thee, that thou mayst withdraw from the abyss. Those who call your friends look at you, struck with consternation, whenever they meet you, pale and arched, in theaters, in the public squares, in the churches, or pressing, with two nervous thighs, that horse which only gallops during the night, while he wears his ghost master, wrapped in a long black cloak. Abandon these thoughts, which make your heart empty like a desert; they are more burning than fire. Your mind is so sick that you do not perceive it, and you believe it to be in your nature, whenever out of your mouth foolish words, though full of infernal grandeur. Unfortunate! what have you said since the day of your birth? O sad remnant of an immortal intelligence, which God had created with so much love! Thou hast only begotten curses more horrible than the sight of hungry panthers! I would rather have the eyelids stuck, my body missing legs and arms, having murdered a man, than not being you! Because I hate you. Why have this character that m ' surprised? By what right do you come to this earth, to turn into derision those who inhabit it, a rotten wreck, tossed about by skepticism? If you do not like it, you must return to the spheres from which you come. An inhabitant of the cities must not reside in the villages, like a stranger. We know that in spaces there are spheres more spacious than ours, and whose minds have an intelligence which we can not even conceive. Well, go away! ... withdraw yourself from this moving ground! ... at last show your divine essence, which you hid so far; and, as soon as possible, direct your ascending flight towards your sphere, which we do not envy, proud as you are! for I have not succeeded in recognizing whether you are a man or more than a man! Farewell then; not' hope to find the toad again on your way. You were the cause of my death. I am going for eternity, in order to beg your forgiveness! "

If it is sometimes logical to refer to the appearance of phenomena, this first song ends here. Do not be severe for one who is still trying his lyre: it makes a sound so strange! However, if you want to be impartial, you will already recognize a strong imprint, amid imperfections. As for me, I will go back to work, to make a second song appear, in a time that is not too delayed. The end of the nineteenth century was to see his poet (though, at the beginning, he must not begin with a masterpiece, but follow the law of nature): he was born on the American shores at the mouth de la Plata, where two peoples, once rivals, are endeavoring to surpass themselves by material and moral progress. Buenos Ayres, the Queen of the South, and Montevideo, the coquette, stretch out a friendly hand, through the Argentinian waters of the great estuary. But, eternal war has placed its destructive empire over the countryside, and reaps joyfully numerous victims. Adieu, old man, and think of me, if you have read me. You, young man, do not despair; for you have a friend in the vampire, in spite of your contrary opinion. Counting the acarus sarcopte which produces scabies, you will have two friends.

END OF CHANT ONE


CHANT TWO

Where has this first song of Maldoror been, since his mouth, full of the leaves of the belladonna, let it escape, through the kingdoms of anger, in a moment of reflection? Where did this song come from? We do not know exactly. It was not the trees or the winds that kept it. And the morality which passed through this place, not presaging that she had in these incandescent pages an energetic defender, saw her steadily and steadily marching towards the obscure corners and the secret fibers of consciences. What is at least gained by science is that, since that time, man, in the form of a toad, no longer recognizes himself, and often falls into fits of rage which make him resemble a beast of the woods. It's not his fault. In all times, he had believed, the eyelids bending beneath the resedias of modesty, that it was composed only of good and a minimum quantity of evil. Suddenly I taught him, by discovering his heart and his plays in full light, that, on the contrary, he was composed only of evil, and of a very small quantity, although the legislators had difficulty in not allowing it to evaporate. I wish he did not feel that which teaches him nothing new, an eternal shame for my bitter truths; but the realization of this wish would not be in conformity with the laws of nature. Indeed, I tear the mask from its treacherous face, and full of mud, and fall one by one, like balls of ivory on a silver basin, the sublime lies with which he is deceived himself: then it is understandable that it does not, do not order calm to lay hands on his face, even when reason dispels the darkness of pride. That is why the hero whom I put on the scene has attracted an irreconcilable hatred, by attacking humanity, which thought itself invulnerable by the breach of absurd philanthropic tirades; they are piled up like grains of sand in his books, of which I am sometimes on the point, when reason abandons me, to estimate the comic so comical, but boring. He had foreseen it. It is not enough to sculpt the statue of goodness on the pediment of the parchments contained in the libraries. O human being! now you are naked like a worm in the presence of my diamond sword! Abandon your method: it is no longer time to make the proud: I rush to you my prayer, in the attitude of prostration. There is someone who observes the slightest movements of your guilty life; you are enveloped by the subtle networks of his relentless perspicacity. Do not trust him when he turns his back; for he looks at you; do not rely on him when he closes his eyes; for he is still looking at you. It is difficult to suppose that, in the case of wiles and wickedness, your formidable resolution is to surpass the child by my imagination. Its least blows bear. With precautions, it is possible to teach those who believe they are ignorant that wolves and brigands do not devour each other: it is perhaps not their custom. Therefore, put the care of your existence in your hands without fear, and lead it in a way that he knows. Do not believe that, he causes the sun to correct you; for you care little, not to say less; yet I am not approaching, from the total truth, the benevolent measure of my verification. But it is because he loves to hurt you, in the legitimate persuasion that you become as wicked as he is, and that you accompany him in the gaping chasm of hell when his hour strikes. Its place has been marked for a long time, at the place where we notice an iron gallows, to which are suspended chains and carcans. When destiny will carry him to it, the funeral funnel will never have tasted of more savory prey, nor contemplated it of more suitable abode. It seems to me that I speak in an intentionally paternal way, and that humanity has no right to complain.

I seize the pen that will build the second song ... instrument snatched from the wings of some reddish bald eagle! But ... what have my fingers? The joints remain paralyzed as soon as I begin my work. However, I need to write ... This is impose target! Well, I repeat that I need to write my thought: I have the right, like another, to submit to this natural law. But no, but no, the pen remains inert! See, through the country, the lightning that shines in the distance. The storm runs through space. It's raining ... It's still raining ... It's raining! ... The lightning broke out ... it fell on my half-open window, and stretched me on the floor, knocking on the forehead. Poor young man! your face was already sufficiently made up by the precocious wrinkles and the deformity of birth, so as not to need, besides, this long sulphurous scar! (I just assumed that the wound is cured, which will not happen soon.) Why this storm, and why the paralysis of my fingers? Is it a warning from above to prevent me from writing, and to better consider what I expose myself to, by distilling the drool of my square mouth? But this storm did not cause me any fear. What would a legion of storms matter to me? These agents of the heavenly police accomplish with zeal their painful duty, if I judge summarily by my wounded forehead. I do not have to thank the Almighty for his remarkable address; he sent the lightning so as to cut my face precisely in two, from the front, where the wound was the most dangerous: another congratulates him! But storms attack someone stronger than them. Thus, horrible LORD, with the face of a viper, it was necessary that not content with having placed my soul between the borders of madness and the thoughts of fury that kill in a slow way, you also believed after a mature examination, to bring forth a cup of blood from my brow. But who is to tell you anything? You know that I do not love you, and that on the contrary I hate you. Why do you insist? When will your conduct cease to wrap itself in the appearance of the oddity? Speak frankly to me, as to a friend: do you not at last realize that in your hateful persecution you show a naive eagerness, none of your seraphim would dare to bring out the ridiculous complete? What anger does it take? Know that if you let me live to shelter from your pursuits, my gratitude would belong to you. Come, Sultan, with your tongue, rid me of that blood which dirties the floor. The bandage is finished: my waterproof front was washed with salt water, and I crossed strips across my face. The result is not infinite: four shirts, full of blood and two handkerchiefs. One would not at first think that Maldoror contained so much blood in his arteries; for on his face, only the reflections of the corpse glitter. But, finally, it's like that. Perhaps it was almost all the blood that could contain his body, and it is probable that there is not much left. Enough, enough, greedy dog; leaves the floor as it is: you have the belly filled. You should not continue to drink; for you would not delay vomiting. You are suitably sated, goes to bed in the kennel; think of swimming in happiness; for you will not think of hunger for three immense days, thanks to the globules which you have descended into your throat with solemnly visible satisfaction. You, Leman, take a broom: I would also like to take one, but I do not have the strength. You understand, do not you, that I do not have the strength? Put your tears back into their scabbard; if not, I shall believe that you have not the courage to contemplate, with cold blood, the great scar, occasioned by a torture already lost to me in the night of the past. You will go and fetch two buckets of water from the fountain. Once the floor was washed, you will put these linen in the next room. If the laundress returns this evening, as she must do, you will give her to him; but as it has rained a great deal for an hour, and it continues to rain, I do not think it comes from her; then she will come tomorrow morning. If she asks you where all the blood comes from, you do not have to answer her. Oh! how weak I am! Nevertheless, I shall have the strength to lift the penholder and the courage to dig my thoughts. What has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears a thunderbolt? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ... as she ought to do, you shall give it to her; but as it has rained a great deal for an hour, and it continues to rain, I do not think it comes from her; then she will come tomorrow morning. If she asks you where all the blood comes from, you do not have to answer her. Oh! how weak I am! Nevertheless, I shall have the strength to lift the penholder and the courage to dig my thoughts. What has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears lightning? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ... as she ought to do, you shall give it to her; but as it has rained a great deal for an hour, and it continues to rain, I do not think it comes from her; then she will come tomorrow morning. If she asks you where all the blood comes from, you do not have to answer her. Oh! how weak I am! Nevertheless, I shall have the strength to lift the penholder and the courage to dig my thoughts. What has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears a thunderbolt? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ... she leaves her house; then she will come tomorrow morning. If she asks you where all the blood comes from, you do not have to answer her. Oh! how weak I am! Nevertheless, I shall have the strength to lift the penholder and the courage to dig my thoughts. What has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears a thunderbolt? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ... she leaves her house; then she will come tomorrow morning. If she asks you where all the blood comes from, you do not have to answer her. Oh! how weak I am! Nevertheless, I shall have the strength to lift the penholder and the courage to dig my thoughts. What has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears a thunderbolt? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ... has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears a thunderbolt? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ... has he told the Creator to bother me, as if I were a child, by a storm that bears a thunderbolt? I still persist in my resolution to write. These strips bother me, and the atmosphere of my room breathes blood ...

Let not the day pass when, Lohengrin and I, we pass in the street, one beside the other, without looking at each other, as we pass our elbows, like two passers-by in a hurry! Oh! let me flee forever from this supposition! The Lord has created the world as it is: he would show much wisdom if, during the time strictly necessary to break a woman's head with a blow of a hammer, he forgot his sidereal majesty in order to reveal us the mysteries in the midst of which our existence stifles, like a fish in the bottom of a boat. But he is great and noble; it prevails over us by the power of its conceptions; if he were to parley with men, all shame would return to his face. But ... wretch that thou art! Why do not you blush? However, is not enough that the army of physical and moral griefs which surrounds us has been born; the secret of our destiny in rags is not disclosed to us. I know him, the Almighty ... and he, too, must know me. If, by chance, we walk along the same path, his piercing sight sees me coming from a distance: he takes a cross road to avoid the triple platinum dart that nature gave me as a language! You will give me pleasure, O Creator, to let me pour out my feelings. Handling the terrible ironies, with a firm and cold hand, I warn you that my heart will contain enough to attack me until the end of my existence. I will strike your hollow carcass; but, so strong, that I will undertake to bring out the remaining plots of intelligence, because you would have been jealous to make it equal to you, and you had brazenly hidden in your trenches, crafty bandit, as if you did not know that one day or another I have discovered them with my eye always open, removed them, and shared them with my fellow men. I have done as I speak, and now they no longer fear thee; they deal from power to power with you. Give me death, to make repentance of my audacity: I discover my breast and I wait with humility. Appear then, ridiculous scales of eternal punishments! ... Emphatic deployments of attributes too much vaunted! He manifested the inability to stop the circulation of my blood which taunts him. However, I have evidence that he does not hesitate to extinguish, in the prime of life, the breath of other humans, when they have scarcely tasted the enjoyments of life. It's simply atrocious; but only from the weakness of my opinion! I saw the Creator, spurting on his useless cruelty, burning fires in which old men and children perished. It is not I who begin the attack: it is he who forces me to turn him, like a top, with the whip with steel ropes. Is it not he who gives me accusations against himself? Do not dry up my frightful verve! She feeds on insane nightmares that torment my insomnia. It is because of Lohengrin that the above has been written; let us return to him. In fear that he would later become like other men, first resolved to kill him with a knife, when he had passed the age of innocence. But I reflected, and wisely abandoned my resolution in time. He does not suspect that his life has been in danger for a quarter of an hour. Everything was ready, and the knife had been bought. This stylus was cute, for I love grace and elegance even in the apparatuses of death; but it was long and sharp. One wound on the neck, carefully piercing one of the carotid arteries, and I think it would have sufficed. I am content with my conduct; I would have repented later. So, Lohengrin, do whatever you like, act as you please, lock me up all my life in an obscure prison, with scorpions for companions of my captivity, or snatch me an eye until it falls down, I will never reproach you. I am yours, I belong to you, I no longer live for myself. The pain you will cause me will not be comparable to the happiness of knowing that the one who hurts me with his murderous hands is soaked in a more divine essence than that of his fellows! Yes, it is still beautiful to lay down one's life for a human being, and thus to preserve the hope that all men are not wicked, since there has been one who has been able to attract by force , towards oneself, the defiant repugnances of my bitter sympathy! ...

It's midnight; we do not see a single omnibus from the Bastille to the Madeleine. I am wrong; there is one that suddenly appears, as if it were coming from under the earth. The few lazy passers-by look at him attentively; for it seems to resemble no other. Imperial men sit with their eyes motionless, like that of a dead fish. They are pressed against each other, and seem to have lost their lives; moreover, the statutory number is not exceeded. When the coachman gives a boost to his horses, it would be as if the whip had caused his arm to move, not his arm, the whip. What must this assemblage of bizarre and mute beings be? Are they inhabitants of the moon? There are moments when one might be tempted to believe it; but they look more like corpses. The highway, eager to reach the last station, devours the space and makes the pavement crack. He flies away! ... But a shapeless mass pursues him furiously, in his tracks, in the midst of the dust. "Stop, I beseech you; stop ... my legs are swollen to have walked during the day ... I have not eaten since yesterday ... my parents have abandoned me ... I do not know what to do ... I am resolved to return to my house, and I should have been there soon if you granted me a place. I am a little child of eight, and I have confidence in you. "He fled! He fled! ... But a shapeless mass pursues him furiously, in his tracks, in the midst of the dust. One of these men, with a cold eye, nudges his neighbor, and seems to express his discontent with those groans, with the Argentinian stamp, which reach his ear. The other drops his head imperceptibly, in the form of acquiescence, and then plunges back into the immobility of his egoism, like a tortoise in his carapace. Everything indicates in the features of other travelers the same sentiments as those of the first two. The screams are still heard for two or three minutes, more sharp from second to second. We see windows opening on the boulevard, and a bewildered face, a light in his hand, after having cast his eyes on the road, closing the shutter with impetuosity, not to reappear again ... He fled He fled! ... But a shapeless mass pursues him furiously, in his tracks, in the midst of the dust. Alone, a young man, plunged in reverie, in the midst of these stone figures, seems to feel pity for misfortune. In favor of the child, who thinks he can reach it, with his little aching legs, he dares not raise his voice; for the other men look at him with contempt and authority, and he knows that he can do nothing against all. With his elbow resting on his knees and his head in his hands, he wondered, stupefied, if this is really what is called and he knows that he can do nothing against all. With his elbow resting on his knees and his head in his hands, he wondered, stupefied, if this is really what is called and he knows that he can do nothing against all. With his elbow resting on his knees and his head in his hands, he wondered, stupefied, if this is really what is calledhuman charity. He then recognizes that it is only an empty word, which is no longer found even in the dictionary of poetry, and confesses frankly its error. He said to himself: "Why should you care about a little child? Leave him aside. "However, a burning tear rolled over the cheek of this teenager, who just blasphemed. He painfully passes his hand over his forehead, as if to remove a cloud, whose opacity obscures his intelligence. He struggles, but in vain, in the century in which he was thrown; he feels that he is not in his place, and yet he can not get out of it. Prison terrible! Hideous Fatality! Lombano, I'm happy with you since that day! I did not cease to observe you, while my face breathed the same indifference as that of other travelers. The teenager stands up, in a movement of indignation, and wishes to withdraw, in order not to participate, even involuntarily, in a bad action. I made a sign to him, and he resumed my side. He fled! He fled! ... But a shapeless mass pursues him fiercely, in these traces, in the midst of the dust. The cries cease suddenly, for the child has touched his foot against a protruding pavement, and has wounded his head by falling. The omnibus has disappeared on the horizon, and we see nothing but the silent street. He flies! He flies away! But a shapeless mass no longer pursues him furiously, on these tracks, in the midst of the dust. Look at this ragpicker who is passing, bending over his pale lantern; there is more heart in him than in all his equals of the omnibus. He has just picked up the " child; be sure that he will cure him and not abandon him, as his parents did. He runs away! ... He runs away! ... But from the spot where he is, the piercing gaze of the ragpicker pursues him furiously, in his tracks, in the midst of the dust! Race stupid and silly! You will repent of doing so. I'm telling you. You will repent, go! you will repent. My poetry will consist only in attacking, by all means, man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought not to have engendered such a vermin. The volumes will pile up on the volumes until the end of my life, and yet one will see only this one idea, always present to my conscience! He runs away! ... He runs away! ... But from the spot where he is, the piercing gaze of the ragpicker pursues him furiously, in his tracks, in the midst of the dust! Race stupid and silly! You will repent of doing so. I'm telling you. You will repent, go! you will repent. My poetry will consist only in attacking, by all means, man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought not to have engendered such a vermin. The volumes will pile up on the volumes until the end of my life, and yet one will see only this one idea, always present to my conscience! He runs away! ... He runs away! ... But from the spot where he is, the piercing gaze of the ragpicker pursues him furiously, in his tracks, in the midst of the dust! Race stupid and silly! You will repent of doing so. I'm telling you. You will repent, go! you will repent. My poetry will consist only in attacking, by all means, man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought not to have engendered such a vermin. The volumes will pile up on the volumes until the end of my life, and yet one will see only this one idea, always present to my conscience! Race stupid and silly! You will repent of doing so. I'm telling you. You will repent, go! you will repent. My poetry will consist only in attacking, by all means, man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought not to have engendered such a vermin. The volumes will pile up on the volumes until the end of my life, and yet one will see only this one idea, always present to my conscience! Race stupid and silly! You will repent of doing so. I'm telling you. You will repent, go! you will repent. My poetry will consist only in attacking, by all means, man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who ought not to have engendered such a vermin. The volumes will pile up on the volumes until the end of my life, and yet one will see only this one idea, always present to my conscience!

Every day I walked in a narrow street every day, and every day a young girl, ten years old, followed me at a distance, respectfully, along this street, looking at me with curious and curious eyelids. She was tall for her age and had slender waist. Abundant black hair, separated in two on the head, fell in independent braids on marmoreal shoulders. One day she followed me as usual; the muscular arms of a woman of the people seized her by the hair, as the whirlwind seized the leaf, applied two brutal slaps on a proud and mute cheek, and brought back to the house this lost consciousness. In vain, I was careless; she never failed to pursue me with her inopportune presence. When I walked up another street, to continue my journey, she stopped, making a violent effort on herself, at the end of that narrow street, motionless as the statue of Silence, and never ceased to look at her until I disappeared. Once, this young girl preceded me into the street, and followed me. If I went quickly to overtake her, she ran almost to maintain the equal distance; but if I slowed down, so that there might be a sufficiently large interval between her and me, she slowed it down, and put on the grace of childhood. Arrived at the end of the street, she turned slowly, so as to bar the passage. I had no time to dodge, and I stood before his face. Her eyes were swollen and red. I could easily see that she wanted to speak to me, and she did not know how to go about it. Suddenly pale as a corpse, she asked me: "Would you be so good as to tell me what time it is?" I told her that I was not wearing a watch, and I went away quickly. Since that day, a child with an uneasy and precocious imagination, you have not seen the mysterious young man in the narrow street, who was beating his heavy sandal on the pavement of tortuous crossroads. The appearance of this inflamed comet will no longer shine, as a sad subject of fanatical curiosity, on the facade of your disappointed observation; and you will often, too often, perhaps always, think of him who did not appear to be concerned with the evils, or the goods of the present life, and went off at random, with a horribly dead face, spiky, and the arms swim blindly in the ironic waters of the ether, as if to search for the bloody prey of hope, continually tossed through the immense regions of space by the relentless snowplow of fatality. You will not see me any more, and I shall never see you again! Who knows? Maybe this girl was not what she showed herself. Under a naive envelope she hid perhaps an immense trick, the weight of eighteen years, and the charm of vice. We have seen salesmen of love exile themselves with gaiety from the British Isles, and cross the Straits. They shone their wings, turning, in gilded swarms, before the Parisian light; and when you saw them, you said, "But they are still children; they are not more than ten or twelve years old. In reality they had twenty. Oh! in this supposition, cursed be the turns of this dark street! Horrible! horrible! what happens there. I think her mother struck her because she did not do her job with enough skill. It is possible that it was only a child, and then the mother is still more guilty. I do not wish to believe in this supposition, which is only a hypothesis, and I prefer to love in this romantic character a soul which is revealed too soon. Ah! you see, young girl, I urge you not to reappear before my eyes, if I ever go back into the narrow street. It could cost you dearly! Already the blood and the hatred rise to my head, with boiling waters. Me, be generous enough to love my fellow men! No no! I ' I have resolved since the day of my birth! They do not love me, they! The worlds will be destroyed, and the granite will slip, like a cormorant, on the surface of the waves, before I touch the infamous hand of a human being. Rear-back, that hand! ... Young girl, you are not an angel, and you will, in short, become like other women. No, no, I implore you; did not reappear before my frowning brows. In a moment of bewilderment, I might take your arms, twist them like a washed linen, the water of which you express, or break them with a crash, like two dry branches, and then make you eat them, using force. I could take my head in my hands with a caressing and gentle air, push my greedy fingers into the lobes of your innocent brain, to extract, a smile on his lips, an effective fat that washes my eyes, sore by the eternal insomnia of life. I could sew your eyelids with a needle, deprive you of the spectacle of the universe, and make it impossible for you to find your way; it is not I who will serve you as a guide. I could lift up your virgin body with an iron arm, seize you by the legs, make you roll around me like a sling, concentrate my strength by describing the last circumference, and throw yourself against the wall. Every drop of blood will fall on a human breast, to frighten men, and set before them the example of my wickedness! They will unceasingly tear away bits and pieces of flesh; but the drop of blood remains ineffaceable, in the same place, and will shine like a diamond. Be quiet, I will give half a dozen servants the order to keep the venerated remains of your body, and to preserve them from the hunger of voracious dogs. Doubtless the body remained clad on the wall like a ripe pear, and did not fall to the ground; but, dogs know how to accomplish high bounds, if one is not careful.

This child, who sits on a bench in the garden of the Tuileries, how kind he is! His bold eyes dart some invisible object, far away, in space. He must not be more than eight years old, and yet he does not amuse himself, as would be proper. At least he should laugh and walk with some comrade, instead of remaining alone; but it is not his character.

This child, who sits on a bench in the garden of the Tuileries, how kind he is! A man, moved by a hidden design, comes and sits down beside him, on the same bench, with equivocal looks. Who is it? I need not tell you; for you will recognize him by his tortuous conversation. Let us listen to them, do not disturb them:

"What were you thinking, child?"

"I was thinking about heaven."

"It is not necessary that you should think in heaven; it is enough to think of the earth. Are you tired of living, you who have just been born?

"No, but everyone prefers heaven to earth."

- Well, not me. For since heaven was made by God, as well as the earth, be sure that you will encounter the same evils as here below. After thy death thou shalt not be rewarded after thy merits; for if you are injured on this earth (as you will experience by experience later), there is no reason why in the other life you should not be made to do it no more. What you have best to do is not to think of God, and to do justice to yourself, since you are denied it. If any of your comrades offended you, would not you be happy to kill him?

"But that's forbidden."

"It is not so defended as you think." It's just not to get caught. The justice brought by the laws is worth nothing; it is the jurisprudence of the offended person that counts. If you hated one of your comrades, would not you be unhappy to think that every moment you have his thoughts before your eyes?

-That is true.

"There is one of your comrades who would make you unhappy all your life; for, seeing that your hatred is only passive, he will not fail to taunt you, and to cause you evil with impunity." There is, therefore, only one means of putting an end to the situation; is to get rid of his enemy. This is where I wanted to get you to understand the foundations of today's society. Everyone must do justice to himself, otherwise he is only an imbecile. He who gains victory over his fellow men, is the most cunning and strong. Would not you like to dominate your fellows one day?

-Yes Yes.

"Then be the strongest and most cunning." You are still too young to be the strongest; but from to-day you can employ cunning, the finest instrument of men of genius. When the shepherd David reached the front of the giant Goliath with a stone thrown by the sling, is it not admirable to remark that it was only by cunning that David defeated his adversary, and that if , on the contrary, they had caught themselves, the giant would have crushed him like a fly? It is the same for you. In an open war, you will never be able to conquer men, on whom you are anxious to extend your will; but with cunning you can fight alone against all. You want riches, beautiful palaces and glory? or did you deceive me when you asserted these noble pretensions?

"No, no, I did not deceive you. But, I would like to acquire what I desire by other means.

"Then you will not acquire anything at all." Virtuous and bountiful means do not lead to anything. More energetic levers and more learned frames must be employed. Before you become famous by your virtue and you reach the goal, a hundred others will have time to make caperries over your back and to reach the end of the career before you, will find more room for your narrow ideas. One must know how to embrace, with greater grandeur, the horizon of the present time. Have you ever heard, for example, of the immense glory of victories? And yet, victories do not happen alone. Blood, much blood, must be shed, to be begotten and deposed at the feet of the conquerors. Without the scattered limbs and limbs you see in the plain, where wickedness has been wrought, there would be no war, and without war there would be no victory. You see that when you want to become famous, you have to gracefully dive into rivers of blood, fueled by cannon fodder. The goal excuses the means. The first thing to become famous is to have money. Now, as you have none, you must murder to acquire it; but, as you are not strong enough to handle the dagger, make yourself a thief, until your limbs have grown. And, to make them grow faster, I advise you to do gymnastics twice a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening. In this way, you can try the crime, with some success, age of fifteen, instead of waiting until twenty. The love of glory excuses everything, and perhaps later, master of your fellow men, will you do them almost as much good as you did to them in the beginning ...

Maldoror perceives that the blood boils in the head of his young interlocutor; her nostrils are swollen, and her lips reject a slight white foam. He felt his pulse; the pulsations are precipitated. The fever has gained this delicate body. He fears the consequences of his words; he slips away, the unhappy man, annoyed at not having been able to maintain this child for a longer time. When in mature age it is so difficult to control the passions, balanced between good and evil, what is in a spirit, still full of inexperience? and what sum of relative energy does it need in addition? The child will leave to keep the bed for three days. Would to heaven that the maternal contact brings peace in this sensitive flower, fragile envelope of a beautiful soul!

There, in a grove surrounded by flowers, sleeps the hermaphrodite, deeply asleep on the lawn, wet with her tears. The moon has cleared its disc of the mass of the clouds, and caresses with its pale rays that sweet figure of adolescent. His features express the most virile energy, at the same time as the grace of a celestial virgin. Nothing seems natural to him, not even the muscles of his body, which make their way through the harmonious contours of feminine forms. He has his arm bent over his forehead, his other hand resting against his breast, as if to compress the beating of a heart closed to all confidences, and charged with the heavy burden of an eternal secret. Tired of life, and ashamed to walk among beings who do not resemble him, despair has won his soul, and he goes away alone, like the beggar of the valley. How does it obtain livelihoods? Compassionate souls keep a close eye on him, and he does not suspect this surveillance, and do not abandon him; he is so good! he is so resigned! Willfully he sometimes speaks with those who have the sensitive character, without touching their hand, and keeps at a distance, in the fear of an imaginary danger. If he is asked why he has taken solitude as a companion, his eyes rise to heaven, and with difficulty retain a tear of reproach against Providence; but he does not reply to this imprudent question, which spreads in the snow of his eyelids the redness of the morning rose. If the conversation is prolonged, he becomes uneasy, turns his eyes towards the four points of the horizon, as if to seek to escape from the presence of an invisible enemy who approaches, makes a sudden farewell of his hand, walks away on the wings of his shyness, and disappears into the forest. It is usually taken for a madman. One day, four masked men, who had received orders, threw themselves upon him and garranged him firmly, so that he could only move his legs. The whip knocked down his rough straps on his back, and told him that he was going straight to the road leading to Bicetre. He began to smile on receiving the blows, and spoke to them with so much feeling and intelligence about many of the human sciences which he had studied, and which showed great instruction in him who had not yet crossed the threshold of youth, and the destinies of the humanity in which he unveiled the poetic nobility of his soul, that his guardians, frightened to the blood of the action they had committed, untied his broken limbs, dragged himself to his knees, and asked for a pardon, and went away, with the marks of a veneration which does not ordinarily agree with men. Since this event, of which much was said, his secret was guessed by every one, but one seems to be ignorant of it, in order not to increase his sufferings; and the government grants him an honorable pension, to make him forget that for a moment they wanted to introduce him by force, without prior verification, into a hospice of insane persons. He uses half of his money; the rest he gives to the poor. When he sees a man and a woman walking along some avenue of plane trees, he feels his body split in two from the bottom to the top, and each new part go and hug one of the walkers; but it is only an hallucination, and reason soon regains its power. That is why he does not mix his presence, neither among men nor among women; for his excessive modesty, which has taken possession of the idea that he is but a monster, prevents him from granting his burning sympathy to any one. He would think he was profaning himself, and he thought he was desecrating others. His pride repeats to him this axiom: "Let each one remain in his nature." His pride, I have said, is because he fears that by joining his life to a man or a woman he is sooner or later blamed , as a huge fault, the conformation of its organization. Then he retreats into self-love, offended by this impious supposition which comes only from him, and he perseveres in remaining alone, in the midst of torments, and without consolation. There, in a grove surrounded by flowers, sleeps the hermaphrodite, deeply asleep on the lawn, wet with her tears. The birds, awake, contemplate with delight this melancholy figure, through the branches of the trees, and the nightingale does not want to make its crystal cavatines hear. The wood has become august as a tomb, by the nocturnal presence of the unfortunate hermaphrodite. O wandering traveler, by your adventurous spirit, which has made your father and mother leave you, from the most tender age: by the sufferings which thirst has caused you in the desert, maybe, after having long wandered, proscribed, in foreign countries; by your steed, your faithful friend, who has endured with you the exile and inclemency of the climates which your vagabond humor made you traverse; by the dignity which man gives to voyages on distant lands and unexplored seas, in the midst of polar ice, or under the influence of a torrid sun, do not touch with your hand, as with a quiver of the breeze, these curls of hair, scattered on the ground, and mingling with the green grass. Set aside many steps, and you will do better. This hair is sacred; it is the hermaphrodite himself who has willed it. He does not want human lips to embrace religiously his hair, perfumed by the breath of the mountain, no more than his forehead, which shines, at that moment, like the stars of the firmament. But it is better to believe that it is a star itself which has descended from its orbit, traversing space, on this majestic front, which it surrounds with its diamond-like light, like a halo. At night, slipping away his sadness, clothed himself with all his charms to celebrate the sleep of this incarnation of modesty, of that perfect image of the innocence of angels: the rustling of insects is less perceptible. The branches bend over them their bushy elevation, in order to preserve it from dew, and the breeze, making the strings of its melodious harp resound, sends its joyous chords, through the universal silence, towards those lowered eyelids, motionless, to the rhythmic concert of suspended worlds. He dreams that he is happy; that its corporeal nature has changed; or that, at least, it has flown over a purple cloud, into another sphere, inhabited by beings of the same nature as itself. Alas! that his illusion is prolonged until the awakening of the dawn! He dreams that the flowers dance around him in circles, like huge mad garlands, and imbue him with their sweet perfumes, while he sings a hymn of love, in the arms of a human being magical beauty. But it is only a crepuscular vapor that his arms interlace; and when he wakes up, his arms will not interlace him any more. Do not wake up, hermaphrodite; do not wake up yet, I beg you. Why do not you want to believe me? Sleep ... always sleep. Let your breast rise, pursuing the chimerical hope of happiness, I will permit you; but do not open your eyes. Ah! do not open your eyes! I want to leave you thus, not to witness your awakening. Perhaps one day, with the help of a voluminous book, I will tell your story, terrified by what it contains, and the teachings that emerge from it. So far, I have not been able to; for every time I wished it, abundant tears fell on the paper, and my fingers trembled, though it was not old age. But I want to have this courage in the end. I am indignant to have no more nerves than a woman, and to faint, like a little girl, whenever I think of your misery. Sleep ... always sleep; but do not open your eyes! Farewell, hermaphrodite! Every day, I will not fail to pray heaven for you (if it were for me, I would not pray). Peace be in thy bosom.

When a woman, with a soprano voice, emits her vibrant and melodious notes, on hearing this human harmony, my eyes fill with a latent flame and spark painful sparks, while in my ears seems to sound the tocsin of the cannonade. Whence can this profound repugnance for all that belongs to man come? If the chords fly away from the fibers of an instrument, I listen with delight to these pearly notes that escape in cadence through the elastic waves of the atmosphere. Perception transmits to my hearing only an impression of gentleness to melt nerves and thought; an ineffable slumber enveloped in its magic poppies, like a veil which sifts the light of day, the active power of my senses, and the perennial forces of my imagination. It is said that I was born in the arms of deafness! At the first epochs of my childhood, I did not hear what I was being told. When, with the greatest difficulty, I learned to speak, it was only after reading on a sheet what someone wrote, that I could, in my turn, communicate the thread of my reasoning. One day, a disastrous day, I grew up in beauty and innocence; and every one admired the intelligence and goodness of the divine adolescent. Many consciences blushed when they contemplated those limpid features in which his soul had placed his throne. They approached him only with reverence, because the eyes of an angel were remarked in his eyes. But no, I knew that the happy roses of the " adolescence were not to flourish perpetually, braided in capricious garlands, on his modest and noble forehead, which all the mothers embraced with frenzy. It seemed to me that the universe, with its starry vault of impassive and annoying globes, was perhaps not what I had dreamed of being more grandiose. One day, therefore, tired of stepping on the steep path of the earthly journey, and going away, staggering like a drunken man, through the dark catacombs of life, I slowly lifted my spleentic eyes, a great bluish circle, towards the concavity of the firmament, and I dared to penetrate, so young, the mysteries of heaven! Not finding what I was looking for, I lifted my eyelid frightened higher and higher, until I saw a throne, formed of human excrements and gold, on which stood, with an idiotic pride, the body covered with a shroud made with unwashed sheets of hospital, the one who calls himself the Creator! He held in his hand the rotten throne of a dead man, and carried him, alternately, with his eyes to his nose and from the nose to his mouth; once in the mouth, you guess what he was doing. His feet were plunged into a vast pool of blood, on the surface of which suddenly rose two or three prudent heads, like tapeworms through the contents of a chamber-pot, and immediately lowered themselves, with the rapidity of the arrow: a kick, well applied to the bone of the nose, was the known reward of the revolt at the regulation, occasioned by the need to breathe another medium; because, finally, these men were not fish! Amphibians at the most, they swam between two waters in this filthy liquid! ... until, having nothing in the hand, the Creator, with the first two claws of the foot, seizes another diver by the as if in a pincer, and lifted it up into the air, outside the reddish mud, an exquisite sauce! For him, he did as for the other. At first he devoured his head, his legs and his arms, and lastly the trunk, until nothing remained; for he was crunching the bones. So on, during the other hours of his eternity. Sometimes he exclaimed: "I have created you; so I have the right to make you what I want. You did not do anything to me, I'm not saying the opposite. I make you suffer, and it is for my pleasure. And he resumed his cruel meal, moving his lower jaw, which moved his beard full of brain. O reader, does not this last detail make you come to the mouth? Do not eat from such a brain, so good, fresh, and just caught a quarter of an hour in the lake at Pisces. The limbs paralyzed, and my throat mute, I contemplated this spectacle for some time. Three times I nearly fell backward, like a man who suffers too much emotion; three times I managed to get back on my feet. Not a fiber of my body remained motionless; and I trembled, as if trembling the inner lava of a volcano. In the end, my chest oppressed, unable to chase with enough speed the air that gives life, the lips of my mouth opened, and I uttered a cry ... a cry so heart-rending ... I heard it! The hoofs of my ear were suddenly untied, the tympanum cracked under the shock of that mass of sonorous air pushed away from me with energy, and a new phenomenon took place in the organ condemned by nature. I had just heard a sound! A fifth sense was revealed in me! But what pleasure could I have found from such a discovery? Henceforth the human sound came to my ear only with the feeling of sorrow which pity engenders for a great injustice. When someone spoke to me, I remembered what I had seen, one day, above the visible spheres, and the translation of my feelings stifled in an impetuous howl, whose timbre was identical to that of my fellow men! I could not answer him; for the torture of man's weakness in that hideous sea of ??purple passed before my forehead, roaring like elephants, and razed my burning hair with their wings of fire. Later, when I knew more humanity, to this feeling of pity was added an intense fury against this marathon tigress, whose hardened children know only how to curse and do evil. Audacity of the lie! they say that evil is only in their state of exception! ... Now it is over long ago; I have not spoken a word for a long time. O you, whoever you are, when you are beside me, let the strings of your glottis leave no intonation; that your motionless larynx should not strive to surpass the nightingale; and you yourself do not try to make me know your soul by the aid of language. Keep a religious silence, that nothing interrupts; humbly cross your hands on your chest, and point your eyelids at the bottom. I told you, since the vision that made me know the supreme truth, enough nightmares greedily sucked my throat, during the nights and days, to have the courage to renew, even in thought, the sufferings I felt in this infernal hour , who pursues me relentlessly from his memory. Oh! when you hear the avalanche of snow fall from the top of the cold mountain; the lioness complaining, in the arid desert, of the disappearance of her young; the storm accomplish its destiny; the condemned roar in the prison on the eve of the guillotine; and the ferocious octopus, to tell the waves of the sea, his victories over swimmers and shipwrecked ones, say it, these majestic voices are not more beautiful than the sneer of man! during the nights and days, to have still the courage to renew, even by thought, the sufferings I experienced in this infernal hour, which pursues me relentlessly from his memory. Oh! when you hear the avalanche of snow fall from the top of the cold mountain; the lioness complaining, in the arid desert, of the disappearance of her young; the storm accomplish its destiny; the condemned roar in the prison on the eve of the guillotine; and the ferocious octopus, to tell the waves of the sea, his victories over swimmers and shipwrecked ones, say it, these majestic voices are not more beautiful than the sneer of man! during the nights and days, to have still the courage to renew, even by thought, the sufferings I experienced in this infernal hour, which pursues me relentlessly from his memory. Oh! when you hear the avalanche of snow fall from the top of the cold mountain; the lioness complaining, in the arid desert, of the disappearance of her young; the storm accomplish its destiny; the condemned roar in the prison on the eve of the guillotine; and the ferocious octopus, to tell the waves of the sea, his victories over swimmers and shipwrecked ones, say it, these majestic voices are not more beautiful than the sneer of man! when you hear the avalanche of snow fall from the top of the cold mountain; the lioness complaining, in the arid desert, of the disappearance of her young; the storm accomplish its destiny; the condemned roar in the prison on the eve of the guillotine; and the ferocious octopus, to tell the waves of the sea, his victories over swimmers and shipwrecked ones, say it, these majestic voices are not more beautiful than the sneer of man! when you hear the avalanche of snow fall from the top of the cold mountain; the lioness complaining, in the arid desert, of the disappearance of her young; the storm accomplish its destiny; the condemned roar in the prison on the eve of the guillotine; and the ferocious octopus, to tell the waves of the sea, his victories over swimmers and shipwrecked ones, say it, these majestic voices are not more beautiful than the sneer of man!

There is an insect that men feed at their expense. They owe him nothing; but they fear it. The latter, who does not love wine but prefers blood, if his legitimate needs are not fulfilled, would be able by occult power to become as large as an elephant, to crush men as of the ears. It is therefore necessary to see how one respects it, as one surrounds it with a canine veneration, as one places it in high esteem above the animals of creation. He is given his head for a throne, and he clings his claws to the roots of his hair with dignity. Later, when he is fat and entering an advanced age, imitating the custom of an ancient people, he is killed, so as not to make him feel the attacks of old age. He was given a grandiose funeral, like a hero, and the beer, which leads directly to the lid of the tomb, is carried on the shoulders by the principal citizens. On the damp earth which the gravedigger stirs with his sagacious shovel, multicolored phrases are combined on the immortality of the soul, on the nothingness of life, on the inexplicable will of Providence, and the marble closes forever , on this existence, laboriously filled, which is no more than a corpse. The crowd dispersed, and the night did not take long to cover with its shadows the walls of the cemetery. on the nothingness of life, on the inexplicable will of Providence, and the marble is closed for ever upon this laboriously filled existence, which is no more than a corpse. The crowd dispersed, and the night did not take long to cover with its shadows the walls of the cemetery. on the nothingness of life, on the inexplicable will of Providence, and the marble is closed for ever upon this laboriously filled existence, which is no more than a corpse. The crowd dispersed, and the night did not take long to cover with its shadows the walls of the cemetery.

But console yourself, humans, for its painful loss. Here is his innumerable family, which advances, and which he has liberally bestowed upon you, in order that your despair might be less bitter, and as softened by the pleasant presence of these surly abortions, which later become magnificent lice, adorned with a remarkable beauty, wise-looking monsters. He has hatched several dozen cherished eggs, with his maternal wing, on your hair, dried up by the fierce sucking of these formidable strangers. The period has quickly come, when the eggs have broken out. Do not be afraid, they will soon grow, these adolescent philosophers, through this ephemeral life. They will grow so much, that they will make you feel, with their claws and their suckers.

You do not know why they do not devour the bones of your head, and are content to extract with their pomp the quintessence of your blood. Wait a moment, I will tell you: it is because they do not have the strength. Be sure that if their jaws conformed to the measure of their infinite vows, the brain, the retina of the eyes, the spine, all your body would pass through. Like a drop of water. On the head of a young beggar in the streets, observe, with a microscope, a working louse; you will give me news of it. Unfortunately they are small, these brigands of long hair. They would not be good to be conscripted; because they do not have the necessary size required by law. They belong to the Lilliputian world of those of the short thigh, and the blind do not hesitate to place them among the infinitely small. Woe to the sperm whale who would fight against a louse. It would be devoured in a flash, despite its size. He would not be standing in line to announce the news. The elephant is caressed. The louse, no. I do not advise you to attempt this perilous attempt. Beware of you, if your hand is hairy, or only it be composed of bones and flesh. It's all over with your fingers. They will crack as if they were tortured. The skin disappears by a strange enchantment. Lice are incapable of committing as much harm as their imagination meditates. If you find a louse in your path, go your way, and do not lick the taste buds of the tongue. Some accident would happen to you. That was seen. Anything, I am already satisfied with the amount of evil which he does to you, O human race; only, I wish he would do you more.

How long will you keep the wormly worship of this god, insensible to your prayers and the generous offerings you offer him as an atoning sacrifice? See, it is not grateful, this horrible manitou, large cuts of blood and brains that you pour on its altars, piously decorated with garlands of flowers. He is not grateful ... for earthquakes and storms continue to be raging since the beginning of things. And yet, a sight worthy of observation, the more indifferent it is, the more you admire it. You see that you distrust his attributes, which he hides; and your reasoning rests on this consideration, that a divinity of an extreme power can alone show so much contempt for the faithful who obey its religion. That's why, in every country there are various gods, here the crocodile; there, the saleswoman of love; but when it is a question of the louse, to this sacred name, universally kissing the chains of their slavery, all the nations kneel together on the august forecourt before the pedestal of the shapeless and sanguinary idol. The people, who would not obey their own crawling instincts, and pretend to revolt, would sooner or later disappear from the earth, like the autumn leaves, wiped out by the vengeance of the inexorable god.

With his eyes curled up; so long as the rivers sprinkle their waters in the abyss of the sea; as long as the stars will gravitate on the path of their orbit; so long as the void void has no horizon; so long as mankind will tear its own flanks by wicked wars; so long as divine justice precipitates his vengeful thunder upon this selfish globe; so long as man misunderstands his creator, and will deride him, not without reason, by mingling with contempt, your kingdom will be assured over the universe, and your dynasty will extend its rings from century to century. I greet you, rising sun, heavenly deliverer, you, the invisible enemy of man. Continue to tell the dirt to unite with him in impure embraces, and to swear to him, by oaths, not written in the powder, she will remain her faithful lover until eternity. Fuck from time to time the dress of this great immodest, in memory of the important services she does not fail to return to you. If she did not seduce man, with his lascivious breasts, it is probable that you could not exist, the product of this reasonable and consistent mating. O son of the dirt! tell your mother that if she abandons the man's bed, walking through lonely roads, alone and without support, she will see her existence compromised. Let her entrails, which have borne you for nine months in their perfumed walls, move for a moment to the thought of the danger which their tender fruit, so gentle and calm, but already cold and ferocious, would follow. Dirt, queen of empires, preserves in the eyes of my hatred the spectacle of the " insensible growth of the muscles of your hungry progeny. To reach this goal, you know that you have to stick more closely against the sides of the man. You can do it without inconvenience for modesty, since both of you have been married for a long time.

For my part, if I may add a few words to this hymn of glorification, I will say that I have built a pit of forty square leagues, and of relative depth. It is there that lies, in its filthy virginity, a living mine of lice. It fills the shallows of the pit, and then winds, in broad dense veins, in all directions. Here's how I built this artificial mine. I pulled out a female louse with the hair of humanity. I was seen sleeping with him for three consecutive nights, and I threw him into the pit. Human fecundation, which would have been null in other similar cases, was accepted this time by fatality; and at the end of a few days thousands of monsters, swarming in a compact knot of matter, were born into the light. This hideous knot became more and more immense in time, acquiring the liquid property of mercury, and branching into several branches, which now feed themselves by devouring themselves (the birth is greater than whenever I do not throw a bastard who has just been born, and whose mother wished for death, or an arm which I am about to cut with a young girl during the night, thanks to chloroform. Every fifteen years, the generations of lice, which feed on man, diminish in a remarkable manner, and predict, infallibly, the next epoch of their complete destruction. For man, more intelligent than his enemy, succeeds in vanquishing him. Then, with an infernal shovel that increases my strength, extracted from this inexhaustible mine of lice-blocks, as great as mountains, I break them with axes, and carry them during the deep nights into the arteries of the cities. There, in contact with human temperature, they dissolve as in the first days of their formation in the tortuous tunnels of the underground mine, dig a bed in the gravel, and spread themselves into streams in the dwellings as nuisance spirits. The keeper of the house barked dully, for it seemed to him that a legion of unknown beings pierced the pores of the walls, and brought terror to the bedside of sleep. Perhaps you have not heard, at least once in your life, this sort of painful and prolonged barking. With his helpless eyes, he tries to pierce the darkness of the night; because, his dog brain does not understand that. This buzzing irritates him, and he feels that he is betrayed. Millions of enemies fall on each city like clouds of locusts. So much for fifteen years. They will fight the man, making him stinging wounds. After this time, I will send others. When I crush the blocks of animate matter, it may happen that a fragment is denser than another. His atoms endeavor with rage to separate their agglomeration to torment humanity; but the cohesion resists its hardness. By a supreme convulsion they engender such an effort that the stone, unable to disperse its living principles, rushes itself up to the top of the air as if it were a powder, and falls, sinking firmly under the ground. Sometimes the dreamer peasant sees an aerolite split vertically in space, heading downwards towards a field of maize. He does not know where the stone comes from. You have now, clear and succinct, the explanation of the phenomenon.

If the earth were covered with lice, as the grains of sand on the shore of the sea, the human race would be annihilated, a prey to terrible pains. What show! I, with the wings of an angel, motionless in the air, to contemplate it!

O severe mathematics, I have not forgotten you, since your learned lessons, sweeter than honey, filtered into my heart like a refreshing wave. I aspired instinctively, from the cradle, to drink at your source, older than the sun, and I still continue to tread the sacred court of your solemn temple, I, the most faithful of your initiates. There was vagueness in my mind, a kind of smoke that was as thick as smoke; but I have been able to cross religiously the steps which lead to your altar, and you have driven away this dark veil, as the wind drives the checkerboard. Instead, you have placed an excessive coldness, a consummate prudence, and an implacable logic. With your fortifying milk, my intelligence quickly developed, and assumed immense proportions, in the midst of that delightful brightness of which you present with prodigality to those who love you with sincere love. Arithmetic! algebra! geometry! trinity grandiose! light triangle! He who did not know you is a fool! He deserves the trial of the greatest punishments; for there is blind contempt in his ignorant carelessness; but he who knows and appreciates you no longer wants anything of the goods of the earth; is satisfied with your magical enjoyments; and, carried on your dark wings, desires only to rise, from a light flight, by constructing an ascending helix, towards the spherical vault of the heavens. The earth shows him only moral illusions and fantasies: but you, oh concise mathematics, a rigorous chaining of your tenacious propositions and the constancy of your iron laws, you shine with dazzled eyes a powerful reflection of that supreme truth whose imprint is remarked in the order of the universe. But the order which surrounds you, represented above all by the perfect regularity of the square, the friend of Pythagoras, is still greater; for the Almighty has revealed himself and his attributes in this memorable work of bringing forth the treasures of theorems and magnificent splendours from the entrails of chaos. In ancient times and in modern times, more than one great human imagination saw its genius, terrified, at the contemplation of your symbolic figures traced on burning paper, as so many mysterious, living signs of a latent breath, which the vulgar profane does not comprehend, and which were but the brilliant revelation of eternal axioms and hieroglyphics which existed before the universe and which will be maintained after him. She asks herself, leaning toward the precipice of a fatal question mark, how it is that mathematics contains so much greatness and so much indisputable truth, while, if she compares them to man, she finds in the latter only false pride and falsehood. Then this sad, superior spirit, to which the noble familiarity of your counsels makes the smallness of humanity and its incomparable madness more clearly felt, plunges its bleached head on a gaunt hand and remains absorbed in supernatural meditations. He tilts his knees before you, and his veneration pays homage to your divine face, as to the image of the Almighty. During my childhood you appeared to me, one May night, in the rays of the moon, on a verdant meadow, on the banks of a limpid stream, all three equal in grace and modesty, all three full of majesty as of queens. You took a few steps toward me, with your long robe, floating like a steamer, and you attracted me to your brother breasts, like a blessed son. So I rushed eagerly, my hands clenched on your white throat. I gratefully nourished your fertile manna, and I felt that mankind was growing in me and becoming better. Since that time, O rival goddesses, I have not abandoned you. Since that time, what energetic projects, what sympathies, which I thought I had engraved on the pages of my heart, as on marble, have not slowly effaced their confused lines from their confused lines, as the rising dawn effaces the shadows of night! Since that time, I have seen death with intent, visible to the naked eye, to populate the tombs, to ravage the battlefields, fattened by human blood and to grow morning flowers over the funeral bones. Since that time I have been present at the revolutions of our globe; earthquakes, volcanoes, with their flaming lava, the simoun of the desert and the wrecks of the tempest had my presence as an impassive spectator. Since that time, I have seen several human generations raise in the morning, with their wings and their eyes, towards space, with the inexperience of the chrysalis, who salutes his last metamorphosis, and dies in the evening, before sunset, with his head bowed like faded flowers, which the hollow whistle of the wind sways. But you are always the same. No change, no pestilential air does not touch the steep rocks and immense valleys of your identity. Your modest pyramids will last more than the pyramids of Egypt, ant-hovels raised by stupidity and slavery. The end of the centuries will again see, standing on the ruins of time, your cabalistic figures, your laconic equations, and your sculptural lines sitting on the right avenging of the Almighty, while the stars will sink desperately like thunders, in the eternity of a horrible and universal night, and that humanity, grimacing, will think of making his accounts with the last judgment. Thank you, for the innumerable services you have rendered me. Thank you, for the foreign qualities you have enriched my intelligence. Without you, in my fight against man, I may have been defeated. Without you, he would have made me roll in the sand and kiss the dust of his feet. Without you, with a perfidious claw, he would have plowed my flesh and my bones. But, I was on my guard, like an experienced athlete. You gave me the coldness which arises from your sublime conceptions, exempt from passion. I used it to reject with disdain the ephemeral enjoyments of my short journey, and to send back from my door the sympathetic but deceptive offers of my fellow-men. You gave me the obstinate prudence, we decipher at every step in your admirable methods of analysis, synthesis and deduction. I used it to mislead the pernicious ruses of my mortal enemy, to attack it, in my turn, with skill, and plunge into the viscera of the man a sharp dagger which will remain forever embedded in his body; for it is a wound from which he will not rise again. You gave me logic, which is like the soul itself of your teachings, full of wisdom; with its syllogisms, of which the complicated labyrinth is only more comprehensible, my intelligence felt double its audacious powers. With the aid of this terrible auxiliary, I discovered, in humanity, by swimming in the shallows, in front of the reef of hatred, black and hideous malice, which stagnated in the midst of harmful miasms, admiring the navel. The first I discovered, in the darkness of her entrails, that evil vice, evil! superior in him to good. With this poisoned weapon you lent me, I sent down from its pedestal, built by the cowardice of man, the Creator himself! He gritted his teeth and suffered this ignominious insult; for he had an opponent stronger than himself. But I will leave it aside, like a bundle of strings, in order to lower my flight. The thinker Descartes once made this reflection that nothing solid had been built upon you. It was an ingenious way of making it clear that the first comer could not at once discover your inestimable value. Indeed, what more solid than the three principal qualities already named, which rise, interlaced like a single crown, on the august summit of your colossal architecture? Monument that constantly grows everyday discoveries, in your diamond mines, and scientific explorations, in your superb estates. O holy mathematics, may you, by your perpetual intercourse, console the rest of my days for the wickedness of man and the injustice of the Great All!

"O lamp with a silver beak, my eyes perceive you in the air, companion of the vault of the cathedrals, and seek the reason of this suspension. It is said that your gleams illuminate during the night the peat of those who come to adore the Almighty and that you show the way to the altar to the repented. Listen, it's very possible; but ... do you need to render such services to those to whom you owe nothing? Leave the pillars of the basilicas in darkness; and when a whirlwind of the tempest upon which the devil whirled, swept into space, would penetrate with him into the holy place, spreading terror there, instead of courageously fighting against the stultified gust of the air. prince of evil, extinguish suddenly, under his feverish breath, so that he may, we see him, choose his victims among the kneeling believers. If you do that, you can say that I will owe you all my happiness. When thou shine thus, by shedding thy undecided but sufficient light, I dare not yield to the suggestions of my character, and I remain, under the sacred portico, looking through the half-open door, those who escape my vengeance, in the bosom of the Lord. O poetic lamp! you who would be my friend if you could understand me, when my feet trod the basalt of the churches, in the nocturnal hours, why do you shine in a manner which, I confess, seems extraordinary to me? Your reflections are colored, then; white shades of electric light; the eye can not fix you; and you light up with a new and powerful flame the smallest details of the kennel of the Creator, as if you were a prey to holy wrath. And when I retire after blaspheming, you become unperceived, modest and pale, sure of having accomplished an act of justice. Tell me a little; would it be because you know the detours of my heart, that when I happen to appear where you watch, you hasten to point out my pernicious presence and to bring the attention of the worshipers to the side where it comes to be the enemy of men? I incline towards this opinion; for I, too, begin to know you; and I know who you are, old witch, who watches so well on the sacred mosques, where strangers, like the crest of a cock, strut your curious master. Vigilante guardian, you gave yourself a crazy mission. I'm warning you; the first time you will designate me to the prudence of my fellow men, as I do not like the phenomenon of optics, which is not mentioned in any book of physics, I take you by the skin of your breast, clinging my claws to the bedsores of and I throw you into the Seine. I do not pretend that when I do nothing to you, you knowingly behave in a manner that is harmful to me. There I will permit you to shine as much as it pleases me; there you will mock me with an inextinguishable smile; then, convinced of the incapacity of your criminal oil, you will urinate it with bitterness. "After speaking thus, Maldoror does not leave the temple, and stays with his eyes fixed on the lamp of the holy place. a kind of provocation, in the attitude of this lamp, which irritates it to the highest degree, by its inopportune presence. He tells himself that if some soul is shut up in this lamp, it is cowardly not to respond, to a loyal attack, by sincerity. He beats the air with his nervous arms and would like the lamp to be transformed into a man; he would make him pass a bad quarter of an hour, he promises himself. But the means by which a lamp becomes a man; it is not natural. He did not resign himself, and went to the front of the miserable pagoda to find a flat pebble with a sharp edge. He throws it into the air with force ... the chain is cut in the middle like the grass by the scythe, and the instrument of the cult falls to the ground, spreading its oil on the flagstones ... seizes the lamp to carry it outside, but it resists and grows. He seems to see wings on his flanks, and the upper part takes the form of an angel bust. The whole wants to rise in the air to take its rise; but he holds it with a firm hand. A lamp and an angel that form the same body, that is what we do not often see. It recognizes the shape of the lamp; he recognizes the form of the angel; but he can not split them in his mind; in reality, they are glued into each other, and form an independent and free body; but he believes that some cloud has veiled his eyes, and has made him lose a little of the excellence of his sight. Nevertheless, he is preparing to fight with courage, because his opponent is not afraid. The naive people tell those who want to believe that the sacred gate shut itself by rolling on its distressed hinges, so that no one could attend this impious struggle, whose vicissitudes were to take place within the precincts of the violated sanctuary. The man in the cloak, while he receives cruel wounds with an invisible sword, endeavors to bring the figure of the angel closer to his mouth; he thinks only of this, and all his efforts are directed towards this end. The latter loses his energy, and seems to foresee his destiny. He fights only feebly, and we see the moment when his adversary can kiss him at his ease, if that's what he wants to do. Well, now is the time. With his muscles he strangles the throat of the angel, who can no longer breathe, and knocks his face down, leaning against his odious breast. He is touched for a moment by the fate awaiting this heavenly being, which he would willingly have made his friend. But he says to himself that he is the messenger of the Lord, and he can not restrain his wrath. It is done; something horrible will go into the cage of time! He leans over, and wears his tongue, soaked in saliva, on that angelic cheek, which looks imploringly. He walks his tongue for a while on this cheek. Oh! See! -see, then! -the white and pink cheek has become black, like a coal! It exhales putrid miasms. It is gangrene; it is no longer permissible to doubt it. The rodent evil spreads over the whole face, and from there, exercises its furies on the lower parts; soon, the whole body is but a vast filthy wound. Himself, terrified (for he did not believe that his tongue contained such a poison of violence), he picks up the lamp and runs away from the church. Once outside, he sees in the air a blackish form, with burnt wings, which painfully directs his flight towards the regions of the sky. They look at each other, while the angel ascends to the serene heights of good, and that he, on the contrary, descends towards the vertiginous abysses of evil. What a look! Everything that humanity has thought of for sixty centuries, and what it will still think, during the succeeding centuries, could easily contain, so many things they said, in this supreme farewell! But we understand that these were higher thoughts than those which sprang from human intelligence; first, because of the two characters, and then, because of the circumstance. This gaze bound them with an eternal friendship. It ' is astonished that the Creator may have missionaries of such a noble soul. For a moment he thought he had been mistaken, and wondered if he should have followed the path of evil, as he did. The trouble is over; he perseveres in his resolution; and it is glorious, according to him, to conquer sooner or later the Great All, in order to reign in his place over the whole universe, and over legions of angels so beautiful. The latter makes him understand; without speaking, that it will resume its primitive form as it ascends to heaven; let fall a tear, which refreshes the forehead of him who gave him the gangrene; and disappears little by little, like a vulture, rising in the midst of the clouds. The culprit looks at the lamp, because of the above. He runs like a fool through the streets, heads for the Seine, and throws the lamp over the parapet. It swirls for a few moments, and sinks definitely into the muddy waters. Since that day, every evening, at nightfall, we see a brilliant lamp which arises and keeps gracefully on the surface of the river, at the height of the bridge Napoleon, carrying, instead of handle , two cute angel wings. It advances slowly over the waters and passes beneath the arches of the Pont de la Gare and the Pont d'Austerlitz, and continues its silent wake on the Seine up to the Pont de l'Alma. Once in this place, it easily ascends the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long. definitely bursts into the muddy waters. Since that day, every evening, at nightfall, we see a brilliant lamp which arises and keeps gracefully on the surface of the river, at the height of the bridge Napoleon, carrying, instead of handle , two cute angel wings. It advances slowly over the waters and passes beneath the arches of the Pont de la Gare and the Pont d'Austerlitz, and continues its silent wake on the Seine up to the Pont de l'Alma. Once in this place, it easily ascends the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long. definitely bursts into the muddy waters. Since that day, every evening, at nightfall, we see a brilliant lamp which arises and keeps gracefully on the surface of the river, at the height of the bridge Napoleon, carrying, instead of handle , two cute angel wings. It advances slowly over the waters and passes beneath the arches of the Pont de la Gare and the Pont d'Austerlitz, and continues its silent wake on the Seine up to the Pont de l'Alma. Once in this place, it easily ascends the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long. on the surface of the river, at the height of the Pont Napoleon, carrying two cute angel wings instead of a handle. It advances slowly over the waters and passes beneath the arches of the Pont de la Gare and the Pont d'Austerlitz, and continues its silent wake on the Seine up to the Pont de l'Alma. Once in this place, it easily ascends the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long. on the surface of the river, at the height of the Pont Napoleon, carrying two cute angel wings instead of a handle. It advances slowly over the waters and passes beneath the arches of the Pont de la Gare and the Pont d'Austerlitz, and continues its silent wake on the Seine up to the Pont de l'Alma. Once in this place, it easily ascends the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long. it ascends with ease the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long. it ascends with ease the course of the river, and returns at the end of four hours to its point of departure. So on, all night long.Its gleams, white as the electric light , efface the gas-lamps which run along the two banks, and between which it advances like a queen, lonely, impenetrable, with an inextinguishable smile, without its oil spreading bitterly. In the beginning the boats chased her; but she thwarted these vain efforts, escaped all pursuits, plunging like a coquette, and reappearing farther on, at a great distance. Now, the superstitious sailors, when they see it, row in an opposite direction, and hold back their songs. When you pass over a bridge during the night, be very careful: you are sure to see the lamp shining here and there; but it is said that she does not show herself to everybody. When he passes over the bridges a human being who has something on his conscience, he suddenly extinguishes his reflections, and the passer-by, frightened, searches in vain, with a desperate glance, the surface and the silt of the river. He knows what that means. He would like to believe that he saw the celestial glow; but, he said to himself that the light came from the front of the boats or from the reflection of the gas jets; and he is right ... He knows that this disappearance is the cause of it; and, plunged in sad reflections, he hastened to his house. Then the lamp with a silver beak reappears on the surface, and continues its march, through elegant and capricious arabesques.

Listen to the thoughts of my childhood, when I awoke, humans, with the red rod: "I just woke up; but my thought is still numb. Every morning I feel a weight in my head. It is rare that I find rest in the night; for frightful dreams torment me, when I manage to fall asleep. In the daytime, my thoughts grow weary in strange meditations, while my eyes wander at random in space; and, at night, I can not sleep. When should I sleep then? However, nature needs to claim its rights. As I disdain her, she makes my face pale and makes my eyes shine with the sour flame of the fever. Besides, I would ask no better than not to exhaust my mind to think continually; but, even if I did not wish it, my feelings dismayed, lead invincibly towards this slope. I realized that the other children are like me; but they are paler still, and their eyebrows are furrowed, like those of men, our elder brothers. O Creator of the universe, I will not fail this morning to offer you the incense of my childish prayer. Sometimes I forget it, and I have noticed that on those days I feel happier than usual; my breast flourishes, free from all constraint, and I breathe more freely, the embalmed air of the fields; while I am accomplishing the painful duty, ordered by my parents, to address daily a hymn of praise, accompanied by the inseparable boredom of his laborious invention, then I am sad and irritated; the day, it does not seem logical and natural for me to say what I do not think, and I seek the retreat of immense solitudes. If I ask them to explain this strange state of my soul, they do not answer me. I would love you and adore you; but you are too powerful, and there is fear in my hymns. If by a single manifestation of your thought you can destroy or create worlds, my feeble prayers will not be useful to you; if, when you please, you send the cholera to ravage the cities, or death carry the four ages of life with no distinction, I do not want to bind myself with a friend so formidable. Not that hatred leads the thread of my reasoning; but I am afraid, on the contrary, of your own hatred, which, by a capricious order, can leave your heart and become immense, the condor of the Andes. Your equivocal amusements are not within my reach, and I would probably be the first victim. You are the Almighty; I do not dispute this title, since you alone have the right to bear it, and that your desires, with fatal or happy consequences, have no end but yourself. This is precisely why it would be painful for me to walk beside your cruel sapphire tunic, not as your slave, but as it might be from one moment to another. It is true that when you descend into yourself to scrutinize your sovereign conduct, if the phantom of a past injustice committed against this unhappy humanity, which has always obeyed you, as your most faithful friend, before you, the immobile vertebrae of a venomous dorsal thorn, your haggard eye let fall the terrified tear of late remorse, and then, with your hair bristling, you believe, yourself, sincerely resolve to suspend forever from the brushwood of the void the inconceivable games of your imagination of a tiger, which would be burlesque if it were not lamentable; but I also know that constancy has not fixed the harpoon of its eternal dwelling in your bones like a stubborn marrow, and that you often fall, you and your thoughts, covered with black leprosy, error, in the funeral lake of the dark curses. I want to believe that these are unconscious (although they contain their fatal venom), and that evil and good, united together, spread in impetuous leaps of your royal gangrenous breast, like the torrent of rock, by the secret charm of a blind force; but nothing proves it. I have seen all too often your foul teeth chatter with rage, and your august face, covered with the moss of the times, blush, like a burning coal, on account of some microscopic futility which men had committed, stop, longer, in front of the signpost of this assumption. Every day, with my hands joined, I will raise the accents of my humble prayer to you, since it is necessary: ??but I beg you, your providence does not think of me; leave me aside, like the worm that crawls under the ground. Know that I would prefer to feed eagerly on the marine plants of unknown and wild islands, which the tropical waves carry in their midst, in their foamy bosom, than to know that you are observing me, and that you carry, in my conscience, your scalpel that sneers. She has just revealed to you the totality of my thoughts, and I hope that your prudence will applaud easily the good sense of which they retain the indelible imprint. Besides these reservations about the kind of relations more or less intimate that I have to keep with you, my mouth is ready, at any hour of the day, to exhale, like an artificial breath, the flood of lies that your gloriole demands sternly from every human, as soon as the dawn rises bluish, seeking light in the folds of satin of twilight, as I seek kindness, excited by the love of good. My years are not numerous, and yet I already feel that goodness is only an assemblage of sonorous syllables; I do not' I found it nowhere. You let your character break through too much; it would be necessary to hide it with more skill. Besides, perhaps I am mistaken and you do it on purpose; for you know better than any other how to conduct yourself. Men, on the other hand, place their glory in imitating you; therefore holy goodness does not recognize its tabernacle in their wild eyes: such a father, a son. Whatever one ought to think of your intelligence, I speak of it only as an impartial critic. I ask nothing better than to have been misled. I do not wish to show you the hatred I bear to you, and that I smolder with love like a beloved girl; for it is better to hide it from your eyes, and only take the appearance of a severe censor in your presence, charged with the control of your unclean acts. You will thus cease all active intercourse with it, you will forget it and you will completely destroy that eager bug that gnaws at your liver. I prefer rather to make you hear words of reverie and sweetness ... Yes, it is you who created the world and all that it contains. You are perfect. No virtue misses you. You are very powerful, everyone knows. May the whole universe strike your everlasting hymn at every hour of time! The birds bless you, taking their rise in the countryside. The stars belong to you ... So be it! "After these beginnings, be surprised to find me as I am! You are very powerful, everyone knows. May the whole universe strike your everlasting hymn at every hour of time! The birds bless you, taking their rise in the countryside. The stars belong to you ... So be it! "After these beginnings, be surprised to find me as I am! You are very powerful, everyone knows. May the whole universe strike your everlasting hymn at every hour of time! The birds bless you, taking their rise in the countryside. The stars belong to you ... So be it! "After these beginnings, be surprised to find me as I am!

I was looking for a soul that resembled me, and I could not find it. I searched every corner of the earth; my perseverance was useless. However, I could not stay alone. It required someone who approved of my character; it was necessary that someone should have the same ideas as myself. It was morning: the sun rose on the horizon in all its magnificence, and now I see a young man emerge, whose presence engendered flowers in his path. He approached me, and, holding out my hand, said, "I have come to you, you who seek me. Let us bless this happy day. "But I," Go away; I did not call you: I do not need your friendship. "It was evening; the night began to spread the darkness of her veil over nature. A beautiful woman, whom I only distinguished, also extended to me her enchanting influence, and looked at me with compassion; yet she dared not speak to me. I said, "Get close to me, that I may make a clear distinction between the features of your face; for the light of the stars is not strong enough to enlighten them at this distance. "Then, with a modest step, and with her eyes lowered, she trampled the grass of the grass on my way. As soon as I saw her, "I see that kindness and justice have resided in your heart: we could not live together. Now you admire my beauty, which has upset more than one; but sooner or later you would repent of having consecrated your love to me; for thou knowest not my soul. Not that I am ever unfaithful to you: the one who gives herself to me with so much abandonment and trust, with so much confidence and confidence, I abandon myself to her; but put it in your head, never to forget it: the wolves and the lambs do not look at one another with gentle eyes. "What, then, did I, who rejected, with so much disgust, what was most beautiful in humanity! what I needed, I would not have known how to say. I was not yet accustomed to rendering myself a rigorous account of the phenomena of my mind, by means of the methods recommended by philosophy. I sat down on a rock near the sea. A ship had just set sail out of it, and an imperceptible spot had just appeared on the horizon, and approached by degrees, pushed by the gust, growing rapidly. The storm was about to begin its attacks, and the sky was already obscuring, a black almost as hideous as the heart of man. The ship, which was a great warship, had thrown down all its anchors, so as not to be swept along the rocks of the coast. The wind whistled furiously from the four cardinal points, and put the sails in lint. The thunderclaps burst forth in the midst of lightning, and could not surpass the sound of the lamentations which were heard on the house without bases, a moving sepulcher. The rolling of these aqueous masses had not succeeded in breaking the chains of the anchors; but their shocks had opened a waterway on the flanks of the ship. Huge breach; for the pumps are not sufficient to throw away the bundles of salt water which, as they foam, fall upon the deck like mountains. The ship in distress fired a cannon - alarm; but, he sinks slowly ... with majesty. He who has not seen a ship sink in the midst of the hurricane, the intermittent lightning, and the deepest darkness, while those in it are overwhelmed with that despair you know, he does not know the accidents of life. Finally, a universal cry of immense pain escapes from the flanks of the ship, while the sea redoubles its formidable attacks. This is the cry that has been made by the abandonment of human forces. Each one wraps himself in the mantle of resignation, and places his lot in the hands of God. One puts up like a flock of sheep. The ship in distress fired warning shots; but, he sinks slowly ... with majesty. They had the pumps played all day long. Unnecessary efforts. Night came, thick, implacable, to put the finishing touch to this graceful spectacle. Everyone says that once in the water, he will not be able to breathe; for as long as he keeps his memory alive, he does not recognize any fish for his ancestor; but he exhorts himself to hold his breath for as long as possible, in order to prolong his life by two or three seconds; this is the vengeful irony he wishes to address to death... The ship in distress fires from the cannon of alarm; but, he sinks slowly ... with majesty. He does not know that the vessel, by sinking, causes a powerful convolution of the waves around themselves; that the muddy mud has mingled with the troubled waters, a force which comes from underneath, counteracts the tempest which wreaks havoc on the top, imprints the element with jerky and nervous movements. Thus, in spite of the reserve of cold blood which he picks up in advance, the future drowned, after a more ample reflection, will have to feel happy, if he prolongs his life, in the whirlpools of the abyss, half an ordinary breath, in order to make good measure. It will therefore be impossible for him to defy death, his supreme vow. The ship in distress fired warning shots; but, he sinks slowly ... with majesty. It is a mistake. He no longer shoots the cannon, he does not sink. The walnut shell has completely engulfed itself. O heaven! how can one live, after experiencing so many pleasures! It had just been given to me, to witness the death agonies of many of my fellow men. Minute per minute, I followed the vicissitudes of their anxieties. Sometimes the bellowing of some old woman, who had become mad with fear, made a prelude on the market. Sometimes the mere laughter of a child in the breasts prevented him from hearing the command of the maneuvers. The ship was too far away to perceive distinctly the groaning which the gust brought me; but I brought it closer by the will, and the optical illusion was complete. Every quarter of an hour, when a gust of wind, stronger than the others, rendering its lugubrious accents through the cry of frightened petrels, dislocated the ship in a longitudinal crack, and increased the complaints of those who were to be offered a holocaust to death, I m ' squeezed the sharp point of an iron into my cheek, and secretly thought: "They suffer more!" I had at least, thus, a term of comparison. From the shore, I apostrophized them, throwing imprecations and threats at them. It seemed to me they had to hear me! It seemed to me that my hatred and my words, crossing the distance, annihilated the physical laws of sound, and came distinctly to their ears, deafened by the roaring of the ocean in wrath! It seemed to me that they must think of me, and exhale their vengeance in impotent rage! From time to time I cast my eyes upon the cities, asleep on dry ground; and seeing that no one suspected that a vessel was about to sink a few miles from the shore, birds of prey, and a pedestal of aquatic giants, with an empty stomach, I regained courage, and hope returned to me: I was sure of their loss! They could not escape! In addition, I had been looking for my rifle twice, so that if some shipwrecked man was tempted to approach the rocks by swimming, to escape an imminent death, a bullet on his shoulder would shatter his arm , and prevented him from accomplishing his purpose. At the furious moment of the storm, I saw, floating on the water, with desperate efforts, an energetic head, with bristling hair. He swallowed liters of water, and plunged into the abyss, tossed about like a cork. But soon he appeared again, his hair dripping; and, fixing his eye on the shore, he seemed to defy death. He was admirable in cold blood. A large, bloody wound, occasioned by some hidden pitfall, scratched his intrepid and noble face. He was not to be more than sixteen years of age; for, scarcely, through the lightning which illuminated the night, the down of the sin was seen on his lip. And now he was only two hundred yards from the cliff; and I stared at him easily. How brave! What an indomitable spirit! As the fixity of his head seemed to mock the fate, while vigorously cracking the wave, the furrows of which opened with difficulty before him! I had decided beforehand. I owed it to myself to keep my promise: last hour had sounded for all, no one was to escape. That is my resolution; nothing would change it ... A dry sound was heard, and the head immediately sank, never to reappear. I did not take as much pleasure in this murder as one might think; and it was precisely because I was satisfied to always kill, that I was doing it henceforth by simple habit, which can not be dispensed with, but which only procures a slight enjoyment. The sense is blunt, hardened. What voluptuousness was there in the death of this human being, when there were more than a hundred of them, who were going to offer themselves to me, in spectacle, in their last struggle against the waves once the ship was submerged? At this death I had not even the attraction of danger; for human justice, lulled by the hurricane of that frightful night, slept in the houses, a few steps from me. Now that the years weigh on my body, I say it with sincerity, as a supreme and solemn truth: I was not as cruel as was subsequently recounted among men; but, sometimes, their wickedness continued to wreak havoc for years on end. Then I knew no bounds to my fury; he took me from cruelty, and I became terrible to him who approached my haggard eyes, if he belonged to my race. If it was a horse or a dog, I let it pass: have you heard what I have just said? Unfortunately, on the night of this tempest, I was in one of these attacks, my reason had gone away (for, ordinarily, I was as cruel, but more prudent); and all that falls into my hands this time must perish: I do not pretend to apologize for my wrongs. The fault, is not all to my fellows. I am only observing what is, while awaiting the last judgment which makes me scratch the neck in advance ... What does the last judgment matter to me? My reason never flies, as I said to deceive you. And when I commit a crime, I know what I'm doing: I did not want to do anything else! Standing on the rock, while the hurricane was lashing my hair and my cloak, I watched in ecstasy the force of the tempest, striking a ship under a starless sky. I followed, in a triumphant attitude, all the vicissitudes of this drama, from the moment when the vessel threw its anchors to the moment when it was engulfed, a fatal habit which carried in the guts of the sea those who clothed them like a cloak. But' instantly approached, where I was going myself, to mingle as an actor with these scenes of nature upset. When the place where the ship had supported the combat clearly showed that it had been spent the rest of his days on the ground floor of the sea, then those who had been carried away with the waves reappeared partly on the surface . They took each other, two by two, three by three; it was the means of not saving their lives; for their movements became embarrassed, and they flowed down like pierced pitchers. What is this army of sea monsters that cleaves the waves with rapidity? They are six; their fins are vigorous, and open a passage through the waves raised. Of all these human beings, who move the four members in this continent, the sharks soon make but one omelette without eggs, and divide it according to the law of the strongest. The blood mingles with the waters, and the waters mingle with the blood. Their ferocious eyes illuminate the scene of the carnage enough. But what is the tumult of the waters over there on the horizon? It looks like a tornado approaching. What strokes of oar! I see what it is. An enormous female shark comes to take part in duck liver pâté, and eat cold boiled. She is furious; for she comes hungry. A struggle commences between her and the sharks, to dispute the few palpitating members who float here and there, without saying anything, on the surface of the red cream. To the right, to the left, she throws toothstrokes that generate fatal wounds. But three live sharks, and she is obliged to turn in all directions, to thwart their maneuvers. With a growing emotion, unknown until then, the spectator, placed on the shore, follows this naval battle of a new kind. He has his eyes fixed on this brave female shark, with such strong teeth. He does not hesitate any more, he shoulder his gun, and, with his usual address, he lodges his second bullet in the hearing of one of the sharks, at the moment when he appeared above a wave. There remain two sharks that bear only a greater fury. From the top of the rock, the man with brackish saliva, throws himself into the sea, and swims towards the pleasantly colored carpet, holding in his hand that steel knife which never abandons it. Now every shark has to deal with an enemy. It ' advances towards his tired adversary, and, taking his time, puts his sharp blade into his belly. The mobile citadel easily gets rid of the last opponent ... The swimmer and the female shark are saved by him. They looked at each other for a few minutes, and each was astonished to find so much ferocity in the other's eyes. They go round in circles while swimming, do not lose sight of each other, and say to themselves: "I have been mistaken so far; there is one who is more wicked. "Then, by mutual agreement, between two waters, they glided towards each other, with mutual admiration, the female shark spreading the water of her fins, Maldoror beating the wave with his arms: and held their breath, in a deep veneration, each eager to contemplate, for the first time, his living portrait. Arrived at a distance of three yards, without making any effort, they suddenly fell one against the other, like two magnets, and embraced each other with dignity and gratitude, in an embrace as tender as that of a brother or sister. 'a sister. Carnal desires followed closely this demonstration of friendship. Two nervous thighs clung closely to the viscous skin of the monster, like two leeches; and the arms and fins interlaced around the body of the beloved object which they surrounded with love, whilst their throats and breasts soon made but a glaucous mass to the exhalations of goemon; in the midst of the storm which continued to rage; by lightning; having for hymeneal bed the frothy wave,

The Seine carries a human body. In these circumstances, it takes solemn steps. The swollen corpse is supported on the waters; it disappears beneath the arch of a bridge; but, farther on, it is seen to appear again, turning slowly upon itself like a mill wheel, and sinking at intervals. A boatmaster, with the help of a pole, hangs him on the way, and brings him back to the ground. Before transporting the body to the Morgue, he was left for some time on the bank, to bring him back to life. The compact crowd gathers around the body. Those who can not see, because they are behind, push, as far as they can, those who are in front. Everyone said to himself: "It is not I who would have drowned me." One complains of the young man who committed suicide; we admire him; but it is not imitated. And yet he found it very natural to kill himself, judging nothing on earth, capable of satisfying him, and aspiring higher. Her face is distinguished, and her clothes are rich. Is he still seventeen? It's young to die! The paralyzed crowd continues to cast his motionless eyes upon him. It is night. Each one retires silently. No one dares to overturn the drowned, to make him reject the water that fills his body. They were afraid to pass for sensible, and none moved, entrenched in the collar of his shirt. One of them goes off, whistling an absurd tyrolean. the other snaps his fingers like castanets ... Harassed by his dark thought, Maldoror, on his horse, passes near this place, with the speed of lightning. He sees the drowned man; It's enough. immediately, he stopped his steed, and got off the stirrup. He raises the young man without disgust, and makes him reject the water abundantly. At the thought that this inert body could revive under his hand, he felt his heart leap, under this excellent impression, and redoubled his courage. Vain efforts! Vain efforts, I said, and that's true. The corpse remains inert, and is allowed to turn in all directions. He rubs the temples; he rubs this limb, that member: he blows for an hour, in the mouth, pressing his lips against the lips of the unknown. At last he felt a slight flapping under his hand, applied against his chest. The drowned lives! At this supreme moment, it was possible to notice that several wrinkles disappeared from the forehead of the cavalier, and rejuvenated him by ten years. But unfortunately! the wrinkles will return, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps as soon as he has departed from the banks of the Seine. Meanwhile, the drowned man opens his eyes, and, with a pallid smile, thanks his benefactor; but it is still weak, and can not make any movement. Save life to someone, how beautiful! And how this action redeems faults! The man with the bronze lips, who had hitherto been forced to tear him from death, looked more attentively at the young man, and his features did not seem to him unknown. It is said that there is not much difference between the asphyxia, with the blond hair, and Holzer. Do you see how they embrace each other effusively? Anything! The man with the apple of jasper wants to retain the appearance of a severe role. Without saying a word, he takes his friend, whom he puts on the rump, at a gallop. O thou Holzer, who thought thee so rational and so strong, didst thou not see, by your very example, how difficult it is in a fit of despair to preserve the coolness with which thou boastest? I hope you will not cause me such a grief, and I, from my side, have promised you never to attempt my life.

There are hours in life when the man, with his hairy hair, throws a staring eye on the green membranes of space; for he seemed to hear before him the ironic hooting of a phantom. He staggered and bent his head: what he had heard was the voice of conscience. Then he rushes out of the house, with the speed of a madman, takes the first direction which is offered to his stupor, and devours the rough plains of the country. But the yellow ghost does not lose sight of it, and pursues it with equal speed. Sometimes, on a stormy night, while legions of winged octopus, resembling at a distance the crows, hover above the clouds, steering from a steep oar to the cities of humans, with the mission of the warn to change your conduct, the pebble, with its dark eye, sees two beings pass by the light of lightning, one behind the other; and wiping away a furtive tear of compassion, which flows from his frozen eyelid, he exclaims: "Certainly he deserves it; and it is only right. "After saying this, he resumes his fierce attitude, and continues to look, with a nervous trembling, on the hunting of man, and the labia majora of the shadow vagina, where immense tenebrous spermatozoa, which take their rise in the gloomy ether, hide, with the vast display of their bat wings, the whole nature, and the solitary legions of octopuses, become dull at the sight of these dull and inexpressible fulgurations. But, meanwhile, the steeplechase continues between the two indefatigable runners, and the ghost throws torrents of fire through his mouth on the calcined back of the human antelope. If in the accomplishment of this duty he encounters on the way the pity which wishes to bar the passage, he yields with reluctance to his supplications, and leaves man to escape. The ghost slams his tongue, as if to say to himself that he will cease pursuit, and returns to his kennel until further notice. His condemned voice is heard even in the most distant strata of space; and when his terrible howl penetrates the human heart, he would rather have been said to have died for his mother than remorse for his sons. He pushed his head to the shoulders in the earthy complications of a hole; but, the consciousness volatiles this ostrich ruse. The excavation evaporates, a drop of ether; the light appears, with its procession of rays, like a flight of curlew which falls upon the lavenders; and the man finds himself face to face with his eyes open and pale. I have seen him go towards the sea, climb a jagged promontory, and beat by the eyebrow of foam; and, like an arrow, rushing into the waves. Here is the miracle: the corpse reappeared the next day on the surface of the ocean, which brought back to the shore this wreck of flesh. The man emerged from the mold that his body had dug in the sand, expressed the water of his wet hair, and resumed, with his forehead silent and bending, the path of life. Conscience severely judges our most secret thoughts and actions, and is not mistaken. As she is often powerless to prevent evil, she keeps tracking down the man like a fox, especially during the darkness. Avenging eyes, which ignorant science callsmeteors , spread a livid flame, pass by rolling on themselves, and articulate words of mystery ... that he understands! Then his bedside is crushed by the shaking of his body, overwhelmed by the weight of insomnia, and he hears the sinister respiration of the vague rumors of the night. The angel of sleep himself, mortally wounded on the brow of an unknown stone, abandons his task, and ascends to heaven. Well, I present myself to defend man, this time; I, the contemptuous of all virtues; I, the one whom the Creator has not forgotten since the glorious day when, reversing from their base the annals of heaven, where, by some infamous fiddling, was recorded his power and hisEternity, I applied my four hundred suckers to the underside of his armpit and made him utter terrible cries. They changed into vipers, coming out through his mouth, and went to hide in the bushes, the ruined walls , watching the day, watching the night. These cries, having become creeping, and endowed with innumerable rings, with a small, flattened head, perfidious eyes, have sworn to stand still before human innocence; and when she walks in the tangles of the maquis, or on the back of the embankments, or on the sands of the dunes, she does not take long to change her mind. If, however, there is still time; for sometimes the man sees the poison intruding into the veins of his leg by an almost imperceptible bite before he has had time to retrace his steps, and to reach the open sea. It is thus that the Creator, preserving an admirable coolness, even in the most atrocious sufferings, knows how to withdraw germs harmful to the inhabitants of the earth from their own bosom. What was not his astonishment when he saw Maldoror, turned into an octopus, move his eight monstrous legs against his body, each of which, solid strap, could easily have embraced the circumference of a planet! Caught off guard, he struggled for a few moments against this viscous embrace, which was getting tighter and tighter ... I feared some bad move on his part; after having abundantly nourished myself with the globules of this sacred blood, I suddenly detached myself from its majestic body, and hid myself in a cavern which, since then, remained my abode. After unsuccessful searches, to find there. That's a long time ago; but I believe that now he knows where my dwelling is; he refrains from returning; we both live as two neighboring monarchs, who know their respective strengths, can not conquer each other, and are tired of the useless battles of the past. He fears me, and I fear him; every one, without being defeated, has experienced the rude blows of his adversary, and we remain there. However, I am ready to start the fight again, whenever he wants. But let him not wait some time favorable to his hidden designs. I will always be on my guard, keeping an eye on him. Let him not send the conscience and his tortures to the earth. I have taught men the weapons with which to fight with advantage. They are not yet familiar with it; but you know that for me it is like the straw carried by the wind. I do the same. If I were to take advantage of the opportunity presented by these poetic discussions, I should add that I make even more of straw than of conscience; for the straw is useful for the ox that ruminates it, while the consciousness shows only its steel claws. They underwent a painful check on the day when they placed themselves before me. As consciousness had been sent by the Creator, I thought it fitting not to let myself be blocked by her. If she had presented herself with the modesty and humility peculiar to her rank, and she ought never to have abandoned herself, I should have listened to her. I did not like his pride. J ' stretched out a hand, and under my fingers crushed the claws; they fell into dust, under the growing pressure of this mortar of a new kind. I stretched out the other hand and tore his head away. I then chased the woman out of my house with a whip, and I saw her no more. I kept my head in memory of my victory. A head in my hand, with which I was eating my skull, I stood on a foot, like the heron, on the edge of the precipice dug in the sides of the mountain. I was seen descending into the valley, while the skin of my chest was motionless and calm, like the lid of a grave! A head in my hand, with which I gnawed my skull, I swam in the most dangerous gulfs, along the mortal reefs, and plunged lower than the currents, to attend, like a stranger, the fighting of sea monsters; I have slipped away from the shore, to the point of losing my piercing eye; and hideous cramps, with their paralyzing magnetism, prowled around my limbs, which cracked the waves with robust movements, without daring to approach. I was seen safely returning to the beach, while the skin of my chest was motionless and calm, like the lid of a grave! A head in my hand, with which I gnawed my skull, I crossed the ascending steps of a high tower. I reached, with my legs weary, on the vertiginous platform. I looked at the country, the sea; I looked at the sun, the firmament; with the back of the granite which did not recoil, I defied death and divine vengeance by a supreme boo, and hurled myself like a pavement into the mouth of the " space. The men heard the painful and resounding shock which resulted from the meeting of the ground with the head of consciousness, which I had abandoned in my fall. I was seen descending, with the slowness of the bird, carried by an invisible cloud, and picking up my head, to force it to witness a triple crime, which I had to commit the same day, while the skin of my chest was motionless and calm, like the lid of a grave! A head in my hand, with which I was gnawing my head, I went to the spot where the posts which support the guillotine rise. I placed the suave grace of the necks of three young girls under the cleaver. Executioner of the high works, I let go the cord with the apparent experience of a whole life; and the triangular iron falling obliquely, cut three heads that looked at me gently. Then I put mine under the heavy razor, and the executioner prepared the fulfillment of his duty. Three times the cleaver descended again between the grooves with a new vigor; three times my material carcass, especially at the seat of the neck, was moved to its foundations, as when one imagines oneself in a dream to be crushed by a collapsing house. The stupefied people let me pass, to get away from the funeral square; he saw me open with my elbows his undulatory waves, and move me, full of life, advancing in front of me, my head straight, while the skin of my chest was motionless and calm, like the lid of a tomb! I had said that I wanted to defend man this time; but, I fear that my apology is not the " expression of the truth: and, therefore, I prefer to be silent. It is with gratitude that humanity will applaud this measure!

It is time to squeeze the brakes to my inspiration, and stop for a moment on the way, as when looking at a woman's vagina; it is well to examine the career which has been traversed, and then to sprout, the limbs rested, with an impetuous leap. Providing a one-time draft is not easy; and the wings grow very tired, in a high flight, without hope or remorse. No, let us not drive deeper the haggard pack of pickaxes and excavations through the explosive mines of this impious song! The crocodile will not change a word to vomiting out from under his skull. Too bad, if some furtive shadow excited by the praiseworthy aim of avenging humanity, unjustly attacked by me, opens the door of my room surreptitiously, brushing against the wall like the wing of a man, a goëland, and thrust a dagger into the ribs of the looters of heavenly wrecks! As much as the clay dissolves its atoms, this way that of another.

END OF CHANT TWO


CHANT THREE

Let us recall the names of these imaginary beings, the nature of an angel, which my pen, during the second song, drew from a brain, shining with a gleam emanating from themselves. They die as soon as they are born, like those sparks whose eyes can hardly follow the rapid effacement of burnt paper. Leman! ... Lohengrin! Lombano! ... Holzer! ... for a moment you appeared, covered with the insignia of youth, on my delighted horizon; such as diver's bells. You will not get out. It is enough that I have kept your memory; you must give way to other substances, perhaps less beautiful, than the stormy overflow of a love that will resolve not to appease its thirst with the human race. Love hungry, who would devour himself, he sought his nourishment in celestial fictions: creating, in the long run, a pyramid of seraphim, more numerous than the insects that swarm in a drop of water, he will entwine them in an ellipse that he will swirl around him. Meanwhile, the traveler, arrested against the appearance of a cataract, if he raises his face, will see, in the distance, a human being, carried to the cellar of hell by a garland of living camellias! But ... silence! the floating image of the fifth ideal is drawn slowly, like the indecisive recesses of a northern aurora, on the vaporous plane of my intelligence, and more and more assumes a definite consistency ... Mario and I were along the strike. Our horses, with stretched necks, split the membranes of space, and tore sparks from the pebbles of the beach. The breeze, which struck us in the face, rushed into our coats, and made the hair of our twin heads fly backwards. The seagull, by its cries and wing movements, tried in vain to warn us of the possible proximity of the storm, and exclaimed: "Where do they go from this insane gallop?" say nothing; plunged into reverie, we let ourselves be carried away by the wings of this furious race; the fisherman, seeing us pass, fast as the albatross, and thinking he saw, fleeing before him, tried in vain to warn us of the possible proximity of the tempest, and exclaimed: "Where do they go from this insane gallop?" We said nothing; plunged into reverie, we let ourselves be carried away by the wings of this furious race; the fisherman, seeing us pass, fast as the albatross, and thinking he saw, fleeing before him, tried in vain to warn us of the possible proximity of the tempest, and exclaimed: "Where do they go from this insane gallop?" We said nothing; plunged into reverie, we let ourselves be carried away by the wings of this furious race; the fisherman, seeing us pass, fast as the albatross, and thinking he saw, fleeing before him,the two mysterious brothers, as they had been called, because they were always together, hastened to make the sign of the cross, and hid himself, with his paralyzed dog, under some deep rock. The inhabitants of the coast had heard strange things about these two persons, who appeared on the earth, in the midst of the clouds, in great epochs of calamity, when a terrible war threatened to plant its harpoon on the chest of two enemy countries, or that the cholera was about to launch, with its sling, rot and death in whole cities. The oldest plunderers of wrecks frowned gravely, asserting that the two ghosts, each of whom had noticed the vast wingspan of the black wings, during the hurricanes, above the sandbanks and reefs, were the genius of the earth, and the genius of the sea, who wandered their majesty through the air, during the great revolutions of nature, united together by an eternal friendship, whose scarcity and glory gave rise to the astonishment of the undefined cable of the generations. It was said that, flying side by side like two condors of the Andes, they loved to glide, in concentric circles, among the layers of atmosphere which adjoin the sun; that they nourished themselves in these parts of the purest essences of light; but that they could scarcely make up their minds to lower the inclination of their vertical flight towards the frightened orbit in which the delirious human globe spins, inhabited by cruel spirits who massacre each other in the fields where they roar the battle (when they do not perfidiously kill themselves, in secret, in the center of cities, with the dagger of hatred or ambition), and who feed on beings full of life like themselves and placed a few degrees lower in the scale of existences. Or, when they resolved, in order to excite men to repentance by the strophes of their prophecies, to swim towards the sidereal regions where a planet was moving amid the thick exhalations of avarice, pride, imprecation, and laughter, which, like pestilential vapors, emanated from its hideous surface, and seemed as small as a ball, being almost invisible, because of distance, they did not fail to find occasions when they repented bitterly of their benevolence, misunderstood and conspicuous, and went to hide themselves in the depths of the volcanoes, to converse with the perennial fire which bubbles in the vats of the central subterranean, or at the bottom of the sea, in order to rest pleasantly their disillusioned view of the most ferocious monsters of the abyss, appeared models of gentleness in comparison with the bastards of humanity. At nightfall, with its propitious darkness, they rushed from the craters, at the crest of porphyry, underwater currents and left far behind them the rocky chamber pot where the constipated anus consumes human kakatoes , until they could no longer distinguish the suspended silhouette of the foul planet. Then, grieved at their unsuccessful attempt, among the stars who sympathized with their grief and under the eye of God, embraced, the angel of the earth, and the angel of the sea! ... Mario and the galloping man were not ignorant of the vague and superstitious noises which the fishermen of the coast recounted in the vigils, whispering around the hearth, doors and windows closed; while the night-wind, which desires to warm itself, makes its whistles sound round the straw hut, and shakes its frail walls, surrounded by fragments of shell, brought by the dying folds of waves. We were not talking. What say two hearts who love each other? Nothing. But our eyes expressed everything. I warn him to press his cloak more closely round him, and he remarked to me that my horse is too far from his; each one takes as much interest in the life of the other as to his own life; we do not laugh. He tries to smile at me; but I perceive that his face carries the weight of the terrible impressions which are engraved on the reflection, constantly leaning over the sphynxes, which, with an oblique eye, confuse the great anguish of the intelligence of mortals. Seeing his useless maneuvers, he turns away his eyes, bites his earthly brake with the drool of rage, and looks at the horizon, which runs away at our approach. In my turn, I endeavor to remind him of his gilded youth, who asks only to advance into the palaces of pleasures, like a queen; but he remarks that my words are difficult to come out of my emaciated mouth, and that the years of my own spring have passed, sad and icy, like an implacable dream, which wanders on the tables of banquets, and on the beds of satin, where the pale priestess of love sleeps, paid with the mirrors of gold, the bitter voluptuousness of disenchantment, the pestilential wrinkles of old age, the fright of solitude and the torches of sorrow. Seeing my useless maneuvers, I am not surprised not to be able to make him happy; the Almighty appears to me clothed with his instruments of torture, in all the resplendent aureole of his horror; I look away and look at the horizon that runs off when we approach ... Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye ... Mario is younger than me; the humidity of the weather and the salty foam that springs up until we bring the contact of cold on his lips. I said to him: "Take care! ... take care! ... close your lips, one against the other; do you not see the sharp claws of the crack, which furrows your skin with stinging wounds? "He fixed my forehead and replied, with the movements of his tongue:" Yes, I see them, these green claws; but, I will not disturb the natural situation of my mouth to make them flee. Look, if I lie. Since it appears that this is the will of Providence, I want to conform to it. His will could have been better. "And I exclaimed," I admire this noble vengeance. "I wanted to tear my hair; but he defended it with a stern look, and I obeyed him with respect. It was getting late, and the eagle regained its nest, dug in the crevices of the rock. He said to me, "I will lend you my cloak, to protect you from the cold; I do not need it. "I replied, "Woe to you, if you do what you say. I do not want another to suffer in my place, especially you. "He did not answer, because I was right; but I began to console him, because of the too impetuous accent of my words. Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing from the human eye. I raised my head, like the prow of a ship lifted by an enormous wave, and I said to her: "Are you crying? I ask you, King of snow and fog. I do not see tears on your face, as beautiful as the flower of the cactus, and your eyelids are dry like the bed of the torrent; but I can distinguish, in the depths of your eyes, a vat full of blood, where your innocence bit into the neck by a scorpion of the great species. A violent wind falls on the fire which warms the boiler, and spread the dark flames to the outside of your sacred orbit. I approached my hair with your pink brow, and I smelled an odor of scorching, because they were burned. Close your eyes; for otherwise your face, calcined like the lava of the volcano, will fall to the ashes of my hand. "And he, turning towards me, without paying attention to the reins he held in his hand, and contemplating me with tenderness, as he slowly lowered and lifted his lily eyelids, like the ebb and flow of the sea. He was willing to reply to my audacious question, and, as he did, he said, "Pay no attention to me. Just as the vapors of the rivers crawl along the flanks of the hill, and when they reach the summit they rush into the atmosphere, forming clouds; In the same way, your anxiety on my account has grown insensibly, without reason, and form above your imagination the deceptive body of a desolate mirage. I assure you that there is no fire in my eyes, although I feel the same impression as if my skull were plunged into a helmet of burning coals. How can the flesh of my innocence boil in the vat, since I hear only very feeble and confused cries, which for me are nothing but the groans of the wind that passes over our heads? It is impossible for a scorpion to have fixed his residence and his sharp claws at the bottom of my chopped orbit; I believe rather that they are vigorous pincers which crush the optic nerves. However, I agree with you that the blood, which fills the tank, was extracted from my veins by an invisible hangman, during the sleep of the last night. I waited for you long, beloved son of the ocean; and my sleeping arms engaged in a vain struggle with Him who had entered the vestibule of my house. Yes, I feel that my soul is padlocked in the lock of my body and that it can not free itself, to flee far from the shores which the human sea strikes, and to be no longer a witness to the spectacle of the livid pack of misfortunes, pursuing relentlessly through the pits and gulfs of immense dejection the human isards. But I will not complain. I have received life as a wound, and I have forbidden suicide to cure the scar. I want the Creator to contemplate, at every hour of his eternity, the gaping crevasse. C ' is the punishment I inflict on him. Our horses slow down the speed of their brazen feet; their bodies tremble, like the hunter caught by a flock of peccaris. They must not listen to what we say. By dint of attention, their intelligence would grow, and they might perhaps understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates them from other beings of creation seem to be granted to them only at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye. Our horses slow down the speed of their brazen feet; their bodies tremble, like the hunter caught by a flock of peccaris. They must not listen to what we say. By dint of attention, their intelligence would grow, and they might perhaps understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates them from other beings of creation seem to be granted to them only at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye. Our horses slow down the speed of their brazen feet; their bodies tremble, like the hunter caught by a flock of peccaris. They must not listen to what we say. By dint of attention, their intelligence would grow, and they might perhaps understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates them from other beings of creation seem to be granted to them only at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye. like the hunter surprised by a herd of peccaris. They must not listen to what we say. By dint of attention, their intelligence would grow, and they might perhaps understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates them from other beings of creation seem to be granted to them only at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye. like the hunter surprised by a herd of peccaris. They must not listen to what we say. By dint of attention, their intelligence would grow, and they might perhaps understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence which separates them from the other beings of creation seem to be granted them only at the irremediable price of incalculable sufferings? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye. and perhaps they could understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates them from other beings of creation seem to be granted to them only at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye. and perhaps they could understand us. Woe to them; for they would suffer more! Indeed, think only of the marcasers of humanity: does not the degree of intelligence that separates them from other beings of creation seem to be granted to them only at the irremediable price of incalculable suffering? Imitate my example, and let your spur of silver sink into the flanks of your steed. "Our horses galloped along the shore, as if they were fleeing the human eye.

Here is the mad woman who dances, while she vaguely recalls something. The children pursue her with stones, as if she were a blackbird. She raises a stick and pretends to pursue them, then resumes her race. She left a shoe on the way, and did not notice it. Long legs of spider circulate on his neck; it is nothing but her hair. Her face no longer resembles the human face, and she shouts laughter like the hyena. She sheds shreds of phrases in which, by stitching them, very few would find a clear meaning. His dress, pierced in more than one place, executes jerky movements around his bony legs and full of mud. She went before him, like the leaf of the poplar, carried away, her youth, her illusions and her past happiness, which she sees through the mists of a destroyed intelligence, through the whirlwind of unconscious faculties. It has lost its primitive grace and beauty; his gait is ignoble, and his breath breathes brandy. If men were happy on this earth, then it would be surprising. The madman does not reproach her, she is too proud to complain, and will die, without having revealed her secret to those who are interested in her, but whom she has forbidden to speak to him. The children pursue her with stones, as if she were a blackbird. She dropped a roll of paper from her breast. A stranger picked him up, shut himself up in his house all night and read the manuscript, which contained the following: "After many sterile years, Providence sent me a daughter. For three days I kneeled down in the churches, and never ceased to thank the great name of Him who had at last fulfilled my wishes. I nourished with my own milk the one that was more than my life and that I saw growing rapidly, endowed with all the qualities of the soul and the body. She said to me: "I wish I had a little sister to amuse myself with her; commands the good God to send me one; and, to reward him, I will interlace, for him, a garland of violets, mints, and geraniums. "To answer, I took it out of my breast and kissed it with love. She already knew how to take an interest in animals, and asked me why the swallow was content to shave the human cottages from the wing without daring to return. But I, I put a finger on my mouth, as if to tell him to remain silent on this serious question, the details of which I did not wish to make him understand, in order not to strike his childish imagination by an excessive sensation; and I hastened to divert the conversation from this subject, painful to treat for any being belonging to the race which has extended unjust domination over the other animals of creation. When she spoke to me of the tombs of the cemetery, telling me that the pleasant perfumes of the cypresses and immortals were breathing in this atmosphere, I refrained from contradicting her; but I told him that it was the city of the birds, that there they sang from the dawn to the evening twilight, and that the tombs were their nests, where they slept at night with their families, by lifting the marble. All the cute clothes that covered it, it was I who had sewn them, as well as the laces, with a thousand arabesques, which I reserved for Sunday. In winter, it had its rightful place round the great chimney; for she thought herself a serious person, and in the summer the prairie recognized the gentle pressure of her footsteps, when she ventured, with her silk net, tied at the end of a cane, after the hummingbirds, full of independence, and butterflies, to annoying zigzags. "What do you do, little vagabond, when the soup has been waiting for you for an hour, with the spoon that grows impatient?" But she exclaimed as she jumped on her neck that she would not come back. The next day she escaped again, through the daisies and the resedas; among the rays of the sun and the swirling flight of ephemeral insects; knowing only the prismatic section of life, not yet gall; happy to be bigger than the tit; mocking the warbler, who does not sing so well as the nightingale; slyly pulling the tongue out of the ravenous crow, who looked at her paternally; and graceful as a young cat. I did not long enjoy his presence; the time was approaching, when she had to unexpectedly bid farewell to the enchantments of life, abandoning forever the company of turtledoves, gelinots and verdigris, the babbling of the tulip and anemone, the tips of the marsh grass, the incisive spirit of the frogs, and the freshness of the streams. They told me what had happened; because me, I was not present at the event which resulted in the death of my daughter. If I had been, I would have defended this angel at the price of my blood. "Maldoror passed with his bulldog; he sees a young girl sleeping in the shade of a plane-tree, he takes her first for a rose. It can not be said who rose up in her mind the sooner, or the sight of that child, or the resolution that followed. He undresses quickly, like a man who knows what he is going to do. Naked like a stone, he threw himself on the girl's body, and raised her dress to commit an indecent assault ... in the brightness of the sun! He will not hesitate, go! Let us not insist on this impure action. The mind displeased, he dressed himself hastily, cast a cautious glance on the powdery road, where no one walks, and orders the bulldog to strangle the bloody girl with the movement of her jaws. He indicates to the mountain dog the place where the suffering victim breathes and howls, and retires to the side, not to witness the re-entry of the pointed teeth into the pink veins. The fulfillment of this order could appear severe to the bulldog. He thought he was asked what had already been done, and contented himself with this monstrous muzzle, to violate in his turn the virginity of this delicate child. From his torn belly, the blood flows again along his legs, across the meadow. His groans are joined to the tears of the animal. The young girl presented him with the golden cross which adorned her neck, so that he might spare her; it ' had not dared to present it to the fierce eyes of him who had at first thought of profiting by the weakness of his age. But the dog was not ignorant that if he disobeyed his master, a knife thrown from under a sleeve, would open his bowels abruptly, without warning. Maldoror (as this name is reluctant to pronounce!) Listened to the agonies of pain, and was astonished that the victim had life so hard not to be dead. He approaches the sacrificing altar, and sees the conduct of his bulldog, abandoned to low inclinations, and raising his head above the young girl, as a shipwrecked man raises his over the waves in anger . He kicked her and slit her eye. The bulldog, in anger, fled into the country, dragging after him, during a space of road which is always too long, however short it may be, the body of the girl suspended, which has been cleared only by the jerky movements of the flight; but he feared to attack his master, who would never see him again. The latter draws from his pocket an American penknife, composed of ten or twelve blades, which are used for various purposes. It opens the angular legs of this hydra of steel; and, armed with such a scalpel, seeing that the grass had not yet disappeared under the color of so much blood, was preparing, without palling, to search bravely the vagina of the unfortunate child. From this enlarged hole he successively withdraws the internal organs; the guts, the lungs, the liver, and finally the heart itself, are torn from their foundations and drawn into the light of day, terrible opening. The priest perceives that the girl, a gutted chicken, has died for a long time; he ceases the growing perseverance of his ravages, and leaves the dead body in the shade of the plane tree. They picked up the penknife, abandoned a few paces away. A shepherd, a witness of the crime, whose author had not been discovered, told it only a long time afterwards, when he had assured himself that the criminal had secured the frontiers, and that he had no longer any fear the certain vengeance uttered against him, in case of revelation. I pitied the fool who had committed this crime, which the legislator had not foreseen, and which had no precedent. I pitied him, because it is probable that he had not kept the use of reason, when he handled the dagger with the blade four times triple, plowing from top to bottom the walls of the viscera. I pitied him because, if he was not mad, his shameful behavior must have covered a great hatred against his fellows, so that he might be hurled on the flesh and arteries of a harmless child, who was my daughter . I attended the burial of these human rubble, with a silent resignation; and every day I come to pray on a grave. "At the end of this reading, the unknown can no longer keep his strength and faint. He regains his senses, and burns the manuscript. He had forgotten this remembrance of his youth, habit blunts his memory; and after twenty years of absence he returned to this fatal country. He will not buy a bulldog! He will not converse with the shepherds!

Tremdall touched his hand for the last time, to the one who voluntarily absent himself, always fleeing before him, always the image of the man pursuing him. The wandering Jew is told that if the scepter of the earth belonged to the crocodile race, he would not flee like that. Tremdall, standing on the valley, put a hand in front of his eyes, to concentrate the solar rays, and make his sight more piercing, while the other palpates the breast of space, with the horizontal and motionless arm. Leaning forward, a statue of friendship, he gazes, with eyes as mysterious as the sea, climbing on the slope of the coast, the gaiters of the traveler, aided by his stick. The earth seems to be wanting at his feet, and even if he wanted it, he could not restrain his tears and feelings:

"It is far; I see her silhouette walking on a narrow path. Where is he going, with this heavy step? He does not know it himself. However, I am persuaded that I am not asleep; what is coming, and goes to meet Maldoror? How great, the dragon ... more than an oak tree! It looks as if its whitish wings, tied by strong fastenings, have nerves of steel, so much do they split the air with ease. His body begins with a tiger bust, and ends with a long snake tail. I was not used to seeing these things. What is it on the front? I see written in a symbolic language a word I can not decipher. With one last blow of his wing, he went to the man whose voice I know. He said, "I was waiting for you, and you too. The hour has arrived; here I am. Read, on my forehead, my name written in hieroglyphic signs. "But he had scarcely seen the enemy come, changed into an immense eagle, and prepared for battle, snapping contentedly a curved beak, signifying by this that he himself, by himself, takes charge of eating the posterior part of the dragon. They are tracing circles whose concentricity diminishes, spying on their reciprocal means, before fighting; they do well. The dragon seems to me stronger; I wish he would win the victory over the eagle. I will experience great emotions at this spectacle where part of my being is engaged. A mighty dragon, I will excite you from my cries, if necessary; for it is in the interest of the eagle to be defeated. What are they waiting for? attack? I'm in a deadly trance. Come on, dragon, begin, you, the first, the attack. You just gave him a dry claw: it's not too bad. I assure you that the eagle will have felt it; the wind carries away the beauty of its feathers, stained with blood. Ah! the eagle tears out an eye with his beak, and you have only snatched it from the skin; it was necessary to pay attention to this. Bravo, take your revenge, and break a wing; there is not to say, your teeth tigers are very good. If you could get near the eagle, as it spins in space, thrown down to the countryside! I notice, this eagle inspires you with restraint, even when it falls. He is on the ground, he will not be able to get up. The appearance of all these gaping wounds intoxicated me. Fly on the ground with him, and, with the blows of your snake's tail, complete it, if you can. Courage, beautiful dragon; thrust in your vigorous claws, and let the blood mingle with the blood, to form streams where there is no water. It's easy to say, but not to do. The eagle has just combined a new strategic defense plan, occasioned by the unfortunate chances of this memorable struggle; he is careful. He sat firmly, in an unshakeable position, on the remaining wing, on his two thighs, and on his tail, which had served him before as a rudder. He defies efforts more extraordinary than those which have been opposed to him. Sometimes he turns as fast as the tiger, and does not seem to get tired; sometimes he lies down on his back, with his two strong legs in the air, and, cold-bloodedly, looks ironically at his adversary. It will be necessary at the end of the day that I know who will be the victor; the fight can not go on forever. I think of the consequences that will result! The eagle is terrible, and makes enormous jumps which shake the earth as if it were about to take flight; however, he knows that it is impossible for him. The dragon does not trust it; he believes that at every moment the eagle will attack him by the side where he lacks an eye. Unhappy as I am! That's what happens. How did the dragon get caught in the chest? He may use cunning and strength; I perceive that the eagle, stuck to him by all his limbs, like a leech, pushes his beak more and more, in spite of new wounds, it receives, up to the root of the neck, in the belly of the dragon. One sees only the body. He seems to be at ease; he does not hurry to get out. No doubt he is looking for something, while the dragon, at the head of a tiger, grows bellows which awaken the forests. Here is the eagle, coming out of this cave. Eagle, how awful you are! You're redder than a pool of blood! Though you hold a palpitating heart in your nervous beak, you are so covered with wounds that you can scarcely support yourself on your feathered feet; and that you waver, without loosening the beak, by the side of the dragon who dies in frightful agonies. The victory was difficult; no matter what you have done, you must at least tell the truth. You act according to the rules of reason, by robbing yourself of the form of an eagle, as you move away from the dragon's corpse. So, Maldoror, you were the victor! So you, Maldoror,Hope ! From now on, despair will feed on your purest substance! Now. you go, deliberately, into the career of evil! Although I am, so to speak, blasé on the suffering, the last blow that you took to the dragon did not fail to be felt in me. Judge yourself if I suffer! But you scare me. See, see, in the distance, this man who runs away. On him, excellent earth, the curse has pushed its thick foliage; he is cursed and cursed. Where do you wear your sandals? Where are you going, hesitating like a somnambulist, over a roof? May your perverse destiny be accomplished! Maldoror, farewell! Adieu, until eternity, where we will not meet again! "

It was a spring day. The birds shed their songs in chirping, and the humans, restored to their various duties, bathed in the sanctity of fatigue. Everything worked on his destiny: the trees, the planets, the sharks. Everything, except the Creator! He was lying on the road, his clothes torn. Her lower lip hung down like a sleeping cable; her teeth were not washed, and the dust mingled with the blond waves of her hair. Numbed by a heavy slumber, crushed against the pebbles, his body made unnecessary efforts to get up. His strength had abandoned him, and he lay there, weak as the earthworm, impassible as the bark. Waves of wine filled the ruts, hollowed out by the nervous jerks of his shoulders. The brutalization, with the snout of a pig, covered him with his protective wings, and cast a loving glance at him. His legs, with relaxed muscles, swept the ground like two blind masts. Blood flowed from his nostrils: in his fall his face had struck against a pole ... He was drunk! Horribly drunk! Soak like a bug that chewed three barrels of blood during the night! He filled the echo with incoherent words, which I shall refrain from repeating here; if the supreme drunkard does not respect himself, I must respect men. Did you know that the Creator ... was getting drunk! Pity for this lip, soiled in the cups of the orgy! The hedgehog, who was passing, thrust his spikes into his back, and said, "That, for you. The sun is at half its course: work, lazy, and do not eat the bread of others. Wait a little, and you'll see, if I call the kakatoes, with a hooked beak. "The woodpecker and the owl, who were passing, thrust the whole beak into his belly, and said," That, for you. What are you doing on this earth? Is it to offer this dismal comedy to animals? But neither the mole nor the casoar, nor the flaming will imitate you, I swear to you. "The ass, who was passing, kicked him on the temple, and said," That, for you. What had I done to give you such long ears? There is no cricket that does not despise me. "The toad, as it passed, threw a spray of drool on his forehead, and said," That, for you. If thou hadst not made such an eye to me, and had seen thee in the state in which I behold thee, I would chastely hide the beauty of thy limbs under a rain of ranunculus, myosotis, and camellias , so that no one may see thee. "The lion, who passed by, inclined his royal face, and said:" For my part, I respect him, although his splendor seems to us to be eclipsed for the moment. You who are proud, and are only cowards, since you attacked him when he was asleep, would you be satisfied if, in his place, you bear the insults of the passers-by, you did not spare him? "The man who was passing stopped before the unknown Creator; and, to the applause of the morpion and the viper, laughed for three days on his august face! Woe to man, because of this insult; for he did not respect the enemy, stretched out in the mixture of mud, blood, and wine; defenseless and almost inanimate! ... Then, the sovereign God, finally awakened, by all these petty insults, got up as best he could; staggered, went and sat down on a stone, his arms hanging, like the two testicles of the breast; and cast a vitreous glance, without flame, upon the whole nature which belonged to him. O humans, you are terrible children; but I beseech you, let us spare this great existence, which has not yet finished the filthy liquor, and, having not preserved enough strength to stand upright, has fallen heavily on this rock, where she sat down like a traveler. Pay attention to this beggar who passes by; he saw that the dervish stretched out a hungry arm, and without knowing whom he was giving alms, he threw a piece of bread into that hand that implores mercy. The Creator expressed his gratitude to him by a movement of the head. Oh! you will never know how to keep the reins of the universe constantly becomes a difficult thing! Blood sometimes rises to the head, when one tries to draw a last comet out of nothing, with a new race of spirits. The mind, too much shaken from top to bottom, retires like a vanquished, and may fall, once in life, into the aberrations you have witnessed!

A red lantern, the flag of vice, suspended at the end of a rod, swung its carcass with the whip of the four winds, above a massive and worm-eaten door. A dirty corridor, which smelled like human thighs, looked out onto a courtyard, where they sought their food for cocks and chickens, leaner than their wings. On the wall which served as an enclosure to the courtyard, and situated on the western side, were parsimoniously made various openings, closed by a grilled wicket. The moss covered the main house, which had doubtless been a convent, and was at present serving with the rest of the building as the dwelling place of all these women who showed every day to those who entered, inside their vagina, in exchange for a little gold. I was on a bridge, whose piles plunged into the muddy water of a belt ditch. From its elevated surface, I contemplated in the countryside this construction leaning on its old age and the smallest details of its interior architecture. Sometimes the grating of a wicket raised itself upon grinding, as if by the ascending impulse of a hand which violated the nature of the iron; a man presented his head to the half-open opening, advanced his shoulders, on which fell the scaly plaster, and, in this laborious extraction, followed his body covered with cobwebs. Putting his hands, as well as a crown, upon the filth of all sorts which pressed the ground with their weight, while he had still the leg engaged in the twists of the grating, he resumed his natural posture, dipped his hands in a lame tub, the soap-water of which had seen rise and fall, entire generations, and then moved away as quickly as possible from these faubourgian alleys, to go breathe clean air towards the center of the city. When the client had gone out, a woman, quite naked, went out in the same manner, and went towards the same tub. Then the cocks and hens ran in crowds from the various points of the court-yard, attracted by the seminal odor, throwing it down on the ground, in spite of its vigorous efforts, stamped the surface of its body like a dung, and shredded with beaks , until he came out of the blood, the flaccid lips of his swollen vagina. The chickens and the cocks, with their full throat, returned to scrape the grass from the yard; the woman, now clean, rose, trembling, covered with wounds, as when awakened after a nightmare. She dropped the cloth she had brought to wipe her legs; no longer needing the common tub, she returned to her lair, as she had come out, to wait for another practice. At this sight, I, too, wanted to penetrate into this house! I went down from the bridge when I saw the inscription in Hebrew letters on the entablature of a pillar: "You who pass over this bridge do not go." Crime abides there with vice; one day his friends waited in vain for a young man who had crossed the fatal gate. "Curiosity prevailed over fear; after a few moments, arrived in front of a wicket, the gates of which had solid bars, which closely crossed each other. I wanted to look inside, through this thick sieve. At first I could not see; but I soon distinguished the objects which were in the dark room, by the rays of the sun, which diminished its light, and soon disappeared on the horizon. The first and only thing that struck me was a blond stick, composed of cornets, sinking into each other. This stick was moving! He walked into the room! His tremors were so strong that the floor staggered; with its two ends, he made enormous breaches in the wall, and appeared a ram which was thrown against the door of a besieged city. His efforts were useless; the walls were built with cut stone, and when it shocked the wall, I saw it curve into a steel blade and bounce like an elastic ball. So this stick was not made of wood! I noticed, then, that it rolled and unfolded with ease like an eel. Though as high as a man, he did not stand upright. Sometimes he tried it, and pointed to one end, in front of the fence of the wicket. He jumped impetuously, fell to the ground, and could not break the obstacle. I began to look at him more and more closely and saw that it was a hair! After a great struggle, with the matter surrounding him like a prison, he leaned against the bed in that room, the root resting on a carpet and the point leaning against the bedside. After a few moments of silence, during which I heard interspersed sobs, he raised his voice and said, "My master has forgotten me in this room; he does not come to fetch me. He got up from this bed, where I am leaning, he has combed his perfumed hair, and never dreamed that I had fallen to the ground before. However, if he had picked me up, I would not have found this act of simple justice surprising. He leaves me, in this locked room, after having wrapped himself in the arms of a woman. And what a woman! The sheets are still moist with their attracted touch and carry, in their disorder, the imprint of a night spent in love ... "And I wondered who could be his master! And my eye glued back to the grid with more energy! "While all nature was sleeping in chastity, he mated with a degraded woman in lascivious and impure embraces. He has lowered himself so far as to allow his cheeks to be approached with cheeks contemptible by their usual impudence, withered in their sap. He did not blush, but I blushed for him. It is certain that he felt happy to sleep with such a night's wife. The woman, astonished at the majestic appearance of this host, seemed to experience incomparable pleasures, embraced her neck with frenzy. "And I wondered who might be his master! And my eye recoiled at the grating with more energy! "Me, meanwhile, I felt pincers envenomed which grew more numerous, by reason of his unaccustomed ardor for the enjoyment of the flesh, to surround my root with their mortal gall, to absorb, with their suckers, the substance which generates my life. The more they forgot, in their senseless movements, the more I felt my strength diminish. At the moment when the bodily desires reached the climax of rage, I perceived that my root sank to itself like a soldier wounded by a bullet. The torch of life having died out in me, I detached myself from its illustrious head like a dead branch; I fell to the ground, without courage, without strength, without vitality; but with deep pity for him to whom I belonged; but with eternal grief for his voluntary error! "And I wondered who might be his master! And my eye was glued to the grille, "If he had, at least, surrounded by his soul the innocent bosom of a virgin. She would have been more worthy of him and the degradation would have been less. He embraces, with his lips, that forehead covered with mud, on which men have walked with his heel, full of dust! He aspires, with brazen nostrils, the emanations of these two wet armpits! I have seen the membrane of the last shrink, while the nostrils, on their part, refused this infamous breathing. But neither he nor her paid any attention to the solemn warnings of the armpits, to the gloomy and pale repulsion of the nostrils. She raised her arms more, and he, with a stronger push, sank his face into their hollows. I was obliged to be the accomplice of this desecration. J ' was obliged to be the spectator of this unheard-of sway; to witness the forced alloy of these two beings, of which an incommensurable abyss separated the various natures ... "And I wondered who could be his master! And my eye recoiled at the gate with more energy! "When he was satisfied to breathe this woman, he wanted to tear his muscles one by one; but as he was a woman, he pardoned her, and preferred to make a being of her sex suffer. He called in the next cell a young man who had come to this house to spend some moments of carelessness with one of these women, and told him to come and stand at a pace from his eyes. It was a long time ago that I was lying on the floor. Not having the strength to rise on my burning root, I could not see what they did. What I know is, that the young man was scarcely within reach of his hand, that scraps of flesh fell at the foot of the bed, and came to stand beside me. They whispered to me that the claws of my master had detached them from the teenager's shoulders. The latter, after a few hours, during which he had struggled against a greater force, got up from the bed and retired majestically. He was literally flayed from head to foot; he dragged his skin back through the slabs of the room. He said to himself that his character was full of goodness; that he loved to believe his fellows equally; that for this he had acquiesced to the wish of the distinguished foreigner who had called him to him; but that, never, never, he would not have expected to be tortured by an executioner. By such an executioner, he added after a pause. At last he made his way to the wicket, which split pitilessly to the level of the ground, in the presence of this body devoid of epidermis. Without abandoning his skin, which could still serve him, if only as a cloak, he tried to disappear from this cut-throat; once away from the room, I could not see if he had the strength to go back to the exit door. Oh! as the chickens and cocks retreated with respect, in spite of their hunger, from that long trail of blood on the soaked ground! "And I wondered who might be his master! And my eyes recoiled at the gate with more energy! "Then, whoever ought to have thought more of his dignity and justice, stood up painfully, on his tired elbow. Alone, gloomy, disgusted and hideous! He dressed slowly. The nuns who had been buried for centuries in the catacombs of the convent, after having been suddenly awakened by the sounds of that horrible night, which clashed each other in a cell situated above the vaults, , and formed a funeral round about him. While he was searching for the ruins of his former splendor; that he washed his hands with spittle and then wiped them on his hair (it was better to wash them with spittle than not to wash them at all after a whole night spent in vice and crime ), they sang the lamentable prayers for the dead, when some one descended into the grave. Indeed, the young man was not to survive this torture, exercised upon him by a divine hand, and his agonies ended during the chanting of the nuns. "I remembered the inscription of the pillar; I understood what had become of the puberty dreamer whom his friends had been waiting for ever since the moment of his disappearance. And I wondered who might be his master! And my eyes glued back to the grating with more energy! "The walls moved away to let him pass; the nuns, seeing him take flight, in the air, with wings that he had hidden until then in his emerald robe, silently replaced under the lid of the tomb. He has gone to his heavenly abode, leaving me here; this is not fair. The other hair remained on his head; and, I, I lie, in this lugubrious room, on the parquet covered with curdled blood, tags of dried meat; this chamber has become damned since it has been introduced; no one enters it; however, I am locked up there. So it is! I shall no longer see the legions of the angels walking in thick phalanges, nor the stars walking in the gardens of harmony. Well, either ... I can bear my misfortune with resignation. But I will not fail to tell men what happened in this cell. I will give them permission to reject their dignity, as a useless garment, since they have the example of my master; I will advise them to suck the rod of the crime, he entered it; no one enters it; however, I am locked up there. So it is! I shall no longer see the legions of the angels walking in thick phalanges, nor the stars walking in the gardens of harmony. Well, either ... I can bear my misfortune with resignation. But I will not fail to tell men what happened in this cell. I will give them permission to reject their dignity, as a useless garment, since they have the example of my master; I will advise them to suck the rod of the crime, he entered it; no one enters it; however, I am locked up there. So it is! I shall no longer see the legions of the angels walking in thick phalanges, nor the stars walking in the gardens of harmony. Well, either ... I can bear my misfortune with resignation. But I will not fail to tell men what happened in this cell. I will give them permission to reject their dignity, as a useless garment, since they have the example of my master; I will advise them to suck the rod of the crime, I can bear my misfortune with resignation. But I will not fail to tell men what happened in this cell. I will give them permission to reject their dignity, as a useless garment, since they have the example of my master; I will advise them to suck the rod of the crime, I can bear my misfortune with resignation. But I will not fail to tell men what happened in this cell. I will give them permission to reject their dignity, as a useless garment, since they have the example of my master; I will advise them to suck the rod of the crime,anotherhas already done it ... "The hair fell silent ... And I wondered who could be his master! And my eyes glued back to the grating with more energy! ... Immediately thunder broke; a phosphoric gleam penetrated the room. I retreated, in spite of myself, by some instinct of warning; though I was a little further away from the wicket, I heard another voice, but the latter, creeping and sweet, for fear of making myself heard, "Do not make such jumps!" Shut up, shut up, if anyone heard you! I will place you again among the other hair; But first let the sun set on the horizon, so that night may cover your steps. I have not forgotten you. but they would have seen you go out, and I would have been compromised. Oh! if you knew how I have suffered since that moment! Returning to heaven, my archangels surrounded me with curiosity; they did not want to ask me the reason for my absence. They, who had never dared to raise their eyes upon me, were throwing, endeavoring to guess the enigma, with stupefied looks on my dejected face, though they did not perceive the substance of this mystery, and communicated all the thoughts that feared in me some unusual change. They wept silent tears; they vaguely felt that I was no longer the same, became inferior to my identity. They would have liked to know what a fatal resolution had made me cross the borders of heaven, to come and shoot me down on earth, and to taste ephemeral voluptuousness, which they themselves profoundly despise. They noticed on my forehead a drop of sperm, a drop of blood. The first had sprung from the thighs of the courtesan! The second had sprung from the veins of the martyr! Odious stigmata! Unshakable rocks! My archangels have found, hanging from the thickets of space, the flaming debris of my tunic of opal, which floated on the gaping peoples. They have not been able to rebuild it, and my body remains naked before their innocence; the memorable punishment of abandoned virtue. Look at the furrows which have traced a bed on my discolored cheeks: it is the drop of sperm and the drop of blood, which slowly filter along my dry wrinkles. Arrived at the upper lip, they make an immense effort, and penetrate into the sanctuary of my mouth, attracted, like a magnet, by the irresistible throat. They stifle me, these two implacable drops. Me, so far, was believed the Almighty; but no; I must lower my neck before the remorse that shouts: "You are but a wretch!" Do not make such jumps! Shut up, shut up, if anyone heard you! I will place you again among the other hair; but first let the sun set on the horizon, so that night may cover your steps. I have seen Satan, the great enemy, straighten the bony tangles of the framework, above his numbness of larva, and, standing, triumphant, sublime, harangue his troops assembled; as I deserve, deride me. He said that he was greatly surprised that his proud rival, caught in the act of perpetual espionage, might, in fact, be reduced to the point of kissing the robe of human debauchery, by a long journey through the reefs of the ether, and to destroy a member of humanity in suffering. He said that this young man, crushed in the train of my refined tortures, might perhaps have become an intelligence of genius; consoling men on this earth by admirable songs of poetry and courage against the blows of misfortune. He said that the nuns of the convent-lupanar do not find their sleep again; prowling in the courtyard, gesticulating like automatons, crushing the buttercups and lilacs with their feet; but not so much as not to remember the cause which engendered this disease in their brains .... (They are advancing, clothed in their white shroud, they do not speak to each other; hold by the hand. Their hair falls in disorder on their bare shoulders; a bouquet of black flowers is bent over their breast. Nuns, return to your vaults; the night has not yet arrived completely; it is only the twilight of the evening. O hair, you see it yourself; on all sides, I am assailed by the unbridled feeling of my depravity!) He said that the Creator, who boasts of being the Providence of all that exists, has behaved with great lightness, not to more, by offering such a spectacle to the starry worlds; for he clearly affirmed the design he had of going to relate in the orbicular planets how I maintain, by my own example, virtue and goodness in the vassitude of my kingdoms. He said that the great esteem he had for so noble an enemy, was thrown off his imagination, and that he preferred to lay his hand on the bosom of a young girl, though it was an execrable act of wickedness, to spit on my face, covered with three layers of blood and mixed sperm, so as not to dirty his slobbery sputum. He said that he rightly thought himself superior to me, not by vice, but by virtue and modesty; not by crime but by justice. He said that I must be tied to a hurdle, because of my innumerable faults; to burn me in a fiery fire, and throw myself into the sea, if the sea would receive me. That, since I boasted of being just, I, who had condemned him to eternal punishment for a slight revolt which had no serious consequences, I ought therefore to do severe justice to myself, and to judge impartially my conscience, charged with iniquities. Do not make such jumps! Shut up, shut up, if anyone heard you! I will place you again among the other hair; but first let the sun set on the horizon, so that night may cover your steps. "He stopped for a moment; although I did not see him, I understood, by this necessary halt, that the swell of emotion raised his chest, as a cyclone giratory raises a family of whales. Divine breast, soiled, one day, by the bitter contact of the nipples of a woman without shame! A royal soul, delivered, in a moment of forgetfulness, to the crab of debauchery, to the octopus of weakness of character, to the shark of individual abjection, to the boa of absent morality, and the monstrous snail of idiocy! The hair and his master embraced each other closely, like two friends who saw each other after a long absence. The Creator continued, accused re-appearing before his own tribunal: "And men, what will they think of me, of which they held such a high opinion, when they learn the mistakes of my conduct, the hesitant march of my sandal in labyrinths and the direction of my dark path through the stagnant waters and the moist reeds of the pool, where, covered with mists, blues and roars the crime, with its dark paw! I perceive that, I must work hard at my rehabilitation in the future, in order to regain their esteem. I am the Great All, and yet on one side I remain inferior to men, created with a little sand! Tell them a bold lie, and tell them that I never came out of heaven, constantly shut up, with the cares of the throne, between the marbles, the statues, and the mosaics of my palaces. I have presented myself before the celestial sons of humanity; I said to them, "Cast out the evil of your cottages, and let the mantle of good come into the hearth. He who will lay his hand on one of his fellows, by making him mortally wounded, with a homicidal iron, that he does not hope for the effects of my mercy, and that he fears the scales of justice. He will hide his sadness in the woods; but the rustling of the leaves, through the clearings, will sing in his ears the ballad of remorse; and he shall flee from these places, stung at the hip by the bush, the holly and the blue thistle, his rapid footsteps intertwined by the suppleness of the creepers and the bites of the scorpions. He will go to the pebbles of the beach; but the rising tide, with its spray and its dangerous approach, will tell him that they are not ignorant of its past; and it will precipitate its blind course towards the coronation of the cliff, while the strident winds of equinox, sinking into the natural caves of the gulf and the quarries practiced beneath the walls of the resounding rocks, will bellow like the immense herds of buffaloes of the pampas. The lighthouses of the coast will pursue it, as far as the northern limits, with their sarcastic reflections, and the crazy fires of the maremma, simple fumes in their fantastic dances, will make the hair of its pores shiver, iris of his eyes. Let modesty be pleased in your huts, and be safe in the shade of your fields. This is how your sons will become beautiful, and bow before their parents with gratitude; if not, sickly, and stunted like the parchment of libraries, they will advance rapidly, led by revolt, against the day of their birth and the clitoris of their impure mother. "How will men want to obey these laws severe, if the legislator himself refuses to submit to it? ... And my shame is immense as eternity! "I heard the hair that forgave him, with humility, his sequestration, since his master had acted prudently, and not by levity; and the pale last ray of sunlight which lit up my eyelids retreated from the ravines of the mountain. Turned towards him, I saw him retreat as well as a shroud ... Do not make such jumps! Shut up, shut up, if anyone heard you! He will put you back among the other hair. And now that the sun is lying on the horizon, cynical old man and gentle hair, crawl both towards the distance of the lupanar, while the night, spreading its shadow on the convent, covers the lengthening of your not stealthy in the plain ... Then, the louse, suddenly emerging from behind a promontory, said to me, clutching his claws: "What do you think of that?" But I did not want to reply. I retired, and arrived on deck. I effaced the primordial inscription, and replaced it with it: "It is painful to keep such a secret in his heart as a dagger; but, I swear never to reveal what I witnessed when I penetrated for the first time into this terrible dungeon. "I threw over the parapet the penknife which had been used to engrave the letters; and making some rapid reflections on the character of the Creator in childhood, which, alas, for a long time, to make mankind suffer (eternity is long), either by the cruelties exercised, or by the ignoble spectacle of the chancres occasioned by a great vice, I closed my eyes like a drunken man, the thought of having such a being as an enemy, and I regained my sadness through the mazes of the streets. making some rapid reflections on the character of the Creator in childhood, which, alas, for a long time, to make mankind suffer (eternity is long), either by the cruelties exercised, or by the ignoble spectacle of the chancres occasioned by a great vice, I closed my eyes like a drunken man, the thought of having such a being as an enemy, and I regained my sadness through the mazes of the streets. making some rapid reflections on the character of the Creator in childhood, which, alas, for a long time, to make mankind suffer (eternity is long), either by the cruelties exercised, or by the ignoble spectacle of the chancres occasioned by a great vice, I closed my eyes like a drunken man, the thought of having such a being as an enemy, and I regained my sadness through the mazes of the streets.

END OF CHANT THREE


CHANT FOUR

It is a man or a stone or a tree that will begin the fourth song. When the foot slips on a frog, one senses a sensation of disgust; but when the human body is scarcely touched with the hand, the skin of the fingers cracks like the scales of a block of mica which is broken with a hammer; and just as the heart of a shark, who has been dead for an hour, is still panting on deck with a tenacious vitality, so that our entrails stir from top to bottom long after the touch. So much man inspires horror to his own like! Perhaps, when I advance this, I am mistaken; but: maybe that also I say true. I know, I conceive a disease more terrible than the eyes swollen by long meditations on the strange character of man; but, I'm looking for it again ... and I could not find it! I do not think myself less intelligent than another, and yet who would dare to affirm that I succeeded in my investigations? What a lie would come from his mouth! The ancient temple of Denderah is located an hour and a half from the left bank of the Nile. Today, countless phalanges of wasps have seized the channels and cornices. They float around the columns, like the thick waves of black hair. Only inhabitants of the portico cold, they keep the entrance of the vestibules, as a hereditary right. I compare the buzzing of their metallic wings, with the incessant shock of ice, precipitated against each other, during the break-up of the polar seas. But, if I consider the conduct of him to whom Providence gave the throne on this earth, the three wings of my grief utter a greater murmur! When a comet at night appears suddenly in an area of ??the sky, after eighty years of absence, it shows the terrestrial inhabitants and the crickets its shining and vaporous tail. No doubt she is not aware of this long journey; it is not so with me: leaning on the bedside of my bed, while the indentations of a barren and dreary horizon rise in force on the bottom of my soul, I absorb myself in the dreams of the compassion and I blush for the man! Cut off in two by the wind, the sailor, having made his night-shift, hastened to return to his hammock. Why is this consolation not offered to me? The the idea that I have fallen voluntarily, as low as my fellow men, and that I have the right less than another to make complaints about our fate, which remains chained to the hardened crust of a planet, essence of our perverse soul, penetrates me like a forge nail. There have been explosions of fiery fire destroying whole families; but they knew the agony for a short time, because death was almost sudden, in the midst of rubbish and detrimental gases: I ... I always exist like basalt! In the midst, as in the beginning of life, the angels are alike to themselves: has not I long ago resembled myself? The man and I, shut up within the limits of our intelligence, as often a lake in a belt of coral islands, to unite our respective forces to defend ourselves against chance and misfortune, we depart, with the trembling of hatred, by taking two opposite roads, as if we had reciprocally injured ourselves with the point of a dagger! It would seem that the one understands the contempt he inspires in the other; driven by the motive of a relative dignity, we hasten not to mislead our adversary; each one remains on his side and is not unaware that the peace proclaimed would be impossible to preserve. Well, be it! that my war against man is eternal, since each recognizes in the other his own degradation ... since both are mortal enemies. Whether I must win a disastrous victory or succumb, the battle will be beautiful: I, alone, against humanity. I will not use a " weapons built with wood or iron; I will push back the layers of minerals extracted from the earth: the powerful and seraphic sonority of the harp will become, under my fingers, a formidable talisman. In more than one ambush, the man, that sublime monkey, has already pierced my chest with his porphyry lance: a soldier does not show his wounds, however glorious they may be. This terrible war will sow sorrow in both parties: two friends who stubbornly seek to destroy themselves, what a drama! a soldier does not show his wounds, however glorious they may be. This terrible war will sow sorrow in both parties: two friends who obstinately seek to destroy themselves, what a drama! a soldier does not show his wounds, however glorious they may be. This terrible war will sow sorrow in both parties: two friends who stubbornly seek to destroy themselves, what a drama!

Two pillars, which it was not difficult and still less possible to take for baobabs, were visible in the valley, larger than two pins. Indeed, it was two enormous towers. And although two baobabs, at first glance, do not resemble two pins, or even two towers, however, by skillfully employing the strings of prudence, one can affirm, without fear of being wrong (for, if this affirmation was accompanied by a single particle of fear, it would no longer be an affirmation, although the same name expresses these two phenomena of the soul, which exhibit characters sufficiently distinct not to be slightly confounded) than a baobab does not differ so much from a pillar, that the comparison is defended between these architectural forms ... or geometric ... or the " one or the other ... or neither ... or rather elevated and massive forms. I have just found, I do not pretend to say the contrary, the epithets proper to the nouns pillar and baobab: that it is well known that it is not, without a joy mingled with pride, make a remark to those who, having raised their eyelids, have taken the most commendable resolution to go through these pages, while the candle burns, if it is the night, while the sun is lighting, if it is daylight . And even if a superior power would order us, in the most clearly defined terms, to reject in the abyss of chaos the judicious comparison that each one could certainly have enjoyed with impunity, even then, and especially then, we do not lose sight of this principal axiom, the habits contracted by the years, the books, the contact of his fellow-men, and the inherent character of each which develops itself in rapid efflorescence, would impose on the human mind the irreparable stigma of recidivism in employment criminal (by temporarily and spontaneously placing himself from the point of view of superior power) of a figure of rhetoric which many despise but which many incense. If the reader finds this sentence too long, accept my apologies; but let him not expect me to be base. I can confess my faults; but not to make them more serious by my cowardice. My reasonings will sometimes shock the bells of madness, and the serious appearance of what is, in short, only grotesque (although, after certain philosophers, it is rather difficult to distinguish the buffoon from the melancholy, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy); however, it is permissible for each to kill flies and even rhinoceros, in order to rest from time to time from too steep a work. To kill flies, this is the most expeditious way, though it is not the best: they are crushed between the first two fingers of the hand. Most writers who have dealt with this subject thoroughly have calculated, with much probability, that it is preferable in many cases to cut off their heads. If any one reproaches me with speaking of pins, as of a radically frivolous subject, which he observes without prejudice, that the greatest effects have often been produced by the smallest causes. And, to avoid moving further from the frame of this paper, do we not see that the laborious piece of literature which I am to compose from the beginning of this stanza would perhaps be less appreciated if it took its point of support in a thorny question of chemistry or internal pathology? Besides, all tastes are in nature; and when in the beginning I compared the pillars to the pins with so much accuracy (I certainly did not think anyone would come to blame me one day), I based myself on the laws of optics, which have established that the farther the visual ray is from an object, the more the image is reflected in the retina. since the beginning of this stanza, would perhaps be less appreciated if it assumed its point of support in a thorny question of chemistry or internal pathology? Besides, all tastes are in nature; and when in the beginning I compared the pillars to the pins with so much accuracy (I certainly did not think anyone would ever come to blame me for it), I based myself on the laws of optics, which have established that the farther the visual ray is from an object, the more the image is reflected in the retina. since the beginning of this stanza, would perhaps be less appreciated if it assumed its point of support in a thorny question of chemistry or internal pathology? Besides, all tastes are in nature; and when in the beginning I compared the pillars to the pins with so much accuracy (I certainly did not think anyone would ever come to blame me for it), I based myself on the laws of optics, which have established that the farther the visual ray is from an object, the more the image is reflected in the retina.

It is thus that what the inclination of our mind to the farce takes for a miserable wit, is, in most cases, in the author's thought only an important truth, proclaimed with majesty! Oh! that foolish philosopher who burst out laughing, seeing an ass eat a fig! I am not inventing anything. The ancient books have narrated, with the greatest detail, this voluntary and shameful despoiling of the human nobility. I do not know how to laugh. I have never been able to laugh, though several times I have tried to do it. It's very difficult to learn to laugh. Or, rather, I believe that a feeling of repugnance to this monstrosity forms an essential mark of my character. Well, I witnessed something stronger: I saw a fig eat a donkey! And however, I did not laugh; frankly, no buccal part stirred. The need to weep so deeply that my eyes let fall a tear. "Nature! nature! "I cried, sobbing," the hawk tears the sparrow, the fig eats the donkey, and the tapeworm devours the man! "Without taking the resolution to go further, I ask myself whether I am" talked about how we kill flies. Yes, is not it? It is none the less true that I had not spoken of the destruction of the rhinoceros! If some friends pretended otherwise, I would not listen to them, and I would remember that praise and flattery are two great stumbling blocks. However, in order to satisfy my conscience as much as possible, I should be obliged to remark that this dissertation on the rhinoceros would lead me beyond the limits of patience and composure, and, on the other hand, would probably discourage the generations present. Have not talked about the rhinoceros after the fly! At least, as a passable excuse, I should have mentioned with promptitude (and I have not done so) this unpremeditated omission, which will not astonish those who have thoroughly studied the real and inexplicable contradictions which inhabit the lobes of the human brain. Nothing is unworthy for a great and simple intelligence; the slightest phenomenon of nature, if there is mystery in him, will become, for the sage, inexhaustible matter for reflection. However, one sees a donkey eating a fig or a fig eat a donkey (these two circumstances do not occur often, unless it is in poetry), be certain that after thinking two or three minutes, to know what to do , he will abandon the path of virtue and begin to laugh like a cock! Again, is it not exactly proved that the cocks expressly open their beaks to imitate the man and make a tormented grimace. I call grimace in birds what bears the same name in humanity! The cock does not come out of its nature, less by inability than by pride. Teach them to read, they revolt. It is not a parrot who would thus be ecstasy at his weakness, ignorant or unpardonable! Oh! degrading degradation! as one resembles a goat when one laughs! The calm of the forehead has disappeared to make way for two enormous eyes of fish which (is not it deplorable?) ... which ... begin to shine like lighthouses! Often it will happen to me, with solemnity, to utter the most clown propositions, I do not think that it becomes a peremptorily sufficient motive to enlarge the mouth! I can not help laughing, you will reply; I accept this absurd explanation, but then, let it be a melancholy laugh. Laugh, but cry at the same time. If you can not cry through your eyes, cry through your mouth. Is it still impossible, urinate; but I warn that any liquid here is necessary, in order to alleviate the dryness of the laughter in its flanks, with the features slit in the back. As for me, I will not be disconcerted by the comical giggles and the original bellowings of those who always find something to say in a character that does not resemble theirs because it is one of the innumerable intellectual modifications that God, a primordial type, created to govern the bony frameworks. Up to our times, poetry made a false road; rising to heaven or crawling to the ground, it has misunderstood the principles of its existence, and has been, not without reason, constantly flouted by honest people. She was not modest ... the most beautiful quality that must exist in an imperfect being! I want to show my qualities; but I am not hypocritical enough to hide my vices! Laughter, evil, pride, madness, will appear, in turn, between sensibility and the love of justice, and serve as an example to human stupefaction; everyone will recognize himself, not as he should be, but as he is. And, perhaps, that simple ideal, conceived by my imagination, will surpass, however, all that poetry has hitherto found to be more grandiose and more sacred. For if I leave my vices to perspire in these pages, one will only believe better the virtues which I make there shine, and whose aureole I will place so high that the greatest geniuses of the future will bear witness to me sincere gratitude. Hence, hypocrisy will be expelled from my dwelling. There will be, in my songs, an imposing proof of power, to despise thus received opinions. He sings for himself alone, and not for his fellows. He does not place the measure of his inspiration in the human balance. Free as the tempest, it came to fail, one day, on the indomitable beaches of his terrible will! He fears nothing, except himself! In his supernatural struggles, he will attack the man and the Creator with advantage, as when the swordfish sinks his sword into the belly of the whale: let him be cursed by his children and by my gaunt hand, the one who persists not to understand the implacable kangaroos of laughter and the audacious lice of caricature! ... Two enormous towers were visible in the valley; I said at the beginning. By multiplying them by two, the product was four ... but I did not quite see the necessity of this arithmetic operation. I continued my journey, with fever in my face, "No ... no ... I can not distinguish very clearly the necessity of this operation of arithmetic!" I had heard cracks in chains, and painful groans. Let no one find it possible, when he passes through this place, to multiply the turns by two, so that the product is four! Some suspect that I love humanity as if I were his own mother, and that I would have carried it, nine months, in my perfumed flanks; that is why I no longer return to the valley where the two units of the multiplicand rise! to multiply the turns by two, so that the product is four! Some suspect that I love humanity as if I were his own mother, and that I would have carried it, nine months, in my perfumed flanks; that is why I no longer return to the valley where the two units of the multiplicand rise! to multiply the turns by two, so that the product is four! Some suspect that I love humanity as if I were his own mother, and that I would have carried it, nine months, in my perfumed flanks; that is why I no longer return to the valley where the two units of the multiplicand rise!

A gallows was raised on the ground; at a distance of one meter from the latter, was suspended by the hair a man, whose arms were tied behind. His legs had been left free, to increase his tortures, and make him desire anything more contrary to the embrace of his arms. The skin of the forehead was so tense by the weight of the hanging that his face, condemned by the circumstance to the absence of natural expression, resembled the stony concretion of a stalagtite. For three days he had suffered this torture. He exclaimed, "Who will untie my arms?" who will untie my hair? I dislocate myself in movements which merely separate the root of my hair from my head; thirst and hunger are not the main causes that prevent me from sleeping. It is impossible for my existence to push its prolongation beyond the limits of an hour. Someone to open my throat, with a sharp pebble! "Each word was preceded, followed by intense screams. I rushed from the bush behind which I was sheltered, and went to the puppet or piece of bacon attached to the ceiling. But, on the opposite side, two drunken women danced. One of them held a sack, and two whips with lead ropes, the other a barrel full of tar and two brushes. The graying hair of the oldest was floating in the wind, like the shreds of a torn veil, and the ankles of the other slammed between them, like the tails of a tuna on the poop of a ship. Their eyes shone with a flame so black and so strong, that I did not at first believe that these two women belonged to my species. They laughed with so selfish aplomb, and their features inspired so much repugnance, that I did not for a moment doubt that I had before my eyes the two most hideous specimens of the human race. I retreated behind the bush, and I stood still, like the acantophorus serraticornis, which only shows the head outside its nest. They approached with the speed of the tide; applying the ear to the ground, the sound, distinctly perceived, brought me the lyrical shake of their march. When the two orang-outang females arrived under the gallows, they sniffed the air for a few seconds; they showed, by their absurd gestures, the truly remarkable quantity of amazement which resulted from their experience, when they perceived that nothing was changed in these places: the end of death, conformable to their wishes, had not occurred. They had not deigned to raise their heads to see if the mortadella was still in the same place. One said, "Is it possible that you are still breathing?" You have a hard life, my beloved husband. "As when two singers in a cathedral alternately intone the verses of a psalm, the second replied:" You do not want to die, O my gracious son? Tell me, then, how you did (surely by some spell) to frighten the vultures? Indeed, your carcass has become so thin! The zephyr weighs it like a lantern. "Each took a brush and tarred the body of the hanged man. each one took a whip and raised his arms ... I admired (it was absolutely impossible not to do like me) with what energetic accuracy the metal blades, instead of slipping to the surface, as when fighting against a Negroes, and useless efforts of the nightmare, to grab him by the hair, applied themselves, through the tar, to the interior of the flesh, marked by furrows as hollow as the prevention of the bones could reasonably allow it. I have preserved myself from the temptation to find pleasure in this spectacle, which is exceedingly curious, but less profoundly comic than one had the right to expect. And yet, in spite of the good resolutions made beforehand, how could we fail to recognize the strength of these women, the muscles of their arms? Their address, which consisted of striking at the most sensitive parts, such as the face and lower abdomen, will be mentioned by me only if I aspire to the ambition of telling the whole truth! Unless, applying my lips to each other, especially in the horizontal direction (but, as everyone knows is the most ordinary way of generating this pressure), I prefer not to keep one a silence bursting with tears and mysteries, the painful manifestation of which will be powerless to hide, not only as well, but even better than my words (for I do not think I am wrong, although it is certainly not necessary to deny in principle to fail in the most elementary rules of skill, error) the fatal results occasioned by the fury which implements the dry metacarpals and the robust joints; even if one does not take the point of view of the impartial observer and the experienced moralist (it is almost enough important that I learn that I do not at least entirely admit this more or less fallacious restriction) doubt, in this respect, would not have the faculty of extending its roots; for I do not suppose it for the moment in the hands of a supernatural power, and would perish inevitably, perhaps not suddenly, for want of a sap fulfilling the simultaneous conditions of nutrition and absence of poisonous matter . It is understood, if not to read to me, that I put on scene only the timid personality of my opinion: far from me, however, the thought of renouncing rights that are incontestable! Certainly, it is not my intention to combat this assertion, in which the criterion of certainty shines, that it is a simpler means of getting along; it would consist, I translate it with only a few words, but, which are worth more than a thousand, not to be discussed: it is more difficult to put into practice than commonly thinks generally. Discussing is the grammatical word, and many people will find that it would not be necessary to contradict, without a voluminous record of evidence, what I have just put down on paper; but the thing differs considerably, if it be permissible to grant to his own instinct that he employs a rare sagacity in the service of his circumspection, when he formulates judgments which would appear otherwise, be persuaded of it, of a boldness which runs along the shores of the boast. To close this little incident, which has stripped itself of its gangue by a lightness as irremediably deplorable as it is fatally full of interest (which everyone will not fail to verify, on condition that he has ausculated his it is good, if one possesses faculties in perfect equilibrium, or better still, if the balance of idiocy does not prevail much on the plateau in which the noble and magnificent attributes of reason, that is to say, in order to be clearer (for so far I have only been concise, which even many will not admit, because of my lengths, which are only imaginary, since they fulfill their purpose, to track, with the scalpel of analysis, the fugitive apparitions of the truth, to their last entrenchments), if the intelligence predominates sufficiently over the defects under the weight of which it has partly stifled habit, nature, and education, it is good, I repeat for the second and last time, for, by dint of repeating, one would end, most often it is not false, by no longer understanding, to return the low tail (even if it is true that I have a tail) to the dramatic subject cemented in this stanza. It is useful to drink a glass of water before undertaking the rest of my work. I prefer to drink two, rather than do without it. Thus, in a hunt against a brown negro, through the forest, at a given moment, each member of the troop suspends his gun to the lianas, and we meet together in the shade of a massif to quench thirst and appease hunger. But, the halt lasts only a few seconds, the pursuit is resumed with eagerness and the hallali does not delay to resonate. And just as oxygen is recognizable by the property which it possesses, without pride, to rekindle a match presenting a few points in ignition, thus it will be acknowledged the accomplishment of my duty to the eagerness which I show to return to the question. When the females found it impossible to retain the whip, which fatigue dropped from their hands, they judiciously put an end to the gymnastic work which they had undertaken for nearly two hours, and retired with a joy which was not without threats to the future. I went to the man who called me to the rescue, with an icy glance (for the loss of his blood was so great, that weakness prevented him from speaking, and that my opinion was, although I was not a physician, that the haemorrhage had broken out in his face and lower abdomen), and I cut his hair with a pair of scissors, after clearing his arms. He told me that his mother had called him to his room one evening and had ordered her to undress to spend the night with her in a bed, and that, without waiting for any reply, the maternity had despoiled herself of all his clothes, crossing before him the most impudent gestures. That then he had retired. Moreover, by his perpetual refusals, he had attracted the anger of his wife, who had been lulled by the hope of " a reward, if she had succeeded in persuading her husband that he should lend his body to the passions of the old woman. They resolved, by a conspiracy, to suspend him on a gallows, prepared beforehand in some unfrequented place, and to let him perish insensibly, exposed to all miseries and dangers. It was not without very mature and many reflections, full of almost insurmountable difficulties, that they had at last succeeded in guiding their choice on the refined torture which had found its disappearance only in the unexpected succor of my intervention. The strongest marks of recognition emphasized each expression, and did not give its confidences their least value. I carried him to the nearest cottage; for he had just fainted, and I left the laborers only when I had left them my purse, to give care to the wounded man, and that I had promised them that they would lavish on the unfortunate as well as their own son the marks of a persevering sympathy. In my turn, I related the event to them, and I approached the door to put my foot on the path; but after a hundred yards, I came back mechanically, and went back into the cottage, and addressing myself to their naive proprietors, exclaimed, "No, no!" do not think that it astonishes me! "This time I went away definitively; but the soles of the feet could not arise in a certain manner; another might have been unaware of it! The wolf no longer passes under the gallows, a spring's day, with his hands interwoven with a wife and a mother, as when he had his imagination charmed by the way of an illusory meal. When he sees on the horizon that black hair, balanced by the wind, he does not encourage his force of inertia, and flees with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to leave in place of this dethroned queen only one vengeance fierce! his hands intertwined with a wife and a mother, as when he made his delightful imagination take the road to an illusory meal. When he sees on the horizon that black hair, balanced by the wind, he does not encourage his force of inertia, and flees with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to leave in place of this dethroned queen only one vengeance fierce! his hands intertwined with a wife and a mother, as when he made his delightful imagination take the road to an illusory meal. When he sees on the horizon that black hair, balanced by the wind, he does not encourage his force of inertia, and flees with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to allow the subsistence of this dethroned queen to exist vengeance fierce! as when he made his deluded imagination take the road to an illusory meal. When he sees on the horizon that black hair, balanced by the wind, he does not encourage his force of inertia, and flees with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to allow the subsistence of this dethroned queen to exist vengeance fierce! as when he made his deluded imagination take the road to an illusory meal. When he sees on the horizon that black hair, balanced by the wind, he does not encourage his force of inertia, and flees with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to allow the subsistence of this dethroned queen to exist vengeance fierce! this black hair, balanced by the wind, it does not encourage its force of inertia, and takes flight with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to leave in place of this dethroned queen only one vengeance fierce! this black hair, balanced by the wind, it does not encourage its force of inertia, and takes flight with incomparable speed! Should we see in this psychological phenomenon an intelligence superior to the ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to allow the subsistence of this dethroned queen to exist vengeance fierce! ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to leave in place of this dethroned queen only one vengeance fierce! ordinary instinct of mammals? Without saying anything and even not foreseeing anything, it seems to me that the animal has understood what crime is! How could he not understand it when human beings themselves have rejected the empire of reason to the point of being indescribable, in order to leave in place of this dethroned queen only one vengeance fierce!

I'm dirty. The lice gnaw at me. The pigs, when they look at me, vomit. The crusts and scabs of the leprosy have scalded my skin, covered with yellowish pus. I do not know the water of the rivers, nor the dew of the clouds. On my neck, like a manure, grows an enormous mushroom, with umbelliferous peduncles. Sitting on a shapeless piece of furniture, I have not moved my limbs for four centuries. My feet have taken root in the soil and make up a kind of perennial vegetation, full of despicable parasites, up to my stomach, which is not yet derived from the plant, and which is no longer flesh. However, my heart beats. But how would he beat him, if the rot and the exhalations of my corpse (I dare not say body) nourished him abundantly? Under my left armpit, a family of toads took up residence and, when one of them stirs, it makes me tickle. Be careful not to let one escape, and to scratch with your mouth the inside of your ear: it would then be able to enter your brain. Under my right armpit there is a chameleon, which makes them a perpetual chase, so as not to die of hunger. Everyone must live. But when one party completely defeats the tricks of the other, they find nothing better than to avoid embarrassment, and suck the delicate fat that covers my ribs: I am accustomed to it. A wicked viper has devoured my rod and has taken its place: it has made me eunuch, this infamous. Oh! if I had been able to defend myself with my paralyzed arms; but I think they have been turned into logs. In any event, it is important to note that the blood no longer comes to walk its redness. Two small hedgehogs, which no longer grow, have thrown the inside of my testicles to a dog, which has not refused, the epidermis carefully washed, they have lodged in it. The anus was intercepted by a crab; encouraged by my inertia, he keeps the entrance with his clamps, and does me much harm! Two jellyfish crossed the seas, immediately attracted by a hope that was not deceived. They have looked attentively at the two fleshy parts which form the human back, and clinging to their convex curves, have so crushed them by constant pressure, that the two pieces of flesh have disappeared, while two monsters, out of the kingdom of viscosity, equal by color, form and ferocity. Do not talk about my spine, since it is a sword. Yes, yes ... I did not pay attention ... your request is right. You want to know, is not it, how it is implanted vertically in my kidneys? I myself do not recall it very clearly; however, if I decide to take for a memory what is perhaps only a dream, know that man, when he knew that I had made a vow to live with sickness and immobility until that I had conquered the Creator, walked behind me on tiptoe, but not so gently that I did not hear him. I no longer perceived anything, for a moment that was not long. This sharp dagger sank to the handle, between the two shoulders of the bull of the feasts, and his bones shuddered, like an earthquake. The blade adheres so strongly to the body that no one has so far been able to extract it. The athletes, the mechanics, the philosophers, the doctors, have tried, in turn, the most diverse means. They did not know that the evil that man has done can not be lost! I have forgiven the depth of their native ignorance, and I saluted them with the eyelids of my eyes. Traveler, when you pass by me, do not address me, I beg of you, the slightest word of consolation: you would weaken my courage. Let me warm my tenacity to the flame of voluntary martyrdom. Go away ... I do not inspire you with any pity. Hatred is more bizarre than you think; his conduct is inexplicable, like the broken appearance of a stick sunk in the water. As you see me, I can still make excursions to the walls of heaven, at the head of a legion of assassins, and return to take up this posture, to meditate again on the noble plans of vengeance. Adieu, I will not delay you any longer; and, to instruct and preserve you, reflect on the fatal fate that led me to revolt, when perhaps I was born good! Thou shalt tell thy son what thou hast seen; and, taking him by the hand, make him admire the beauty of the stars and the wonders of the universe, the red-throated nest and the temples of the Lord. You will be astonished to see him so obedient to the counsels of paternity, and you will reward him with a smile. But when he learns that he is not observed, cast his eyes upon him, and you will see him spouting his drooling on virtue; he has deceived you, he who is descended from the human race, but he will not deceive you any more; you will now know what will become of him. O unfortunate father, prepare to accompany the steps of your old age the ineffaceable scaffold that will cut off the head of a precocious criminal, and the grief that will show you the way that leads to the grave.

On the wall of my room, what shadow draws, with incomparable power, the phantasmagoric projection of her shrunken silhouette? When I place this delirious and mute question on my heart, it is less for the majesty of form, for the picture of reality, than the sobriety of style is conducted in this way. Whoever you are, defend yourself; for I am about to direct thee to thee a frightful accusation: these eyes do not belong to thee ... where didst thou take them? One day I saw a fair-haired woman in front of me; she had them like yours: you have snatched it from her. I see that you want your beauty to be believed; but no one is mistaken; and I, less than another. I tell you so that you do not take me for a fool. A whole series of birds of prey, others, and defenders of the utility of the pursuit, beautiful as the skeletons of the Arkansas panoccos, fling around your forehead like submissive and accepted servants. But, is it a front? It is not difficult to put much hesitation to believe it. It is so low, that it is impossible to verify the numerically small proofs of its equivocal existence. It is not for amusement that I tell you that. Perhaps you do not have a brow on the wall, like the ill-considered symbol of a fantastic dance, the feverish tumbling of your lumbar vertebrae. Who then scalped you? if it is a human being, because you have locked it up for twenty years in a prison, has escaped to prepare a vengeance worthy of his retaliation, he has done as he ought, and I applaud him; only, there was only one, he was not severe enough. Now you look like a Red-skinned prisoner, at least (let us note it beforehand) by the expressive lack of hair. Not that it can not be rejected, since physiologists have discovered that even the removed brains reappear at length in animals; but my thought, stopping at a simple observation, which, notwithstanding the little I perceive, is not devoid of enormous voluptuousness, does not, even in its most bold consequences, at the borders of a wish for healing, and remains, on the contrary, grounded, by the implementation of its more than suspicious neutrality, to look (or at least wish) as the omen of greater misfortunes, which can only be for you a momentary privation of the skin which covers the top of your head. I hope you understand me. And even if chance allowed you, by an absurd, but not, sometimes reasonable, miracle of recovering that precious skin which the religious vigilance of your enemy has retained, as the intoxicating memory of his victory, it is possible that even if the law of probabilities should have been studied only in mathematics, it is well known that analogy easily transports the application of this law to other fields of intelligence. Your legitimate fear , but a little exaggerated, of a partial or total cooling, would not deny the important and even unique opportunity, which would present itself so opportunely, though abruptly, to preserve the various parts of your brain from the touch of the atmosphere, especially during the winter, by a head-dress which rightly belongs to you, since it is natural, and it would be permissible for you, moreover (it would be incomprehensible for you to dismiss it), to keep constantly on the head, without incurring the always unpleasant risks, of infringing the simplest rules of elementary convenience . Is it not true that you listen to me attentively? If you listen to me more, your sadness will be far from detaching from the inside of your red nostrils. But as I am very impartial, and do not detest you as much as I ought (if I am mistaken, tell me), you lend, in spite of yourself, an ear to my speeches, as pushed by a higher force. I am not so wicked as you: that is why wrong genius bows of itself before mine ... Indeed, I am not as bad as you! You have just looked at the city built on the side of this mountain. And now what do I see? All the inhabitants are dead! I have pride like any other, and it is one more vice than to have more of it. Well, listen, listen, if the confession of a man, who remembers to have lived half a century under the form of a shark in the submarine currents along the coasts of Africa, interests you enough to lend your attention to it, if not bitterly, at least without the irreparable fault of showing the disgust I inspire you with. I will not throw at your feet the mask of virtue, to appear in your eyes as I am; for I have never carried it (if, however, this is an excuse); and, from the first moment, if you notice my features attentively, you will recognize me as your disciple respectful in perversity, but not as your formidable rival. Since I do not dispute the palm of evil, I do not think anyone else is doing it: it should be equal to me before, which is not easy ... Listen, unless you are the a little condensation of a fog (you hide your body somewhere, and I can not meet it): one morning I saw a little girl leaning over a lake, picking a pink lotus, early experience; she leaned towards the waters, when her eyes met my gaze (it is true that, on my side, it was not without premeditation). Immediately, she staggered like the whirlwind of the tide around a rock, her legs flexed, and a marvelous thing to see, a phenomenon which is accomplished with as much truth as I do with you. lake: a strange consequence, she no longer plucks any water lily. What is she doing underneath? ... I did not know. Undoubtedly, his will, which has placed itself under the banner of deliverance, fights bitterly against rottenness! But you, O my master, under your gaze, the inhabitants of the cities are suddenly destroyed, like a mound of ants crushed by the heel of the elephant. Have not I just witnessed a demonstration? See ... the mountain is no longer joyful ... she remains isolated as an old man. True, the houses exist; but it is not a paradox to assert, in a low voice, that you could not say the same of those who no longer exist. Already the emanations of the corpses reach me. Do not you feel them? Look at these birds of prey, waiting for us to go away, to begin this giant meal; there comes a perpetual cloud from the four corners of the horizon. Alas! they had already come, since I saw their rapacious wings tracing above you the monument of the spirals, as if to excite you to hasten the crime. Does not your smell receive the slightest smell? The impostor is nothing else ... Your olfactory nerves are finally shaken by the perception of aromatic atoms: these rise from the city annihilated, though I do not need to tell you. I would like to kiss your feet, but my arms interlace only a transparent vapor. Let us seek this untraceable body, which, nevertheless, my eyes perceive: it deserves, on my part, the most numerous marks of sincere admiration. The ghost laughs at me: it helps me to look for his own body. If I make him a sign to remain in his place, here he sends me the same sign. The secret is discovered; but it is not, I say frankly, to my greatest satisfaction. Everything is explained, the great as well as the small details; they are indifferent to putting before the mind, as, for example, the tearing of the eyes of the blond woman: that is almost nothing! ... Did not I remember that I, too, had been scalped, though it was only for five years (the exact number of time had failed me), that I had locked up a human being in a prison, to witness the spectacle of his sufferings, because he had refused me, rightly, a friendship that does not accord with beings like me? Since I pretend to be ignorant that my gaze can kill even the planets that revolve in space, it will not be wrong, the one who will pretend that I do not possess the faculty of memories. What remains for me to do is to break this ice, in shards, with the aid of a stone ... It is not the first time that the nightmare of the momentary loss of memory establishes its abode in my imagination, when, through the inflexible laws of optics,

I had fallen asleep on the cliff. Whoever, for one day, pursued the ostrich through the desert, but could not reach it, did not have time to take food and close his eyes. If it is he who reads me, he is capable of guessing, in the strictest sense, what slumber weighs upon me. But when the storm has pushed vertically a ship, with the palm of its hand, to the bottom of the sea; if, on the raft, nothing remains of the whole crew but one man, broken by fatigues and privations of every kind; if the blade stirs it, like a wreck, for hours longer than the life of a man; and if a frigate, which furrows these spots of desolation of a split hull later, sees the unhappy man who walks on the ocean his gaunt carcass, and I am of opinion that this shipwrecked man will still be able to guess at the degree to which the drowsiness of my senses was carried. Magnetism and chloroform, when they take the trouble to do so, are sometimes capable of engendering similarly those lethargic catalepsies. They have no resemblance to death: it would be a great lie to say so. But let us come at once to the dream, so that the impatient ones, hungry for these kinds of readings, do not roar like a bank of macrocephalic sperm whales fighting for a pregnant female. I dreamed that I had entered the body of a swine, that it was not easy for me to get out of it, and that I would put my hair in the most muddy marshes. Was it like a reward? Object of my wishes, belonged more to mankind! As for me, I heard the interpretation thus, and I felt a joy more than profound. However, I actively sought what act of virtue I had accomplished to merit, on the part of Providence, that noble favor. Now that I have recollected in my memory the various phases of this appalling flattening against the belly of the granite, during which the tide, without my perceiving it, passed twice over this irreducible mixture of dead matter and flesh alive, it is perhaps not without utility to proclaim that this degradation was probably only a punishment, carried out on me by divine justice. But, who knows his intimate needs or the cause of his pestilential joys? The metamorphosis never appeared to me as anything but the high and magnanimous repercussion of perfect happiness, which I had long awaited. He had come at last, the day I was a swine! I tried my teeth on the bark of the trees; my snout, I contemplated it with delight. There was not a single patch of divinity left; I could raise my soul to the height of this ineffable delight. Hear me then, and do not blush, inexhaustible caricatures of the beautiful, who take seriously the laughable bravery of your soul, sovereignly contemptible; and who do not understand why the Almighty, in a rare moment of excellent buffoonery, which certainly does not exceed the great general laws of the grotesque,humans, and whose material resembles that of the vermilion coral. Certainly, you are right to blush, bone and fat, but listen to me. I do not invoke your intelligence; you would cause her to reject blood by the horror she shows you: forget her, and be consistent with yourselves ... There, no more constraint. When I wanted to kill, I killed; This, indeed, often happened to me, and no one prevented me from doing so. Human laws still pursued me for their vengeance, though I did not attack the race which I had so quietly abandoned; but my conscience did not reproach me. During the day I was fighting with my new fellows, and the ground was strewn with many layers of curd blood. I was the strongest, and I won all the victories. Burning wounds covered my body; I pretended not to notice it. The terrestrial animals moved away from me, and I remained alone in my resplendent grandeur. What was not my astonishment when, after swirling across a river, in order to move away from the country which my rage had depopulated, and to gain other campaigns to plant my habits of murder and carnage, I tried to walk on this flowery bank! My feet were paralyzed; no movement came to betray the truth of this forced immobility. In the midst of supernatural efforts, to continue my journey, it was then that I awoke, and felt that I was becoming a man again. Providence thus made me understand, in a manner which is not inexplicable, that she did not wish that my sublime projects should be accomplished, even in dreams. To return to my primitive form was so great a pain to me that, during the nights, I still weep. My sheets are constantly wet, as if they had been passed in the water, and every day I change them. If you do not believe it, come and see me; you will control, by your own experience, not the verisimilitude, but, moreover, the very truth of my assertion. How many times since that night passed under the stars, on a cliff, have I not mingled with herds of swine, to take up, as a right, my metamorphosis destroyed! It is time to leave these glorious memories, which leave, after their suite, only the pale milky way of the eternal regrets. My sheets are constantly wet, as if they had been passed in the water, and every day I change them. If you do not believe it, come and see me; you will control, by your own experience, not the verisimilitude, but, moreover, the very truth of my assertion. How many times since that night passed under the stars, on a cliff, have I not mingled with herds of swine, to take up, as a right, my metamorphosis destroyed! It is time to leave these glorious memories, which leave, after their suite, only the pale milky way of the eternal regrets. My sheets are constantly wet, as if they had been passed in the water, and every day I change them. If you do not believe it, come and see me; you will control, by your own experience, not the verisimilitude, but, moreover, the very truth of my assertion. How many times since that night passed under the stars, on a cliff, have I not mingled with herds of swine, to take up, as a right, my metamorphosis destroyed! It is time to leave these glorious memories, which leave, after their suite, only the pale milky way of the eternal regrets. the very truth of my assertion. How many times since that night passed under the stars, on a cliff, have I not mingled with herds of swine, to take up, as a right, my metamorphosis destroyed! It is time to leave these glorious memories, which leave, after their suite, only the pale milky way of the eternal regrets. the very truth of my assertion. How many times since that night passed under the stars, on a cliff, have I not mingled with herds of swine, to take up, as a right, my metamorphosis destroyed! It is time to leave these glorious memories, which leave, after their suite, only the pale milky way of the eternal regrets.

It is not impossible to witness an abnormal deviation in the latent or visible functioning of the laws of nature. Indeed, if each one takes the ingenious trouble of questioning the various phases of his existence (without forgetting one, for it was perhaps that which was destined to furnish proof of what I advance) he will not recall, without a certain astonishment, which would be comic under other circumstances, that on such a day, to speak first of objective things, he witnessed some phenomenon which seemed to surpass and surpass positively the known notions furnished by the observation and experience, as, for example, the rain of toads, whose magic spectacle was not at first understood by scientists. And that, on another day, is not difficult to appreciate the opportunity; if, however, we take as a companion an attentive moderation. I present two of them: the transports of anger and the diseases of pride. I warn him who reads me that he is careful not to make a vague, and still more false, idea of ??the beauties of literature that I strike, in the excessively rapid development of my sentences . Alas! I would like to develop my reasoning and my comparisons slowly and with great magnificence (but which disposes of his time?), so that everyone may understand more, if not my terror, at least my astonishment, when one summer evening, like the sun seemed to sink to the horizon, I saw swimming, on the sea, with large duck legs in place of the extremities of the legs and arms, carrying a dorsal fin proportionately as long and as thin as that of the dolphins, a human being with vigorous muscles, and that numerous benches of fish (in this procession I saw among other inhabitants of the waters, the torpedo, the Greenlandic anarnak, and the horrible scorpene) followed with the most ostensible marks of the greatest admiration. Sometimes he plunged, and his viscous body reappeared almost immediately, at a distance of two hundred yards. The porpoises, who did not, according to my opinion, steal the reputation of good swimmers, could scarcely follow the amphibian of a new species. I do not believe that the reader has a place to repent, if he lends to my narrative, less the harmful obstacle of a stupid credulity, than the supreme service of a profound confidence, which legally discusses, with a secret sympathy, the poetic mysteries, too few in its own opinion, which I undertake to reveal to it, when the occasion presents itself, as it has unexpectedly now presented itself, intimately penetrated by the tonic scents of aquatic plants, which the fresh breeze conveys in this stanza, which contains a monster, is appropriate the distinguishing marks of the family of the palmipeds. Who is talking about appropriation? Let it be well known that man, by his multiple and complex nature, is not unaware of the means of extending its frontiers still further; he lives in water, like the hippocampus; through the upper layers of the air, like the orfraia; and under the earth, like the mole, the cloporte, and the sublimity of the vermice. It is in its form, more or less concise (but more so than less), the exact criterion of the extremely fortifying consolation which I endeavored to bring to birth in my mind, when I thought that the human being whom I am, perceiving at a great distance swim from the four limbs, on the surface of the waves, as the most magnificent cormorant ever did, had perhaps acquired the new change of the extremities of his arms and legs only as the expiatory punishment of some unknown crime. It was not necessary for me to torment my head to fabricate beforehand the melancholy pills of pity; for I did not know that this man, whose arms struck the bitter wave alternately, while his legs, with a force similar to that possessed by the spiral defenses of the narwhal, caused the retreat of the aquatic strata, had not more voluntarily appropriated these extraordinary forms, they had not been imposed on her as a torture. From what I learned later, here is the simple truth: the prolongation of existence in this fluid element had insensibly brought into the human being who had exiled himself from the rocky continents the important but not essential changes which I had noticed in the object which a rather confused look had made me take, from the primordial moments of its appearance (by an unreasonable lightness, whose deviations engender the painful feeling which psychologists and prudent lovers will easily understand) for a fish, of strange shape, not yet described in the classifications of naturalists; but perhaps in their posthumous works, although I had not the excusable pretension of leaning towards this last supposition, imagined in too hypothetical conditions. Indeed, this amphibian (since amphibious there is, without being able to affirm the contrary) was visible only for me alone, apart from fish and cetaceans; for I perceived that some peasants who had stopped to contemplate my face, disturbed by this supernatural phenomenon, and who vainly sought to explain why my eyes were constantly fixed, with a perseverance which seemed invincible, and which was not so in reality, on a part of the sea, where they only distinguished an appreciable and limited quantity of schools of fish of all species, distended the opening of their grandiose mouth, perhaps as much as a whale. "It made them smile, but not, as I do, pale," said they in their picturesque language; and they were not stupid enough not to notice that I did not look at the rustic evolutions of fish, but that my sight was much more forward. "In such a way that, as to what concerns me, turning my eyes mechanically on the side of the remarkable span of these powerful mouths, I said to myself that unless one finds in the whole of the " a pelican, as large as a mountain or at least as a promontory (admire the fineness of the restriction which loses no inch of ground), no beak of bird of prey or wild animal jaw would never capable of surpassing, or even of equaling, each of these gaping craters, but too lugubrious. And yet, although I reserve a good part of the sympathetic use of metaphor (this figure of rhetoric renders much more service to human aspirations towards the infinite than are usually endeavored to imagine those who are imbued with prejudices or of false ideas, which is the same thing), it is none the less true that the laughable mouth of these peasants is still wide enough to swallow three sperm whales. Let us shorten our thoughts, let us be serious, and let us content ourselves with three little elephants which have just been born. With one arm, the amphibian left behind a kilometer of frothy furrow. During the very short moment when the arm stretched forward remains suspended in the air, before it sinks again, its fingers spread, joined together by means of a fold of the skin, seemed to rush towards the heights of space, and take the stars. Standing on the rock, I used my hands as a megaphone, and I exclaimed, while crabs and crayfish fled to the darkness of the most secret crevasses: "O thou, swimming will prevail over the flight of the long wings of the frigate, if you still understand the meaning of the great shouts of voices that, as a faithful interpretation of his inner thoughts, throw humanity into force, deign to stop for a moment in your rapid march, and summarily tell me the phases of your true history. But I warn you that you do not need to speak to me if your audacious purpose is to give rise to the friendship and reverence I felt for you as soon as I saw you, first, accomplishing, with the grace and strength of the shark, your indomitable and straightforward pilgrimage. "A sigh, which froze my bones, and made the rock on which I rest the soles of my feet I myself was the one who wavered, by the rude penetration of the sound waves, which carried such a cry of despair to my ear, extended to the very bowels of the earth: the fish plunged under the waves, with the noise of the avalanche. The amphibious did not dare to advance too far to the shore; but as soon as he had assured himself that his voice had reached his tympanum quite distinctly, he reduced the movement of his palmated limbs so as to support his bust, covered with goemon, above the roaring waves. I saw him bow his forehead, as if to invoke, by solemn order, the wandering pack of memories. I dared not interrupt him in this occupation, holy archaeological: plunged into the past, it resembled a rock. At last he spoke in these terms: "The scolopendre is not lacking in enemies; the fantastic beauty of its innumerable paws, instead of attracting the sympathy of the animals, is perhaps, for them, as the powerful stimulant of jealous irritation. And I should not be surprised to learn that this insect is the object of the most intense hatreds. I will conceal from you the place of my birth, which does not matter to my account: but the shame which would affect my family is important to my duty. My father and mother (may God forgive them!), After a year of waiting, saw the sky fulfill their wishes: two twins, my brother and I, appeared to the light. All the more reason to love one another. It was not so that I speak. Because I was the most beautiful of the two, and the most intelligent, my brother took me in hatred, and did not bother to conceal his feelings. That is why my father and mother made me the greater part of their love, while, through my sincere and constant friendship, endeavored to pacify a soul which had no right to revolt against him who had been drawn from the same flesh. Then my brother knew no bounds to his fury, and lost me, in the hearts of our common parents, by the most improbable calumnies. I lived in a dungeon for fifteen years, with larvae and muddy water for all food. I will not tell you in detail the untold torments I have proved in this long unjust sequestration. Sometimes, in one moment of the day, one of the three executioners, in turn, suddenly entered, loaded with pliers, pincers, and various instruments of execution. The cries of torture left me unmoved: the abundant loss of my blood made them smile. O my brother, I forgave you, the first cause of all my evils! Is it not possible that a blind rage can finally open its own eyes! I have done many reflections in my eternal prison. What became of my general hatred of humanity? The progressive etiolation, the solitude of the body and the soul, had not made me lose all my reason, to the point of keeping resentment against those whom I had never ceased to love. the slave. I succeeded, by cunning, in regaining my liberty! Disgusted with the inhabitants of the continent, who, although they called themselves my fellow-men, did not appear to resemble me in any way (if they thought I resembled them, why did they hurt me? race to the pebbles of the beach, firmly resolved to give me death, if the sea should offer me the former reminiscences of a life inevitably lived. Will you believe your own eyes? Since the day I have fled from my father's house, I do not complain as much as you think of living in the sea and its crystal caves. Providence, as you see, has given me, in part, the organization of the swan. I live in peace with the fish, and they give me the food I need, as if I were their monarch. I will utter a peculiar whistle, provided it does not thwart you, and you will see how they will reappear. "He arrived as he predicted. He resumed his royal swim, surrounded by his procession of subjects. And though, after a few seconds, it would have completely disappeared in my eyes, with a telescope, I could still distinguish it, at the last limits of the horizon. He swam with one hand, and on the other wiped his eyes, which had been injected with blood by the terrible constraint of approaching the mainland. He had done this to please me. I rejected the revealing instrument against the steep escarpment; he jumped from rock to rock, and his scattered fragments were the waves which received him. Such was the last demonstration and the final farewell, by which I bowed, as in a dream, before a noble and unfortunate intelligence! However, everything was real in what had happened, that summer evening. had injected with blood the terrible constraint of approaching the mainland. He had done this to please me. I rejected the revealing instrument against the steep escarpment; he jumped from rock to rock, and his scattered fragments were the waves which received him. Such was the last demonstration and the final farewell, by which I bowed, as in a dream, before a noble and unfortunate intelligence! However, everything was real in what had happened, that summer evening. had injected with blood the terrible constraint of approaching the mainland. He had done this to please me. I rejected the revealing instrument against the steep escarpment; he jumped from rock to rock, and his scattered fragments were the waves which received him. Such was the last demonstration and the final farewell, by which I bowed, as in a dream, before a noble and unfortunate intelligence! However, everything was real in what had happened, that summer evening. as in a dream, before a noble and unfortunate intelligence! However, everything was real in what had happened, that summer evening. as in a dream, before a noble and unfortunate intelligence! However, everything was real in what had happened, that summer evening.

Every night, plunging the wings into my agonizing memory, I evoked the memory of Falmer ... every night. Her blond hair, her oval face, her majestic features were still imprinted in my imagination, indestructible ... especially her blond hair. Keep away this head without hair, polished as the shell of the tortoise. He was fourteen, and I was only a year older. Let this dismal voice be silent. Why is she coming to denounce me? But it is I who speak. Using my own language to express my thoughts, I perceive that my lips are moving, and that it is I who speak. And it is I myself who, recounting a story of my youth, and feeling remorse penetrating into my heart ... it is myself, unless I am mistaken. is myself speaking. I was only one year older. What is the one to which I refer? He was a friend I had in past times, I think. Yes, yes, I have already said his name. I do not want to spell these six letters again, no, no. Nor is it useful to repeat that I was one year older. Who knows? Let us repeat it, however, but with a painful murmur: I was only a year older. Even then, the pre-eminence of my physical strength was rather a motive to support, through the rough path of my life, the one who gave himself to me, than to maltreat a visibly weaker being. But I think he was weaker ... Even then. He was a friend I had in past times, I think. The preeminence of my physical strength ... every night ... Especially his blond hair. There are more than one human being who has seen bald heads: old age, illness, pain (the three together or taken separately) explain this negative phenomenon in a satisfactory manner. Such, at least, is the answer a scholar would give me if I asked him about it. Old age, illness, pain. But I know (I, too, a scholar) that one day, because he had stopped my hand, when I raised my dagger to pierce a woman, I seized him by the hair with an arm of iron, and twist it in the air with such speed, that the hair remained in my hand, and that its body, thrown by centrifugal force, went to bang against the trunk of a oak ... I do not ignore that " one day her hair remained in my hand. I, too, am a scientist. Yes, yes, I already said how it's called. I am not ignorant that one day I did an infamous act, while his body was launched by centrifugal force. He was fourteen. When, in a fit of insanity, I run through the fields, holding, pressed upon my heart, a bloody thing that I have long held, like a venerated relic, the little children who pursue me ... the little ones children and old women who pursue me with stones, utter these lamentable groans: "Here is the hair of Falmer." Move away, therefore, remove this bald head, polished as the shell of the tortoise. Something bloody. But it is I who speak. His oval face, his majestic features. Gold, I think he was weaker. Old women and little children. Now, I believe, in fact, what did I mean? I believe, in fact, that he was weaker. With an arm wrestling. Did this shock, that shock, kill him? Has his bones been broken against the tree ... irreparably? Did he kill him, the shock engendered by the vigor of an athlete? Did he preserve life, although his bones were irreparably broken ... irreparably? Has this shock killed him? I am afraid to know what my closed eyes were not witnessed. Indeed ... Especially his blond hair. Indeed, I run away with a conscience now implacable. He was fourteen. With a conscience now implacable. Each night. When a young man, who aspires to glory, on a fifth floor, leaning on his desk at midnight's silent hour, perceives a rustling which he knows not what to attribute to, he turns his head, weighed down by meditation and powdery manuscripts, on all sides. but nothing, no surprise, reveals to him the cause of what he hears so feebly, though nevertheless he hears it. Finally, he perceived that the smoke from his candle, rising towards the ceiling, caused the almost imperceptible vibrations of a sheet of paper hanging from a nail fixed against the wall. In a fifth floor. Just as a young man, who aspires to glory, hears a rustling which he knows not what to attribute, so I hear a melodious voice which says in my ear: "Maldoror!" But before putting an end to his mistake, he thought he heard the wings of a mosquito ... leaning on his work table. However, I do not dream; What mattered that I was lying on my bed of satin? I coolly make the perspicuous remark that I have my eyes open, though it is the hour of pink dominoes and masked balls. Never ... oh! no never! a mortal voice did not utter these seraphic accents, pronouncing, with so much painful elegance, the syllables of my name! The wings of a mosquito ... As his voice is benevolent. Has he forgiven me? His body struck against the trunk of an oak tree ... "Maldoror!" have my eyes open, though it is the hour of pink dominoes and masked balls. Never ... oh! no never! a mortal voice did not utter these seraphic accents, pronouncing, with so much painful elegance, the syllables of my name! The wings of a mosquito ... As his voice is benevolent. Has he forgiven me? His body struck against the trunk of an oak tree ... "Maldoror!" have my eyes open, though it is the hour of pink dominoes and masked balls. Never ... oh! no never! a mortal voice did not utter these seraphic accents, pronouncing, with so much painful elegance, the syllables of my name! The wings of a mosquito ... As his voice is benevolent. Has he forgiven me? His body struck against the trunk of an oak tree ... "Maldoror!"

END OF CHANT FOUR


CHANT FIVE

Let the reader not be angry with me, if my prose has not the happiness of pleasing him. You maintain that my ideas are at least singular. What you say there, a respectable man, is the truth; but a partial truth. Now, what abundant source of error and mistake is not all partial truth! The strips of starlings have a style of flight of their own, and seem to be subject to a uniform and regular tactic, such as that of a disciplined troop, obeying with precision the voice of a single chief. It is at the voice of instinct that the starlings obey, and their instinct leads them to always approach the center of the platoon, whilst the rapidity of their flight always takes them beyond; so that this multitude of birds, thus united by a common tendency towards the same magnetic point, going and coming ceaselessly, circulating and crossing in every direction, forms a sort of highly agitated whirlwind, the whole mass of which, without following any certain direction, appears to have a movement general of evolution on itself, resulting from the particular movements of circulation peculiar to each of its parts, and in which the center, perpetually tending to develop, but incessantly pressed, repelled by the contrary effort of the surrounding lines weighing on it, is constantly more tight than any of these lines, which are themselves more so, as they are nearer to the center. In spite of this singular way of whirling, the starlings split none the less, with a rare rapidity, the ambient air, and gain, at every second, a precious ground for the end of their fatigues, and the object of their pilgrimage. You, too, do not pay attention to the bizarre way in which I sing each of these stanzas. But, be persuaded that the fundamental accents of poetry nevertheless retain their intrinsic right over my intelligence. Let us not generalize exceptional facts, I ask nothing better: nevertheless my character is in the order of possible things. Undoubtedly, between the two extreme terms of literature, as you understand it, and mine, there is an infinity of intermediaries, and it would be easy to multiply the divisions; but there would be no utility, and there would be the danger of giving something narrow and false to an eminently philosophical conception, which ceases to be rational, as soon as it is no longer understood as it has been imagined, that is to say, with scope. You know how to combine enthusiasm and internal cold, an observer of a concentrated mood; finally, for me, I find you perfect ... And you do not want to understand me! If you are not healthy, follow my advice (it's the best I have at your disposal), and go for a walk in the countryside. Sad compensation, what do you say? When you have taken the air, come back to me: your senses will be more rested. Do not Cry; I did not want to hurt you. Is it not true, my friend, that to a certain extent your sympathy is acquired by my songs? Now, what prevents you from crossing the other degrees? The border between your taste and mine is invisible; you will never be able to grasp it: proof that this frontier itself does not exist. Think then that then (I am only touching the question here) it would not be impossible for you to have signed a treaty of alliance with obstinacy, that pleasant girl of the mule, a source so rich in intolerance. If I did not know that you were not a fool, I would not reproach you like that. It is not useful to you that you are encrusted in the cartilaginous carapace of an axiom that you believe immovable. There are other axioms also which are unshakable, and which walk parallel with yours. If you have a strong inclination for caramel (admirable farce of nature), no one will conceive it as a crime; but those whose intellect, more energetic and capable of greater things, prefers pepper and arsenic, have good reasons for acting in this way, without having the intention of imposing their peaceful domination on those who tremble with fear in front of a shrew or the speaking expression of the surfaces of a cube. I speak from experience, without coming to play here the role of provocateur. And just as rotifers and tardigrades can be heated to a temperature close to boiling, without necessarily losing their vitality, so will it be for you, if you know how to assimilate with precaution the acrid serosity suppurative that emerges with slowness of the annoyance that cause my interesting lucubrations. Eh! what, has it not been possible to graft on the back of a living rat the tail detached from the body of an animal, another rat? Try, then, in like manner to convey in your imagination the various modifications of my cadaveric reason. But be careful. At the hour I am writing, new thrills permeate the intellectual atmosphere: it is only a matter of having the courage to look them in the face. Why do you make that face? And even you accompany him with a gesture that one can only imitate after a long apprenticeship. Be persuaded that habit is necessary in everything; and since the instinctive repulsion, which had declared itself from the first pages, has considerably diminished in depth, in the inverse ratio of application to reading, as a boil that is incised, we must hope, although your head is still sick, that your healing will certainly not be long in returning to its last period. For me, it is undoubted that you are already sailing in convalescence; Yet thy face has remained very thin, alas! But ... courage! there is in you an uncommon spirit, I love you, and I do not despair of your complete deliverance, provided you absorb some medicinal substances, which will only hasten the disappearance of the last symptoms of the evil. As an astringent and tonic food, you will first snatch the arms of your mother (if she still exists), you will divide them into small pieces, and you will eat them in a single day, without any feature of your figure betray your emotion. If your mother was too old, choose another surgical subject, younger and cooler, on which the rugine will have taken, and whose tarsal bones, when walking, easily take a fulcrum to make the rocking: your sister, for example. I can not help pitying his fate, and I am not one of those in whom a very cold enthusiasm merely affects kindness. You and I will pour for her, for this beloved virgin (but, I have no evidence to prove she is a virgin), two incoercible tears, two tears of lead. That's it. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair. and I am not one of those in whom a very cold enthusiasm merely affects kindness. You and I will pour for her, for this beloved virgin (but, I have no evidence to prove she is a virgin), two incoercible tears, two tears of lead. That's it. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair. and I am not one of those in whom a very cold enthusiasm merely affects kindness. You and I will pour for her, for this beloved virgin (but, I have no evidence to prove she is a virgin), two incoercible tears, two tears of lead. That's it. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair. affect goodness. You and I will pour for her, for this beloved virgin (but, I have no evidence to prove she is a virgin), two incoercible tears, two tears of lead. That's it. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair. affect goodness. You and I will pour for her, for this beloved virgin (but, I have no evidence to prove she is a virgin), two incoercible tears, two tears of lead. That's it. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair. The most lenitive potion, which I advise you, is a basin, full of a blennorrhagic nucleus pus, in which a hairy cyst of the ovary, a follicular chancre, an inflamed foreskin, acorn by a paraphimosis, three red slugs. If you are my ordinances, my poetry will receive you with open arms, like a pouch, with its kisses, the root of a hair.

I saw before me an object standing on a mound. I could not make out his head clearly; but I already guessed that it was not of an ordinary form, without, however, specifying the exact proportion of its contours. I dared not approach this motionless column; and even if I had at my disposal the ambulatory legs of more than three thousand crabs (I do not even speak of those used for the grasping and chewing of food), I would still have remained in the same place, if an event, which was very futile in itself, would have taken a heavy price on my curiosity, which made its dikes crack. A beetle, rolling on the ground, with its mandibles and antennae, a ball, the principal elements of which were composed of excremental matter, advanced rapidly, towards the designated mound, applying himself to show clearly his desire to take this direction. This articulated animal was not much larger than a cow! If anyone doubts what I say, let them come to me, and I will satisfy the most unbelieving by the testimony of good witnesses. I followed him from afar, ostensibly intrigued. What did he want to do with that big black ball? O reader, you who constantly boast of your perspicacity (and not wrongly), would you be able to tell me? But, I do not want to test your passion known for riddles. Let it suffice you to know that the sweetest punishment I can inflict on you is still to make you observe that this mystery will not be revealed to you (it will be revealed to you) that later, at the end of your life, when you begin philosophical discussions with the agony on the edge of your bedside ... and maybe even at the end of this stanza. The scarab arrived at the bottom of the mound. I had followed my footsteps in his footsteps, and I was still at a great distance from the scene; for, just as the stercoraries, birds worried as if they were always starving, take pleasure in the seas that bathe the two poles, and advance only accidentally in the temperate zones, so I was not tranquil, and I carried my legs forward with much slowness. But what was the corporeal substance to which I was advancing? I knew that the family of the peletinae comprises four distinct genera: the madman, the pelican, the cormorant, the frigate. The grayish form, appeared was not a madman. The plastic block I saw was not a frigate. The crystallized flesh I was observing was not a cormorant. I saw him now, the man with the brain free of annular protuberance! I looked vaguely, in the recesses of my memory, in what torrid or icy country, I had already noticed this beak very long, broad, convex, vaulted, markedly marked, unguiculated, swollen and very crooked at its extremity; these jagged, straight edges; this lower mandible, with branches separated as far as the point; this interval filled by a membranous skin; this large pocket, yellow and sacciform, occupying the whole throat, and capable of considerable distension; and these narrow, longitudinal, almost imperceptible nostrils, dug in a bazal furrow! If this living being, with a pulmonary respiration and simple, with a body covered with hair, had been a whole bird to the soles of the feet, and not only to the shoulders, it would not have been so difficult for me recognize it: very easy thing to do, as you will see yourself. But this time I do not mind; for the clarity of my demonstration, I would need one of these birds to be placed on my work-table, even if it were only fastened. But I am not rich enough to procure it. Following step by step a previous hypothesis, I would have immediately assigned its true nature and found a place, in the frameworks of natural history, to which I admired the nobility in its sickly pose. With what satisfaction, perhaps not completely ignorant of the secrets of his double organism, and what eagerness to know more, I contemplated him in his lasting metamorphosis! Though he did not possess a human face, he appeared to me as beautiful as the two long tentaculiform filaments of an insect; or rather, as a precipitated burial; or, as the law of the reconstitution of mutilated organs; and above all, as an eminently putrescible liquid! But, paying no attention to what was happening in the neighborhood, the stranger always looked ahead, with his pelican's head! Another day, I will end the story. However, I will continue my narrative with a dismal eagerness; for if, on your side, you are longing to know where my imagination wants to go (it would be in heaven that indeed, it was only imagination!), of mine, I resolved to finish in one go (and not in two!) what I had to tell you, though nobody has the right to accuse me of lacking courage. But when one is faced with such circumstances, more than one of them must beat the pulsations of his heart against the palm of his hand. He has just died, almost unknown, in a small port of Brittany, a master coaster, an old sailor, who was the hero of a terrible story. He was then a long-distance captain, and traveled for a shipowner of Saint-Malo. Now, after an absence of thirteen months, he arrived at the conjugal home, at the moment when his wife, still in bed, had just given him an heir, to whose acknowledgment he recognized no right. The captain made no impression of his surprise and anger; he coldly begged his wife to dress, and accompany her to a walk on the ramparts of the city. We were in January. The ramparts of Saint-Malo are elevated, and when the wind blows from the north, the most intrepid retreat. The unhappy woman obeyed, calm and resigned; on returning, she delighted. She expired in the night. But she was only a woman. While I, who am a man, in the presence of a drama not less great, I do not know whether I retained enough power over myself, that the muscles of my face should remain motionless! As soon as the scarab arrived at the bottom of the mound, the man raised his arm to the west (precisely in this direction a vulture of the lambs and a Grand Duke of Virginia had fought in the air) wiped a long tear on her beak, which presented a system of diamond coloration, and said to the beetle, "Unhappy ball! did not you drive it long enough? Your vengeance is not yet satisfied; and already this woman, of whom you had tied, with pearl necklaces, legs and arms, so as to make an amorphous polyhedron, in order to drag it along with your tarses through the valleys and paths on brambles and stones (let me go and see if it's still her!), saw her bones widen by wounds, her limbs polished by the mechanical law of rotational friction, merge into the unity of the coagulation, and its body, instead of primordial lineaments and natural curves, present the monotonous appearance of a single homogeneous whole which resembles only too much, by the confusion of its various crushed elements, to the mass of a sphere! She has been dead for a long time; leave these spoils to the ground, and be careful to increase, in irreparable proportions, the rage which consumes you: it is no longer justice: for selfishness, hidden in the integuments of your forehead, raises slowly, like a ghost, the drapery which covers it. "The vultures of the lambs and the Grand Duke of Virginia, insensibly carried by the vicissitudes of their struggle, had come nearer to us. The beetle trembled at these unexpected words, and what, on another occasion, would have been an insignificant movement, became, this time, the distinctive mark of a fury which knew no bounds; for he dreadfully rubbed his posterior thighs against the edge of the elytra, making a loud noise. "Who are you, then, being pusillanimous?" It seems that you have forgotten certain strange developments of the past; you do not keep them in your memory, my brother. This woman betrayed us, one after the other. You first, I second. It seems to me that this insult must not (must not) disappear from memory so easily. So easily! You, your magnanimous nature, allows you to forgive. But do you know whether, despite the abnormal situation of the woman's atoms, reduced to knead dough (it is not now questioned whether one would not believe at the first investigation that this body was increased by a notable amount of density rather by the combination of two strong wheels than by the effects of my fiery passion), it does not yet exist? Shut up, and let me avenge myself. "He resumed his ride, and went away, the ball pushed before him. When he had gone away, the pelican cried out: "This woman, by her magic power, gave me a palmiped's head, and changed my brother into a scarab: perhaps she deserves even worse treatments than those whom I have just enumerated. "And I, who was not certain not to dream, guessing, by what I had heard, the nature of the hostile relations that united me above a combat the vulture of the lambs, and the Grand Duke of Virginia, I rejected my head as a hood backward, in order to give to the play of my lungs the ease and elasticity that were likely, and I shouted to them, pointing my eyes upward: "You others, cease your discord. You are right both; because, to each one she had promised her love; therefore she deceived you together. But, you are not the only ones. Besides, she robbed you of your human form, making a cruel play of your most holy pains. And you would hesitate to believe me! Besides, she is dead; and the beetle made him suffer a punishment of indelible imprint, notwithstanding the pity of the first betrayed. "At these words they put an end to their quarrel, and no longer plucked their feathers, nor the scraps of flesh; to do so. The Grand Duke of Virginia, as beautiful as a memory on the curve described by a dog running after his master, sank into the crevices of a ruined convent. The vulture of the lambs, as beautiful as the law of ' stopping the development of the breast in adults whose propensity to growth is not related to the quantity of molecules that their organism assimilates, is lost in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The pelican, whose generous forgiveness had given me a great deal of impression, because I did not find it natural, restoring on its mound the majestic impassibility of a lighthouse, as if to warn human navigators to pay attention to its example , and to preserve their fate from the love of dark magicians, always looked ahead. The scarab, as beautiful as the trembling of the hands in alcoholism, disappeared on the horizon. Four more existences that could be struck from the book of life. I plucked an entire muscle in my left arm, for I no longer knew what I was doing, so much was I moved by this quadruple misfortune. And I, who believed that these were excremals. Great beast that I am, go.

The intermittent annihilation of the human faculties: whatever your thoughts incline to suppose, these are not words. At least, they are not words like the others. Let him raise his hand, whoever believes he is doing a righteous act, praying to some executioner to flay him alive. Let him raise his head, with the voluptuousness of the smile, the one who would voluntarily offer his breast to the bullets of death. My eyes will look for scars; my ten fingers will concentrate their entire attention on carefully treating the flesh of this eccentric; I will verify that the splashing of the brain has spilled on the satin of my forehead. Is it not that a man, a lover of such a martyrdom, would not find himself in the whole universe? I do not know what laughter is, it's true, having never experienced it by myself. How, then, would it be imprudent to maintain that my lips would not be enlarged, if it were given me to see whoever would claim that somewhere that man exists? What none would wish for his own existence, has been fallen to me by an unequal lot. It is not that my body swims in the lake of pain; then passes. But the mind dries up by a condensed and continually strained reflection; he screams like the frogs of a swamp, when a flock of voracious flamingos and hungry herons fall upon the rushes of its banks. Happy is he who sleeps peacefully in a bed of feathers, torn from the chest of the eider, without noticing that he betrays himself. I have not slept for more than thirty years. Since the imprudent day of my birth, I have devoted an irreconcilable hatred to sleeping-boards. It was I who wanted it; that no one should be accused. Quick, let's get rid of the aborted suspicion. Do you distinguish this pale crown on my forehead? The one who braided her with her thin fingers was the tenacity. As long as a burning sap remains in my bones like a torrent of molten metal, I shall not sleep. Every night I force my livid eye to fix the stars, through the tiles of my window. To be more sure of myself, a splinter of wood separates my swollen eyelids. When the aurora appears, she finds me in the same position, the body leaning vertically, and standing against the plaster of the cold wall. However, sometimes I dream, but without losing for a moment the perennial feeling of my personality and the free faculty of moving: know that the nightmare that hides in the phosphoric angles of the shadow, the fever that palpates my face with its stump, draws its bloody claw, well, it is my will that, to give a stable nourishment to its perpetual activity, makes them turn in circles. Indeed, an atom which avenges itself in its extreme weakness, free will does not hesitate to assert, with a powerful authority, that it does not count degradation among the number of its sons: the one who sleeps is less than an animal castrated the day before. Though insomnia leads to the depths of the pit, these muscles, which already spread a smell of cypress, never the white catacomb of my intelligence, will open its sanctuaries to the Creator. A secret and noble justice, towards the outstretched arms of which I launch by instinct, orders me to pursue without ceasing this ignoble punishment. A frightful enemy of my imprudent soul, at the hour when a lantern is lighted on the coast, I forbid my unfortunate reins to lie down on the dew of grass. Winner, I reject the pitfalls of the hypocritical poppy. It is therefore certain that, by this strange struggle, my heart has walled up its designs, a starving man who eats himself. Impenetrable like the giants, I, I lived ceaselessly with the wide gaping eyes. At least it is proved that during the day each one can put up a useful resistance against the Great External Object (who does not know his name?); because then, the will takes care of its own defense with remarkable fury. But as soon as the veil of nocturnal vapors spreads, even on the condemned ones who are to be hanged, oh! to see his intellect between the sacrilegious hands of a stranger. An implacable scalpel scrutinizes the thick brush. Consciousness exhales a long groan of curse; for the veil of her modesty receives cruel tears. Humiliation! our door is open to the fierce curiosity of the Celestial Bandit. I have not deserved this infamous punishment, you, the hideous spy of my causality! If I exist, I am not another. I do not admit to myself this equivocal plurality. I want to reside alone in my intimate reasoning. Autonomy ... or else I change to a hippopotamus. Abyss under earth, O anonymous stygmate, and no longer reappeared before my haggard indignation. My subjectivity and the Creator is too much for a brain. When the night obscures the course of the hours, who is the one who has not fought against the influence of sleep, in his bed wet with an icy sweat? This bed, attracting against its breast the dying faculties, is only a tomb composed of squared planks of spruce. The will withdraws imperceptibly, as in the presence of an invisible force. A viscous pitch thickens the lens of the eyes. The eyelids look like two friends. The body is no more than a breathing corpse. Finally, four enormous stakes nail the entire limb on the mattress. And note, I pray you, that the sheets are nothing but shrouds. Here is the cassolette where the incense of religions burns. Eternity roars, as well as a distant sea, and is approaching with great strides. The apartment has disappeared: prostrate yourself, humans, in the fiery chapel! Sometimes, trying in vain to overcome the imperfections of the organism, in the midst of the heaviest sleep, the magnetized sense perceives with astonishment that it is no more than a block of burial, and reasoning admirably, supported on an incomparable subtlety: "To leave this layer is a more difficult problem than you think. Sitting on the cart, they drag me to the binarity of the poles of the guillotine. Curiously enough, my inert arm cleverly assimilated the stiffness of the stump. It is very bad to dream of walking on the scaffold. "Blood flows through the face. The chest carries out repeated surges, and swells to whistles. The weight of an obelisk stifles the expansion of rabies. The real has destroyed the dreams of drowsiness! Who does not know that when the struggle is prolonged between the self, full of pride, and the terrible increase of catalepsy, the hallucinated mind loses judgment? Frowned by despair, he delights in his evil, until he has conquered nature, and sleep, seeing his prey escape him, flees without return far from his heart, from an irritated wing and shameful. Throw some ash into my burning orbit. Do not fix my eye that never closes. Do you understand the sufferings I endure? (however, pride is satisfied). As soon as the night urges humans to rest, a man, whom I know, strides in the country. I am afraid that my resolution will succumb to the attacks of old age. May it happen, that fatal day when I shall fall asleep! When I wake up, my razor, making its way through the neck, will prove that nothing was, in fact, more real.

"But who, then, dares, here, like a conspirator, to drag the rings of his body towards my black chest?" Whoever you are, eccentric python, on what pretext do you excuse your ridiculous presence? Is it a vast remorse that torments you? For, you see, boa, your savage majesty has not, I suppose, the exorbitant pretension of escaping from the comparison I make with the features of the criminal. This frothy whitish drool is, to me, the sign of rage. Listen to me: do you know that your eye is far from drinking a heavenly ray? Do not forget that if your presumptuous brain has believed me capable of offering you a few words of consolation, it can only be by the motive of an ignorance totally devoid of physiognomonic knowledge. For a time, of course, sufficient, direct the light of your eyes towards what I have the right, like another, to call my face! Do not you see how he cries? You're wrong, basil. It is necessary that you seek elsewhere the sad ration of relief, which my radical impotence has cut you off, in spite of the many protests of my good will. Oh! what force, in expressible phrases, inevitably dragged you to your ruin? It is almost impossible for me to get used to this reasoning that you do not understand that, with a stroke of my heel, placing the curves of your triangular head on the red grass, I could knead a nameless mastic with the " grass of the savannah and the flesh of the crushed. It is necessary that you seek elsewhere the sad ration of relief, which my radical impotence has cut you off, in spite of the many protests of my good will. Oh! what force, in expressible phrases, inevitably dragged you to your ruin? It is almost impossible for me to get used to this reasoning that you do not understand that, with a stroke of my heel, placing the curves of your triangular head on the red grass, I could knead a nameless mastic with the " grass of the savannah and the flesh of the crushed. It is necessary that you seek elsewhere the sad ration of relief, which my radical impotence has cut you off, in spite of the many protests of my good will. Oh! what force, in expressible phrases, inevitably dragged you to your ruin? It is almost impossible for me to get used to this reasoning that you do not understand that, with a stroke of my heel, placing the curves of your triangular head on the red grass, I could knead a nameless mastic with the " grass of the savannah and the flesh of the crushed.

"Disappear as soon as possible away from me, guilty to the pale face!" The fallacious mirage of terror has shown you your own specter! Dissolve your injurious suspicions, if you do not wish me to accuse you in my turn, and that I do not bring against you a recrimination which would certainly be approved by the judgment of the reptilian serpent. What a monstrous aberration of the imagination prevents you from recognizing me! You do not remember the important services I have rendered you, by the gratification of an existence which I caused to emerge from the chaos, and, on your side, the vow, forever unforgettable, not to desert my flag, so that I may remain faithful unto death? When you were a child (your intelligence was then in its most beautiful phase), the first you climbed up the hill, isard, to greet, with a gesture of your little hand, the multicolored rays of dawning dawn. The notes of your voice gushed from your sonorous larynx like diamond-shaped pearls, and solved their collective personalities in the vibrant aggregation of a long hymn of adoration. Now thou castest at thy feet, like a muddy rag, the long-suffering of which I have proved too long. Recognition has seen its roots dry up like the bed of a pool; but in its place ambition has grown in proportions which it would be painful to describe. Who is he who hears me to have such confidence in the abuse of his own weakness? of your sonorous larynx, like diamond-shaped pearls, and solved their collective personalities in the vibrant aggregation of a long hymn of adoration. Now thou castest at thy feet, like a muddy rag, the long-suffering of which I have proved too long. Recognition has seen its roots dry up like the bed of a pool; but in its place ambition has grown in proportions which it would be painful to describe. Who is he who hears me to have such confidence in the abuse of his own weakness? of your sonorous larynx, like diamond-shaped pearls, and solved their collective personalities in the vibrant aggregation of a long hymn of adoration. Now thou castest at thy feet, like a muddy rag, the long-suffering of which I have proved too long. Recognition has seen its roots dry up like the bed of a pool; but in its place ambition has grown in proportions which it would be painful to describe. Who is he who hears me to have such confidence in the abuse of his own weakness? I have proved too long. Recognition has seen its roots dry up like the bed of a pool; but in its place ambition has grown in proportions which it would be painful to describe. Who is he who hears me to have such confidence in the abuse of his own weakness? I have proved too long. Recognition has seen its roots dry up like the bed of a pool; but in its place ambition has grown in proportions which it would be painful to describe. Who is he who hears me to have such confidence in the abuse of his own weakness?

"And who art thou, audacious substance? No, no, I am not mistaken; and, in spite of the multiple metamorphoses to which you have recourse, your serpent's head will always shine before my eyes like a beacon of eternal injustice and cruel domination! He wanted to take the reins of command, but he does not know how to rule! He wanted to become an object of horror for all beings of creation, and he succeeded. He wished to prove that he alone is the monarch of the universe, and it is in this that he was mistaken. O wretch! have you waited till this hour to hear murmurs and plots which, rising simultaneously from the surface of the spheres, shave with a fierce wing the papillaceous edges of your destructible tympanum? It is not far, by day, where my arm will throw you into the dust, poisoned by your breath, and tearing from your entrails a harmful life, will leave on your way your corpse, riddled with contortions, to teach the dismayed traveler that this palpitating flesh, striking his sight of astonishment, and nails his silent tongue in his palace, must be compared, if one keeps his composure, with the rotten trunk of an oak, which fell from old age! What thought of pity keeps me from your presence? You, yourself, retreat before me, I tell you, and go and wash away your immeasurable shame in the blood of a child who has just been born: these are your habits. They are worthy of you. Go ... always walk before you. I condemn you to become a wanderer. I condemn you to remain alone and without family. Paths constantly, so that your legs will refuse you their support. Cross the sands of the deserts until the end of the world engulfs the stars in nothingness. When you pass near the lair of the tiger, he will hasten to flee, not to look, as in a mirror, his elevated character on the base of the ideal perversity. But when the imperious fatigue orders you to stop your march before the flagstones of my palace, covered with brambles and thistles, pay attention to your tattered sandals and tiptoe over the elegance of the vestibules . This is not an unnecessary recommendation. You could awaken my young wife and my young son, lying in the leaden vaults that line the foundations of the ancient castle. If you did not take your precautions beforehand, they could make you pale by their underground yells. When thy impenetrable will deprived them of their existence, they were not ignorant that thy power was formidable, and had no doubt in this respect; but they did not expect (and their supreme farewells confirmed their belief) that your Providence would have been so pitiless! Be that as it may, it passes rapidly through these abandoned and silent rooms, with emerald wainscoting, but with faded coat-of-arms, on which rest the glorious statues of my ancestors. These marble bodies are irritated against you; avoids their vitreous looks. This is a tip given to you by the language of their last and only descendant. Watch as their arms are raised in the attitude of provocative defense, head proudly reversed back. Surely they have guessed the evil you have done me; and if you pass within the reach of the frozen pedestals which support these sculptured blocks, vengeance awaits you there. If your defense needs to object to me, speak. It's too late to cry now. It was necessary to weep in more suitable moments when the occasion was propitious. If your eyes are finally opened, judge for yourself what were the consequences of your conduct. Farewell! I am going to breathe the breeze of the cliffs; for my lungs, half choked, demand a lighter and more virtuous spectacle than yours! It's too late to cry now. It was necessary to weep in more suitable moments when the occasion was propitious. If your eyes are finally opened, judge for yourself what were the consequences of your conduct. Farewell! I am going to breathe the breeze of the cliffs; for my lungs, half choked, demand a lighter and more virtuous spectacle than yours! It's too late to cry now. It was necessary to weep in more suitable moments when the occasion was propitious. If your eyes are finally opened, judge for yourself what were the consequences of your conduct. Farewell! I am going to breathe the breeze of the cliffs; for my lungs, half choked, demand a lighter and more virtuous spectacle than yours!

O incomprehensible pederasts, it is not I who will insult your degradation; it is not I who will come to cast contempt on your infundibuliform anus. It is enough that the shameful, almost incurable diseases which besiege you carry with them their inevitable punishment. Legislators of stupid institutions, inventors of a narrow morality, move away from me, for I am an impartial soul. And you, young teenagers or rather young girls, explain to me how and why (but, stand at a suitable distance, for I, too, can not resist my passions) vengeance has germinated in your hearts, for having attached to the side of humanity such a crown of wounds. You make her blush with her children by your conduct (which, I, I venerate!); your prostitution, offering itself to the first comer, exercises the logic of the deepest thinkers, while your exaggerated sensitivity fills the measure of the stupefaction of the woman herself. Are you of a nature less or more earthly than that of your fellows? Do you have a sixth sense that we lack? Do not lie, and say what you think. This is not a question I ask you; for, since I have been observing the sublimity of your grandiose intelligences, I know what to expect of me. Be blessed by my left hand, be sanctified by my right hand, angels protected by my universal love. I kiss your face, I kiss your chest, I kiss, with my lips sweet, the various parts of your body harmonious and fragrant. What did you tell me at once what you were, a higher moral beauty? It was necessary for me to divine by myself the innumerable treasures of tenderness and chastity concealed by the beating of your oppressed heart. Chest decorated with garlands of roses and vettyver. I had to open your legs to know you, and my mouth hung on the insignia of your modesty. But (important thing to represent) do not forget every day to wash the skin of your parts with hot water, for if not, venereal chancres would infallibly push on the split commissures of my unconscious lips. Oh! if instead of being a hell, the universe had been nothing but an immense celestial anus, look at the gesture I make on the side of my lower abdomen: yes, I would have buried my rod through his bloody sphyncter , shattering, by my impetuous movements, the own walls of his pelvis! Unhappiness would not then have blown, on my blind eyes, whole dunes of moving sand; I should have discovered the subterranean spot where sleeping truth lies, and the rivers of my viscous sperm would have found an ocean in which to rush! But why am I surprised to regret an imaginary state of things, and who will never receive the stamp of its ultimate accomplishment? Let us not bother to build fugitive hypotheses. Meanwhile, let him who is burning with the ardor of sharing my bed come to find me; but I place a strict condition on my hospitality: he must not be more than fifteen years old. Let him not believe on his side that I have thirty; what does it do? The age does not diminish the intensity of feelings, far from it; and though my hair has become white as snow, it is not because of old age: it is, on the contrary, for the motive that you know. I do not like women! Nor even the hermaphrodites! I need beings who resemble me, on whose forehead the human nobility is marked in characters more distinct and indelible! Are you sure that those who wear long hair are of the same nature as mine? I do not believe it, and I will not desert my opinion. A brackish saliva flows from my mouth, I do not know why. Who wants to suck it on me, that I may be rid of it? She climbs ... she always rises! I know what it is. I noticed that, when I drink at my throat the blood of those who lie down beside me (it is wrong for me to suppose vampire, since they call the dead who come out of their tomb, but I am a living one), I reject the next day a part by the mouth: this is the explanation of the infective saliva. What do you want me to do, if the organs, weakened by vice, refuse to perform the functions of nutrition? But do not reveal my confidences to anyone. It is not for me that I tell you this; it is for yourself and others, that the prestige of the secret should retain within the limits of duty and virtue those who, magnetized by the electricity of the unknown, would be tempted to imitate me. Have my goodness to look at my mouth (for now, use a longer form of politeness); it strikes you at first sight by the appearance of its structure, without putting the serpent in your comparisons; it is because I contract the tissue to the last reduction, in order to make believe that I possess a cold character. You are not unaware that it is diametrically opposed. What can I look through these seraphic pages the face of the one who reads me. If he has not passed puberty, let him approach. Hold me against thee, and fear not to hurt me; progressively narrow the ties of our muscles. More. I feel it is useless to insist; the opacity, remarkable in more than one respect, of this sheet of paper, is an impediment of the most considerable to the operation of our complete union. Me, I ' I have always experienced an infamous caprice for the pale youth of the colleges, and the children of the manufactories! My words are not the reminiscences of a dream, and I would have too many memories to disentangle if I had been obliged to pass before your eyes the events which might confirm the veracity of my painful affirmation of their testimony . Human justice has not yet surprised me in flagrante delicto, in spite of the incontestable skill of its agents. I even murdered (not long ago) a pederast who did not lend himself sufficiently to my passion; I threw his corpse into an abandoned well, and there is no decisive proof against me. Why do you shudder with fear, teenager who reads me? Do you think I want to do the same for you? You are sovereignly unjust ... You are right: beware of me, especially if you are beautiful. My parts eternally offer the gloomy spectacle of turgor; no one can support (and how many have not approached them!) that he saw them in a state of normal tranquility, not even the scrapper who stabbed me with a knife in a moment of delirium . The ungrateful! I change clothes twice a week, cleanliness not being the main reason for my determination. If I did not do so, the members of humanity would disappear after a few days, in protracted combats. In fact, in whatever country I am, they continually harass me from their presence and lick the surface of my feet. But what power do they possess, my seminal drops, to attract to them all that breathes by olfactory nerves! They come from the banks of the Amazons, they cross the valleys watered by the Ganges, they abandon the polar lichen, to make long journeys in search of me, and ask the immobile cities, if they have not seen, along the ramparts of which the sacred sperm embalms the mountains, lakes, heaths, forests, promontories, and the vastness of the seas! The despair at not being able to meet me (I hide secretly in the most inaccessible places, in order to fuel their ardor) leads them to the most regrettable acts. They place three hundred thousand on each side, and the roar of the cannon serves as a prelude to the battle. All the wings shake at once, like a single warrior. The squares form and fall at once to no longer rise. The frightened horses flee in all directions. The cannonballs plow the ground like implacable meteors. The theater of combat is but a vast field of carnage, when night reveals its presence and the silent moon appears between the tears of a cloud. Pointing to a space of several leagues covered with corpses, the vaporous crescent of this star orders me to take for a moment, as the subject of meditative reflections, the fatal consequences which, after him, entails the inexplicable enchanting talisman that the Providence m ' granted. Unfortunately, how many centuries will it not be before the human race perishes by my perfidious trap! It is thus that a clever mind, which does not boast, employs, in order to attain its ends, the very means which at first appear to bear an invincible obstacle. Always my intelligence rises towards this imposing question, and you yourself are witnesses that it is no longer possible for me to remain in the modest subject that in the beginning I had the design to treat. A last word ... it was a winter night. While the kiss whistled in the fir trees, the Creator opened his door in the midst of darkness and brought in a pederast. is a skilful mind, which does not boast, employs, in order to attain its ends, the very means which at first appear to bear an invincible obstacle. Always my intelligence rises towards this imposing question, and you yourself are witnesses that it is no longer possible for me to remain in the modest subject that in the beginning I had the design to treat. A last word ... it was a winter night. While the kiss whistled in the fir trees, the Creator opened his door in the midst of darkness and brought in a pederast. is a skilful mind, which does not boast, employs, in order to attain its ends, the very means which at first appear to bear an invincible obstacle. Always my intelligence rises towards this imposing question, and you yourself are witnesses that it is no longer possible for me to remain in the modest subject that in the beginning I had the design to treat. A last word ... it was a winter night. While the kiss whistled in the fir trees, the Creator opened his door in the midst of darkness and brought in a pederast. it is no longer possible for me to remain in the modest subject which I had the design of treating at the beginning. A last word ... it was a winter night. While the kiss whistled in the fir trees, the Creator opened his door in the midst of darkness and brought in a pederast. it is no longer possible for me to remain in the modest subject which I had the design of treating at the beginning. A last word ... it was a winter night. While the kiss whistled in the fir trees, the Creator opened his door in the midst of darkness and brought in a pederast.

Silence! he passes a funeral procession beside you. Tilt the binarity of your kneecaps towards the earth and sing a song from beyond the grave. (If you consider my words rather as a mere imperative form, than as a formal order that is not in its place, you will show the spirit and the best.) It is possible that you could succeed in this way extremely the soul of the dead, who will rest from life in a pit. Even the fact is, for me, certain. Notice that I do not say that your opinion can not, to a certain extent, be contrary to mine; but, above all, it is important to possess just notions on the basis of morality, in such a way that each one has to penetrate himself with the principle which commands to do to another, we might wish to have done it to ourselves. The priest of religions opens the first march, holding in his hand a white flag, a sign of peace, and on the other a golden emblem representing the parts of the man and the woman, as if to indicate that these carnal members are, most of the time, abstracting from any metaphor, very dangerous instruments in the hands of those who use them, when they manipulate them blindly for various purposes that quarrel among themselves, engender a timely reaction against the known passion that causes almost all our ills. At the bottom of her back is attached (artificially, of course) a ponytail, with thick hairs, which sweeps dust from the ground. It means taking care not to reduce us by our conduct to the rank of animals. The coffin knows its way and walks after the floating tunic of the consoler. The relatives and friends of the deceased, by the manifestation of their position, resolved to close the march of the procession. The latter advances with majesty, like a vessel which divides the open sea, and does not fear the phenomenon of sinking; for at the present moment storms and reefs are not noticed by anything less than their explicable absence. The crickets and toads follow at a few steps the funeral feast; they, too, are not ignorant of their modest presence at the funeral of anyone who will ever be counted. They converse in a low voice in their picturesque language (do not be presumptuous enough, allow me to give you this uninteresting advice, to believe that you alone possess the precious faculty of translating the feelings of your thought) from that they more than once watched through the verdant meadows, and plunge the sweat of its limbs into the bluish waves of the sandy gulfs. In the first place, life seemed to smile at him without a second thought, and, magnificently, crowned it with flowers; but since your intelligence itself perceives or rather guesses that it has stopped at the limits 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 exactly modeled, to be mistaken, on that of the fingers of the hand. It is little and it is a lot In the case that concerns us, however, will support your love of truth, that you may say with me, without delay, for a second more, that it is but little. And when I think summarily of these mysterious mysteries, by which a human being disappears from the earth, as easily as a fly or a dragonfly, without preserving the hope of returning to it, I find myself hatching the deep regret of not likely to be able to live long enough, to explain you well what I do not pretend to understand myself. But since it is proved that by extraordinary chance I have not yet lost my life since that distant time when I began with terror the preceding sentence, I calculate mentally that it will not be useless here , to construct the complete avowal of my radical impotence, when it concerns above all, as now, of this imposing and unaffordable question. It is, in general, a singular thing, that the attractive tendency which leads us to seek (and then express) the resemblances and differences which, in their natural properties, contain the objects most opposed to each other, less able, apparently, to lend themselves to such sympathetically curious combinations, and which, in my word of honor, give gracefully to the style of the writer, who pays for this personal satisfaction, the impossible and unforgettable aspect of " a serious owl to eternity. Let us follow the current which leads us. The royal kite has the wings proportionally longer than the buzzards, and the flight is much easier: so it passes its life in the air. It never rests, and traverses immense spaces every day; and this great movement is not an exercise of hunting, nor pursuit of prey, nor even of discovery; for he does not hunt; but, it seems that the flight is his natural state, his favorite situation. One can not help but admire the manner in which he executes it. Its long, narrow wings seem motionless; it is the tail that believes to direct all evolutions, and the tail is not mistaken: it acts constantly. He rises without effort; it descends as if it slipped on an inclined plane; it seems rather to swim than to fly; it precipitates its course, it slows it down, stops, and remains as suspended or fixed in the same place, for hours on end. One can not perceive any movement in its wings: you would open your eyes like the door of an oven, that it would be all the more useless. Everyone has the good sense to confess without difficulty (although with a little bad grace) that he does not at first sight notice the report, however distant he may be, that I point out between the beauty of the flight of milan royal, and that of the figure of the child, rising gently, above the uncovered coffin, like a water-lily which pierces the surface of the waters; and this is precisely what the unpardonable fault of the irremovable situation of a lack of repentance, touching the voluntary ignorance in which it is stagnating, consists. This relation of calm majesty between the two terms of my mocking comparison is already all too common, and of a symbol sufficiently comprehensible, is more astonishing than that which can have, as the only excuse, the same vulgarity which makes a profound sense of unjust indifference call upon every object or spectacle that is attained. As if what is seen daily should none the less awaken the attention of our admiration! Arrived at the entrance of the cemetery, the procession hastened to stop; its intention is not to go further. The gravedigger completes the digging of the pit; the coffin is deposited there with all the precautions taken in such cases; some unexpected shovelfuls of earth come to cover the child's body. The priest of the religions, in the midst of the affected audience, uttered a few words to bury the dead man even more in the imagination of the assistants. "He says he ' astonishes much that so many tears are poured out for an act of such insignificance. Textual. But he fears not to qualify sufficiently what he claims to be an incontestable happiness. If he had believed that death was so unsympathetic in his naivete, he would have renounced his mandate, in order not to increase the legitimate grief of the many relatives and friends of the deceased; but a secret voice warns him to give them some consolations, which will not be useless, even if it were only that which would give the hope of an approaching encounter in the heavens between the one who died and those who survived. " Maldoror fled at full gallop, seeming to direct his course towards the walls of the cemetery. The sabots of his courier raised a false crown of thick dust around his master. You others can not know the name of this rider; but I know it. He approached more and more; his figure of platinum was beginning to become perceptible, though the lower part was entirely wrapped in a cloak, which the reader took care not to take from his memory, and which only allowed his eyes to be seen. In the midst of his speech, the priest of religion suddenly turns pale, for his ear recognizes the irregular gallop of that celebrated white horse which never abandoned his master. "Yes," he added again, "my confidence is great in this next meeting; then it will be understood, better than before, what sense should be attached to the temporary separation of soul and body. Anyone who believes himself to be living on this earth is lulled by an illusion of which it would be important to accelerate the evaporation. "The noise of the gallop grew more and more; and as the rider, clasping the horizon line, appeared in sight, in the optic field embraced by the gate of the cemetery, as rapid as a cyclone giratory, the priest of the religions more seriously resumed: "You do not seem you doubt that this disease, which sickness forced to know only the first phases of life, and which the pit has just received in its bosom, is the undoubted living; but at least know that one, whose equivocal silhouette is carried by a nervous horse, and on which I advise you to fix your eyes as soon as possible, for it is but one point,

"Every night, at a time when sleep has reached its greatest degree of intensity, an old spider of the great species slowly comes out of a hole placed on the ground at one of the intersections of the angles from the room. She listens attentively if any rustle still stirs her mandibles in the atmosphere. Considering its conformation as an insect, it can not do less, if it pretends to increase brilliant personifications the treasures of literature, than to attribute mandibles to the rustle. When she has assured herself that silence reigns in the neighborhood, she withdraws her various parts of her body successively from the depths of her nest, without the help of meditation, and advances at a pace towards my bed. Remarkable thing! me who makes sleep and nightmares go back, I feel paralyzed in the totality of my body, when it climbs along the ebony feet of my satin bed. She hugs my throat with her legs, and sucks my blood with her belly. Quite simply! How many liters of a purple liquor, of which you are not unaware of the name, has she not been busy, since she has been performing the same merry-go-round with a persistence worthy of a better cause? I do not know what I have done to her, that she should behave in this way to me. Did I crush a paw out of inattention? Did I take her off? These two hypotheses, which are subject to doubt, are not capable of sustaining a serious examination; they do not even have any trouble in provoking a shrug in my shoulders and a smile on my lips, although one must not laugh at anyone. Beware, black tarantula; if your conduct is not excused by an irrefutable syllogism, one night I shall awake with a start, by a last effort of my agonizing will, I will break the charm with which you retain my limbs in immobility, and I will crush you between the bones of my fingers, like a piece of soft matter. However, I vaguely remember that I gave you permission to let your legs climb on the hatching of the breast, and from there to the skin that covers my face; that therefore I have no right to compel you. Oh! who will disentangle my confused memories! I give him as a reward what remains of my blood: by counting the last drop inclusively, there is to fill at least half a cup of orgy. "He speaks, and he never ceases to undress. He presses one leg on the mattress, and on the other, pressing the sapphire parquet to remove it, he is lying in a horizontal position. He resolved not to close his eyes, in order to await his enemy with a firm foot. But does it not always take the same resolution, and is it not always destroyed by the inexplicable image of its fatal promise? He says nothing, and resigns himself with grief; for to him the oath is sacred. He wraps himself majestically in the folds of the silk, disdains to interlace the golden acorns of his curtains, and, pressing the wavy curls of his long black hair on the fringes of the velvet cushion, he feels with his hand , the broad wound of his neck, in which the tarantula has become accustomed to lodge, as in a second nest, while his face breathes satisfaction. He hopes that this present night (hope with him!) Will see the last representation of the immense suction; for his only wish would be for the executioner to finish his life: death, and he will be satisfied. Look at this old spider of the great species, which slowly comes out of a hole placed on the ground at one of the intersections of the corners of the room. We are no longer in the narrative. She listens attentively if any rustle still stirs her mandibles in the atmosphere. Alas! we have now arrived in the real world, as far as the tarantula is concerned, and, although an exclamation point may be placed at the end of each sentence, it may not be a reason for to dispense! It ' is assured that silence reigns in the neighborhood; she succeeded in withdrawing the various parts of her body successively from the depths of her nest, without the help of meditation, and advancing with a step towards the bed of the solitary man. For a moment she stopped; but it is short, this moment of hesitation. She told herself that it was not yet time to cease torturing, and that the condemned man must first be given the plausible reasons which determined the perpetuality of the torture. She climbed up next to the sleeping ear. If you wish not to lose a single word of what she is about to say, do not consider the foreign occupations which obstruct the portico of your mind, and at least be grateful for the interest I have in you, by making your presence attend the theatrical scenes which seem to me worthy of exciting a real attention on your part; for what would prevent me from keeping to myself the events which I recount? "Wake up, love flame of the old days, gaunt skeleton. The time has come to stop the hand of justice. We will not make you wait long for the explanation you wish. You're listening to us, are not we? But do not move your limbs; you are still under our magnetic power today, and the encephalic atony persists: it is for the last time. What impression does the figure of Elsinore make in your imagination? You forgot it! And this Reginald, proud, have you engraved his features in your faithful brain? Look at him hidden in the folds of the curtains; his mouth is bent toward thy forehead; but he dares not speak to you, for he is more timid than I am. I'll tell you an episode of your youth, and put you back on the path of memory ... "The spider had long opened his belly, from which had sprung two teenagers, with the blue dress , each with a flaming sword in his hand, and who had taken their places beside the bed, as if to guard henceforth the sanctuary of sleep. "This one, who has not yet stopped looking at you, for he loved you very much, was the first of us to whom you gave your love. But you often made him suffer by the brusqueness of your character. He never ceased to employ his efforts in producing no cause of complaint against him: an angel would not have succeeded. You asked him, one day, he wanted to go and bathe with you on the shore of the sea. Both of you, like two swans, were at the same time lined with a rock. Eminent divers, you slipped into the watery mass, arms extended between the head and meeting in hands. For a few minutes, you swam between two currents. You reappeared at a great distance, your hair intermingled with each other, and dripping with salty liquid. But what mystery had passed under the water, so that a long trace of blood could be seen through the waves? When you came back to the surface, you continued to swim, and you pretended not to notice your companion's growing weakness. He was rapidly losing his strength, and yet you were pushing your broad breasts towards the misty horizon, which was fading before you. The wounded man uttered cries of distress, and made him deaf. Reginald struck the echo of the syllables of your name three times, and three times you answered with a cry of voluptuousness. He was too far from the shore to return, and tried in vain to follow the furrows of your passage in order to reach you, and rest his hand for a moment on your shoulder. The negative hunting lasted for an hour, losing his strength, and you, feeling yours grow. Despairing of equaling your speed, he made a short prayer to the Lord to recommend his soul to him, placed himself on his back, as when the plank was made, so that the heart could beat violently beneath his breast, death would come, in order not to wait any longer. At this moment your vigorous limbs were as far as the eye could see, fast as a probe that is allowed to spin. A bark, which had just returned from placing its nets in the open sea, passed through these parts. The fishermen took Reginald for a shipwrecked man, and hailed him, unconscious, in their boat. There was a wound on the right flank; each of these experienced sailors expressed the opinion that no point of reef or fragment of rock could pierce a hole so microscopic and at the same time so deep. A sharp weapon, as a sharp stiletto would be, could alone assume the rights to the paternity of such a fine wound. He would never tell the various phases of the plunge, through the bowels of the waves, and this secret he has kept until now. Tears now flow on her cheeks a little discolored, and fall upon your sheets: the memory is sometimes more bitter than the thing. But I will not feel pity: it would show you too much esteem. Do not roll their furious eyes in their orbit. Stay calm rather. You know you can not move. Besides, I have not finished my narrative.-Raise your sword, Reginald, and do not forget so easily vengeance. Who knows? perhaps one day she would come to reproach you.-Later, you conceived of remorse, the existence of which must have been ephemeral; you resolved to redeem your fault by the choice of another friend, in order to bless and honor him. By this expiatory means, you effaced the spots of the past, and made you fall back on the one who became the second victim, the sympathy you had not shown to the other. Vain hope; the character does not change from one day to another, and your will remained like itself. I, Elseneur, saw you for the first time, and from that moment I could not forget you. We looked at each other for a few moments, and began to smile. I lowered my eyes, because I saw in yours a supernatural flame. I wondered whether by a dark night you had let yourself fall secretly from the surface of some star; for, confessing it now, that it is not necessary to pretend, you did not resemble the marauders of humanity; but an aureole of sparkling rays enveloped the periphery of your forehead. I would have liked to tie intimate relationships with you; my presence dared not approach the striking novelty of this strange nobility, and a tenacious terror roamed about me. Why have I not listened to these warnings of conscience? Precedent pressures. Noticing my hesitation, you blushed in your turn, and thrust your arm. I put my hand courageously into yours, and after this action I felt stronger; now a breath of your intelligence had passed through me. With hair in the wind and breathing in the breath of the breezes, we walked for a few moments before us, through thick bushes of lentisks, jasmines, grenadiers and orange trees, the scents of which we intoxicated. A wild boar brushed our clothes at every race, and a tear fell from his eye, when he saw me with you. I did not explain his conduct. We arrived at nightfall before the gates of a populous city. The profiles of the domes, the arrows of the minarets and the marble balls of the belvederes cut their indentations vigorously through the darkness on the intense blue of the sky. But you would not rest in this place, although we were overwhelmed with fatigue. We passed the bottom of the external fortifications like nocturnal jackals; we avoided the encounter of the sentinels on the watch; and we managed to move away, through the opposite door, to this solemn meeting of reasonable animals, civilized like beavers. The flight of the lantern-carrying fulgore, the crackling of dry grass, the intermittent howlings of some distant wolf, accompanied the darkness of our uncertain march through the country. What were your valid motives for escaping from human beehives? I asked myself this question with some confusion; my legs, moreover, began to refuse me a service which had been too long prolonged. At last we reached the edge of a thick wood, the trees of which were interlaced by a clutter of tall, inextricable lianas, parasitic plants, and cactus with monstrous thorns. You stopped in front of a birch tree. You tell me to kneel to prepare to die; you gave me a quarter of an hour to get out of this land. A few furtive glances during our long run, thrown stealthily at me, when I did not observe you, certain gestures of which I had noticed the irregularity of measurement and movement presented themselves immediately to my memory, as the open pages of a book. My suspicions were confirmed. Too weak to fight against you, you knocked me down, hurricane kills aspen leaf. One of your knees on my chest, and the other on the damp grass, while one of your hands stopped the binarity of my arms in his vice, I saw the other take out a knife, your belt. My resistance was almost nil, and I closed my eyes. The trampling of a herd of oxen was heard at some distance, brought by the wind. He was advancing like a locomotive, harassed by the stick of a shepherd and the jaws of a dog. There was no time to lose, and that's what you understood; fearing not to attain your end, for the approach of an unexpected succor had doubled my muscular power, and perceiving that you could only rest one arm at a time, you contented yourself, by a rapid movement printed on the steel blade, to cut off my right wrist. The piece, exactly detached, fell to the ground. You fled, while I was stunned by the pain. I will not tell you how the shepherd came to my rescue, nor how long it took for my recovery. Let it suffice you to know that this betrayal, which I did not expect, made me want to seek death. I wore my presence in the fighting, in order to offer my breast to blows. I gained glory in the fields of battle; my name had become formidable even to the most intrepid, so much did my artificial hand of iron spread carnage and destruction among the enemy's ranks. However, one day the shells thundered much louder than usual, and the squadrons, removed from their base, swirled like straws, under the influence of the cyclone of death, a cavalier, with a bold gait, advanced before me to dispute the palm of victory. The two armies stopped, motionless, to contemplate us in silence. We fought for a long time, riddled with wounds, and the helmets broken. By mutual agreement we ceased the struggle, in order to rest, and then resume it with more energy. Full of admiration for his adversary, each one raises his own visor: "Elseneur!", "Reginald!" - these were the simple words which our breathless throats uttered at the same time. The latter, fallen into the despair of an inconsolable sadness, had taken, as I did, the career of arms, and the bullets had spared him. Under what circumstances we met again! But your name was not pronounced! He and I swore an eternal friendship; but, of course, different from the first two in which you had been the main actor. An archangel, descended from heaven and messenger of the Lord, commanded us to change into a single spider, and to come every night to suck your throat, until a commandment from above stopped the course of punishment. For nearly ten years, we haunted you. As of today, you are freed from our persecution. The vague promise you spoke of was not yours, but rather the Being who is stronger than you: you yourself understood that it was better to submit to this irrevocable decree. Wake up, Maldoror! The magnetic charm which has weighed on your cerebro-spinal system during the nights of two chandeliers evaporates. "He wakes up as it has been ordered, and sees two celestial forms disappear in the air, arms intertwined. He does not try to go back to sleep. He slowly emerges, one after another, his limbs out of bed. He will warm his icy skin to the reclaimed fire pits of the Gothic fireplace. His shirt alone covered his body. He looks for the crystal carafe in order to moisten his parched palate. He opens the shutters of the window. It rests on the ledge. He contemplates the moon, which pours on its breast a cone of ecstatic rays, in which silver atoms of ineffable sweetness flutter like moths. He waits for the twilight of the morning to come,

END OF CHANT FIVE


CHANT SIX

You, whose enviable calm can not do more than beautify the facies, do not think that it is still necessary to push, in stanzas of fourteen or fifteen lines, as well as a pupil of the fourth, exclamations which will pass for inopportune, and giggling sonorous cochinchinoise chicken, as grotesque as one would be able to imagine, if one took the trouble; but it is better to prove by facts the propositions which are advanced. Would you then pretend that because I would have insulted, as if I were playing, the man, the Creator, and myself, in my explicable hyperbole, my mission was complete? No: the most important part of my work remains none the less, as a task that remains to be done. now the strings of the novel will stir the three personages named above: a less abstract power will thus be communicated to them. Vitality will spread magnificently in the torrent of their circulatory system, and you will see how you will be astonished yourself to meet, where at first you thought you saw only vague entities belonging to the domain of pure speculation, on the one hand, the corporeal organism with its ramifications of nerves and its mucous membranes, on the other, the spiritual principle which presides over the physiological functions of the flesh. They are beings endowed with an energetic life, who, with their arms folded and their breasts in a state of rest, pose prosaically (but I am certain that the effect will be very poetic) before your face, placed only a few steps from you, so that the solar rays, striking first the tiles of the roofs and the lids of the chimneys, will then be reflected, visibly on their terrestrial and material hair. But it will no longer be anathemas, possessors of the specialty of provoking laughter; fictitious personalities who would have done well to remain in the brain of the author; or nightmares placed too much above ordinary existence. Notice that by this very fact my poetry will be all the more beautiful. You will touch with your hands ascending branches of aorta and adrenal capsules; and then feelings! The first five accounts were not useless; they were the frontispiece of my work, the foundation of the construction, the preliminary explanation of my future poetics: and I owed to myself, before closing my suitcase and setting out for the countries of the imagination, to warn the sincere lovers of literature, by the rapid outline of a clear and precise generalization of the goal I had resolved to pursue . Consequently, my opinion is that now, the synthetic part of my work is complete and sufficiently paraphrased. It is through her that you learned that I proposed to attack the man and the one who created him. For now and for later, you do not need to know more! New considerations seem superfluous to me, for they merely repeat, in another, more ample form, it is true, but identical, the statement of the thesis whose end of this day will see the first development. It results, of the preceding observations, that my intention is to undertake, henceforth, the analytical part; it is so true that only a few minutes ago I expressed the ardent desire that you should be imprisoned in the sweat glands of my skin to verify the loyalty of what I affirm, in full knowledge of the facts . I know it is necessary to prove by a large number of proofs the argument which is included in my theorem; Well, these proofs exist, and you know that I do not attack anyone without serious motives! I laugh out loud when I think that you reproach me for shedding bitter accusations against humanity, of which I am one of the members (this one remark would be right) and against Providence: I will not retract my words ; but, recounting what I have seen, it will not be difficult for me, without ambition other than truth, to justify them. Today, I will make a little novel of thirty pages; this measure will remain stationary in the near future. Hoping to see, sooner or later, the consecration of my theories accepted by this or that literary form, I think I have finally found, after some trial and error, my definitive formula. It is the best: since it is the novel! This hybrid preface has been exposed in a way that may not seem natural enough, in that it surprises, as it were, the reader, who does not know very well where one wants first drive; but this feeling of remarkable astonishment, which is generally to be sought to remove those who spend their time from reading books or pamphlets, I have made every effort to produce it. Indeed, it was impossible for me to do less, in spite of my good will: it was only later, when a few novels appeared, that you would better understand the preface of the renegade, with its fuliginous face.

Before I get into the matter, I find it stupid that I should put (I think everyone will not agree, if I am wrong) that I put an open inkstand beside me and a few sheets of unchecked paper . In this way it will be possible for me to begin, with love, by this sixth canto, the series of instructive poems which I long to produce. Dramatic episodes of an implacable utility! Our hero realized that by frequenting the caves, and taking refuge in inaccessible places, he transgressed the rules of logic and committed a vicious circle. For if on the one hand he favored his repugnance to men by compensating for solitude and distance, and circumscribing his limited horizon passively amongst stunted shrubs, brambles and lambrusques; on the other, his activity found no food to feed the minotaur of his perverse instincts. Consequently, he resolved to draw closer to the human agglomerations, convinced that among so many prepared victims, his various passions would find ample means of satisfying themselves. He knew that the police, that shield of civilization, had been pursuing it with perseverance for many years, and that a veritable army of agents and spies were constantly on its heels. Without, however, manage to meet him. His superstitious skill, with a supreme chic, was the most uncontrollable tricks from the point of view of their success, and the order of the most learned meditation. He had a special faculty for taking forms unrecognizable to the practiced eyes. Superior disguises, if I speak as an artist! Accomplishments of a really mediocre effect, when I think of morality. By this point he touched almost the genius. Have you not noticed the grace of a pretty cricket, with alert motions, in the sewers of Paris? There's only that one: it was Maldoror! Magnetising the flourishing capitals, with a pernicious fluid, it brings them into a lethargic state where they are unable to monitor themselves as they should. This state is all the more dangerous because it is not suspected. Today he is in Madrid; to-morrow he will be at St. Petersburg; yesterday he was in Peking. However, a place which is filled with terror by the exploits of this poetic Rocambola, is a work beyond the possible forces of my thick ratiocination. This bandit is, perhaps, seven hundred leagues from this country; maybe it is a few steps away from you. It is not easy to destroy men entirely, and the laws are there; but one can, with patience, exterminate, one by one, the humanitarian ants. Now, since the days of my birth, when I lived with the first ancestors of our race, yet inexperienced in the tension of my snares; from distant times, placed beyond history, where, in subtle metamorphoses, I ravaged the countries of the globe at different times by conquest and carnage, and spread civil war among the citizens, 'have I not already crushed under my heels, member by member, or collectively, whole generations, whose innumerable number would not be difficult to conceive? The radiant past has made brilliant promises in the future: it will hold them. For the raking of my sentences, I will inevitably use the natural method, downshifting even among the savages, in order that they may give me lessons. Gentlemen simple and majestic, their graceful mouth ennoblates everything that flows from their lips tattooed. I have just proved that nothing is laughable in this planet. Planet comical, but superb. Taking a style that some will find naive (when it is so profound), I will make it serve to interpret ideas which, unfortunately, may not seem grandiose! By this very fact, stripping me of the light and skeptical gaits of the " ordinary conversation, and, prudent enough not to ask ... I do not know what I meant to say, for I do not remember the beginning of the sentence. But know that poetry is found wherever there is not the smile, stupidly mocking, of man, with the figure of a duck. I'll blow my nose first, because I need it; and then, powerfully aided by my hand, I will take again the pen-holder which my fingers had dropped. How could the bridge of the Carrousel maintain the constancy of its neutrality, when he heard the heart-rending cries which the bag seemed to push? is not the smile, stupidly mocking, of the man, to the figure of duck. I'll blow my nose first, because I need it; and then, powerfully aided by my hand, I will take again the pen-holder which my fingers had dropped. How could the bridge of the Carrousel maintain the constancy of its neutrality, when he heard the heart-rending cries which the bag seemed to push? is not the smile, stupidly mocking, of the man, to the figure of duck. I'll blow my nose first, because I need it; and then, powerfully aided by my hand, I will take again the pen-holder which my fingers had dropped. How could the bridge of the Carrousel maintain the constancy of its neutrality, when he heard the heart-rending cries which the bag seemed to push?

I

The shops of the Rue Vivienne display their riches with their eyes amazed. Enlightened by numerous gas spouts, mahogany cabinets and gold watches spread dazzling lights through the showcases. Eight o'clock struck the Exchange clock: it's not late! Scarcely had the last blow of a hammer been heard, than the street, whose name was quoted, began to tremble, and shook its foundations from the Place Royale to the Boulevard Montmartre. The walkers hurried on, and retired thoughtfully into their houses. A woman faints and falls on the asphalt. No one raises it: it is a long time for each one to leave this spot. The shutters close with impetuosity, and the inhabitants sink into their blankets. It seems that the Asian plague has revealed its presence. Thus, while the greater part of the town prepares to swim in the rejoicings of the nocturnal feasts, the Rue Vivienne is suddenly frozen by a sort of petrification. Like a heart that ceases to love, it has its extinct life. But soon the news of the phenomenon is spreading among the other strata of the population, and a dreary silence hangs over the august capital. Where have they gone, gas pipes? What have they become, the saleswomen of love? Nothing ... loneliness and darkness! An owl, flying in a rectilinear direction, whose paw is broken, passes over the Madeleine, and takes its rise towards the barrier of the throne, exclaiming, "A misfortune is preparing." Now, in this place that my pen (this true friend who serves me as a comrade) has just made mysterious, if you look on the side where the Rue Colbert enters the Rue de Vivienne, you will see, at the angle formed by the crossing these two paths, a figure showing his figure, and directing his light march towards the boulevards. But if we approach more closely, so as not to bring to ourselves the attention of this passer-by, we perceive, with a pleasant astonishment, that he is young! From a distance it would have been taken for a mature man. The sum of days no longer counts, when it comes to appreciating the intellectual capacity of a serious figure. I know myself to read age in the physiognomic lines of the front: he is sixteen and four months old! It is as beautiful as the retractility of the greenhouses of birds of prey; or, as the uncertainty of the muscular movements in the wounds of the soft parts of the posterior cervical region; or rather, like that perpetual rat-trap, always retained by the caught animal, which can take rodents indefinitely, and even function under the straw; and above all, as the chance encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella! Mervyn, the son of blonde England, has just taken a lesson in fencing from his teacher, and, wrapped up in his Scottish tartan, returns to his parents. It is half-past eight, and he hopes to arrive at his house at nine o'clock. On his part, it is a great presumption to pretend to be certain of knowing the future. Can not some unexpected obstacle embarrass him? And would this circumstance be so infrequent that he should take it upon himself to regard it as an exception? What does he consider rather as an abnormal fact, the possibility which he has hitherto had of feeling himself deprived of anxiety and, so to speak, happy? By what right, indeed, would he pretend to gain his home unharmed, when someone is watching him and following him behind as his future prey? (It would be very unfamiliar to his profession as a sensational writer, not to at least put forward the restrictive interrogations after which immediately comes the sentence I am about to finish.) You recognized the hero imaginary that, for a long time, breaks by the pressure of his individuality my unhappy intelligence! Sometimes Maldoror approaches Mervyn, to engrave in his memory the features of this adolescent; sometimes, the body thrown back, it retreats on itself like the boomerang of Australia, in the second period of its journey, or rather, like a machine infernal. Undecided about what to do. But his consciousness experiences no symptom of the most embryogenic emotion, as you would suppose. I saw him move away for a moment in an opposite direction: was he overwhelmed by remorse? But he retraced his steps again. Mervyn does not know why his temporal arteries beat vigorously, and he presses his steps, obsessed by a fright with which he and you are vainly seeking the cause. We must take into account its application to discover the enigma. Why does not he turn around? He would understand everything. Are we ever thinking of the simplest means of putting an end to an alarming state? When a barrier-walker crosses a suburb of the suburbs, a white wine-bowl in his throat and a tattered blouse, if in the corner of a post he sees an old muscular cat, contemporary with the revolutions to which our fathers, contemplating the melancholy rays of the moon, which fall upon the sleeping plain, he advances curiously in a curved line, and beckons to a cackling dog, which rushes. The noble animal of the feline race awaits his adversary with courage, and disputes his life dearly. Tomorrow some ragpicker will buy an electrifiable skin. Why did he not run away? C ' was so easy. But in the present case. Mervyn further complicates the danger by his own ignorance. It has, as it were, a few gleams, which are exceedingly rare, it is true, of which I shall not stop to show the vagueness which covers them; however, it is impossible for him to guess the reality. He is not a prophet, I do not say the contrary, and he does not recognize the faculty of being. Arriving on the main thoroughfare, turn right and cross the Boulevard Poissonnière and boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. At this point, he advances in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, leaves behind him the landing-place of the Strasbourg railway, and stops before a high gate, before he has reached the superposition perpendicular to Lafayette Street. Since you advise me to finish the first stanza in this place, I am willing, this time, to obey your desire. Do you know that when I think of the iron ring hidden under the stone by the hand of a maniac, an invincible thrill passes through my hair?

II

He pulls the copper button, and the modern hotel gate rotates on its hinges. He paces the courtyard, strewn with fine sand, and crosses the eight steps of the steps. The two statues, placed to the right and left as the guardians of the aristocratic villa, do not bar her passage. He who has denied everything, father, mother, Providence, love, ideal, in order to think only of himself, has been careful not to follow the steps that preceded. He saw him enter a spacious living room on the ground floor, with carnelian woodwork. The son of a family throws himself on a sofa, and the emotion prevents him from speaking. His mother, in the long, dragging robe, hurries around him, and surrounds him with his arms. His brothers, less elder than himself, group themselves around the piece of furniture, loaded with a burden; they do not know life sufficiently, to get a clear idea of ??the scene that is happening. Finally, the father raises his cane, and lowers on the assistants a look full of authority. Pressing the wrist on the arms of the chair, he moved away from his usual seat, and advanced anxiously, though weakened by the years, towards the immobile body of his first-born. He speaks in a foreign language, and everyone listens to them in a respectful reverie: "Who put the boy in this state? The misty Thames will still carry a considerable amount of silt before my forces are completely exhausted. Conservative laws do not seem to exist in this inhospitable country. He would feel the strength of my arm, if I knew the culprit. Although I have retired, in the remoteness of maritime combats, my sword of Commodore, suspended from the wall, is not yet rusty. Moreover, it is easy to iron the thread. Mervyn, be calm; I will give orders to my servants, in order to meet the traces of those whom I shall henceforth seek, in order to destroy him with my own hand. Woman, take off thence, and go and crouch in a corner; your eyes wait for me, and you better close the duct of your lacrimal glands. My son, I implore you, awaken your senses, and recognize your family; it is your father who speaks to you. "The mother kept aloof, and to obey her master's orders she took a book in her hands, and endeavored to remain quiet, of the danger that the one whom his womb bred. "... Children, go and enjoy yourself in the park, and take care, while admiring the swimming of the swans, not to fall into the pond ... "The brothers, their hands hanging, remain mute; all of them, with their toque surmounted by a feather torn from the wing of the Carolina nightie, with the velvet trousers stopping at their knees, and the red silk stockings, are taken by the hand and withdraw from the drawing-room , being careful not to squeeze the ebony floor tip-toe. I am certain that they will not amuse themselves, and that they will walk with gravity in the paths of plane trees. Their intelligence is precocious. So much the better for them. "... Useless care, I cradle you in my arms, and you are insensitive to my supplications. Would you like to raise your head? I will kiss your knees, if need be. But no ... it falls inert. "My sweet master, if thou permitest thy slave, I shall seek in my apartment a bottle filled with turpentine, and which I usually use when the headache invades my temples, after returning from the theater; when the reading of a moving narrative, recorded in the British annals of the chivalrous history of our ancestors, throws my thoughtful thought into the peat bogs of slumber. "-" Woman, I did not give you the floor, and you had no right to take it. Since our legitimate union, no cloud has come between us. I am satisfied with you, I have never had any reproaches to make to you, and vice versa. Go and fetch in your apartment a bottle filled with turpentine. I know he ' find one in the drawers of your commode, and you will not come and tell me. Hurry up the steps of the spiral staircase, and come back to me with a happy face. "But the sensitive Londoner has barely reached the first steps (she does not run as fast as a person from the lower classes) that already one of her damsels of atour comes down from the first floor, her cheeks flushed with sweat, with the bottle which, perhaps, contains the liqueur of life in its crystal walls. The young lady bows gracefully in offering her offer, and the mother, with her royal gait, has advanced towards the fringes which border the sofa, the only object which preoccupies her tenderness. The Commodore, with a proud but benevolent gesture, accepts the bottle from his wife's hands. A scarf, India is soaked in it, and the head of Mervyn is surrounded by the orbicular meanders of the silk. It breathes salts; he shakes an arm. The traffic revives, and you can hear the joyful cries of a kakato of the Philippines, perched on the window. "Who goes there? Do not stop me. Where am I?" Is it a grave that supports my heavy limbs? The planks seem sweet to me... The medallion which contains the portrait of my mother, is it still attached to my neck? ... Back, malefactor, with disheveled head. He could not reach me, and I left a piece of my doublet in his fingers. Untie the chains of the bulldogs, for a recognizable thief can break into our house that night, while we are plunged into sleep. My father and my mother, I recognize you, and I thank you for your care. Call my little brothers. It was for them that I bought some pralines, and I want to kiss them. "At these words he falls into a deep, lethargic state. The doctor, who had been summoned in all haste, rubbed his hands and exclaimed: "The crisis has passed. Everything is fine. Tomorrow your son will wake up ready. All of you, go to your respective beds, I order it, that I may remain alone by the side of the patient, until the appearance of the dawn and song of the nightingale. "Maldoror, hidden behind the door , has lost no word. Now he knows the character of the inhabitants of the hotel, and will act accordingly. He knows where Mervyn lives, and does not want to know more. He entered in a notebook the name of the street and the number of the building. C ' is the main one. It is safe not to forget them. He advances, like a hyena, without being seen, and runs along the sides of the court. He climbs the gate with agility, and entangles himself for a moment in the iron points; with one bound, he is on the road. He walks away at a wolf's pace. "He took me for a malefactor," he exclaimed; "he is an imbecile." I should like to find a man exempt from the accusation which the patient has made against me. I did not take off a doublet of his doublet, as he said. Simple hypnagogic hallucination caused by fright. It was not my intention today to take possession of him; for I have other plans for this shy teenager. "Go to the side of the swan-lake; and, I will tell you later why he '

III

Mervyn is in her room; he received a missive. Who wrote him a letter? His trouble prevented him from thanking the postal agent. The envelope has black borders, and the words are traced in a hasty way. Will he carry this letter to his father? And if the signatory expressly forbids it? Full of anguish, he opens his window to breathe the scents of the atmosphere; the rays of the sun reflect their prismatic irradiations on the Venice ice and damask curtains. He throws the missive aside, among the books with golden slice and albums with mother-of-pearl cover, dotted on the repoussé leather that covers the surface of his school desk. He opens his piano, and runs his tapered fingers on the ivory keys. The brass strings do not resound. This indirect warning impels him to take back vellum; but he drew back, as if he had been offended by the hesitation of the addressee. Taken to this trap, Mervyn's curiosity increases and he opens the piece of prepared rag. He had only seen his own handwriting until then. "Young man, I am interested in you: I want to make your happiness. I will take you as a companion, and we will accomplish long wanderings in the islands of Oceania. Mervyn, you know I love you, and I do not need to prove it to you. You will grant me your friendship, I am convinced of it. When you know me more, you will not repent of the confidence you have shown me. I will preserve you from the perils that your inexperience will run. I will be a brother to you, and good advice will not fail you. For longer explanations, find yourself, the day after to-morrow morning, at five o'clock, on the bridge of the Carrousel. If I have not arrived, wait for me; but, I hope to be delivered at the right time. You do the same. An Englishman will not easily give up the opportunity to see clearly in his affairs. Young man, I greet you, and see you soon. Do not show this letter to anyone. "" Three stars instead of a signature, "cries Mervyn; and a stain of blood at the bottom of the page! "Abundant tears flow over the curious phrases his eyes have devoured, and which open to his mind the unlimited field of uncertain and new horizons. It seems to him (it is only since the reading that he has just finished) that his father is a little severe and his mother too majestic. He has reasons which have not come to my knowledge and which, therefore, I can not pass on to you, to insinuate that his brothers do not agree with him either. He hides this letter in his chest. His teachers observed that on that day he did not look like himself; his eyes dimmed immeasurably, and the veil of excessive reflection was lowered over the peri-orbital region. Each professor blushed, for fear of not being at the intellectual height of his pupil, and yet, for the first time, the latter neglected his duties and did not work. In the evening, the family gathered in the dining room, decorated with antique portraits. Mervyn admires the dishes laden with succulent meats and odoriferous fruits, but he does not eat; the multicolored streams of the Rhine wines and the sparkling ruby ??of the Champagne flow into the narrow, high sections of Bohemian stone and leave even its indifferent view. He leans his elbow on the table, and remains absorbed in his thoughts as a sleepwalker. The Commodore, with his face furrowed by the foam of the sea, bends to his wife's ear: "The elder has changed his character since the day of the crisis; he was already too much inclined to absurd ideas; today he is daydreaming even more of custom. But I was not like that when I was old. Pretend to see nothing. It is here that an effective remedy, material or moral, would easily find its use. Mervyn, you who enjoy reading books of travel and natural history, I will read you a story that will not displease you. Let me listen attentively; every one will find his profit, I, the first. And you children, learn, by the attention that you will lend to my words, to perfect the design of your style and to realize the slightest intentions of an author. "As if this nest of adorable mustards could have understood what rhetoric was! He said, and, with a gesture of his hand, one of the brothers goes to the paternal library, and comes back with a volume under his arm. Meanwhile, the canopy and the silverware are removed, and the father takes the book. To this electrifying name of travels, Mervyn raised his head, and endeavored to put an end to his irrelevant meditations. The book is open towards the middle, and the Commodore's metallic voice proves that he was able, as in the days of his glorious youth, to command the fury of men and of tempests. Well before the end of the reading, Mervyn fell back on his elbow, unable to follow the reasoned development of sentences passed to the string and the saponification of mandatory metaphors. The father exclaimed: "That is not what interests him; let us read something else. Lily, woman; you will be happier than I, to drive away the grief of our son's days. "The mother has no hope; however, she seized another book, and the timbre of her soprano voice echoed melodiously in the ears of the product of her conception. But after a few words, discouragement invades her, itself the interpretation of the literary work. The firstborn exclaims, "I am going to bed." He retired, his eyes lowered with a cold fixity, and without adding anything. The dog begins to grow a lugubrious bark, for it does not find this natural behavior, and the wind outside, rushing unevenly through the longitudinal fissure of the window, wavers the flame folded down by two cupolas of pink crystal, the bronze lamp. The mother leans her hands on her forehead, and the father raises his eyes to heaven. The children throw staring glances at the old sailor. Mervyn closes the double door of his room, and his hand runs rapidly over the paper. "I have received your letter at noon, and you will pardon me if I have made you wait for the answer." I do not have the " honor to know you personally, and I did not know if I should write to you. But, as rudeness does not lodge in our house, I have resolved to take up the pen, and to thank you warmly for the interest you take in a stranger. God forbid me not to show gratitude for the sympathy with which you fill me. I know my imperfections, and I am no more proud of them. But if it is proper to accept the friendship of an elderly person, it is also necessary to make him understand that our characters are not the same. Indeed, you seem to be older than me, since you call me a young man, and yet I have doubts about your true age. For how can we reconcile the coldness of your syllogisms with the passion which, in disengagement? It is certain that I will not abandon the place where I was born, to accompany you to distant lands; which would be possible only on condition of asking the authors of my days beforehand, an impatiently awaited permission. But as you enjoined me to keep the secret (in the sense of the cubic word) on this darkly spiritual affair, I will hasten to obey your incontestable wisdom. It seems that she would not be pleased to face the clarity of light. Since you seem to wish me to have confidence in your own person (a wish which is not displaced, I am pleased to confess it), have the goodness, I pray you, to testify to me a similar confidence , and not to pretend to believe that I should be so far from your opinion, that, at the appointed hour, at the appointed hour, I should not be exact at the rendezvous. I will cross the fence wall of the park, for the gate will be closed, and no one will witness my departure. To speak frankly, what would I not do for you, whose inexplicable attachment has quickly revealed itself to my dazzled eyes, especially astonished at such a proof of kindness, to which I made sure that I would not not expected. Because I did not know you. Now I know you. Do not forget the promise you made me to take a walk on the Carrousel bridge. In the case I pass, I have a certainty to no other, to meet you there and touch your hand, provided that this innocent manifestation of a young man who, even yesterday, bowed before the altar of modesty, ought not to offend you by his respectful familiarity. Now, is familiarity not avowable in the case of a strong and ardent intimacy, when the perdition is serious and convinced? And what evil would there be after all, I ask of you, that I say goodbye to you while passing, when the day after tomorrow, whether it rains or not, five o'clock will have sounded? You will appreciate yourself, gentleman, the tact with which I have conceived my letter; for I do not permit myself in a flying leaf, capable of going astray, to tell you more. Your address at the bottom of the page is a rebus. It took me nearly a quarter of an hour to decipher it. I think you have done well, tracing the words in a microscopic manner. I dispense myself from signing, and in this I imitate you: we live in too eccentric a time, to astonish for a moment what might happen. I would be curious to know how you have learned the place where my frozen immobility lies, surrounded by a long row of deserted rooms, the filthy masses of my hours of boredom. How to say that? When I think of you, my chest is agitated, resounding as the collapse of an empire in decadence; for the shadow of your love shows a smile which, perhaps, does not exist: it is so vague, and stirs up its scales so tortuously! In your hands, I give up my impetuous feelings, marble tables all new, and still virgins of mortal contact. Let us take patience, at the first gleams of the morning twilight, and in the expectation of the moment which will throw me into the hideous interlacing of your plague-stricken arms, I humbly bow to your knees, which I press. "After writing this guilty letter, Mervyn the door to the post office and back to bed. Do not expect to find his guardian angel there. The fish tail will only fly for three days, that's true; but unfortunately! the beam will be burnt no less; and a cylindrical-conical ball will pierce the skin of the rhinoceros, despite the snow girl and the beggar! It is because the crowned fool will have told the truth about the fidelity of the fourteen daggers. After writing this guilty letter, Mervyn took her to the post office and returned to bed. Do not expect to find his guardian angel there. The fish tail will only fly for three days, that's true; but unfortunately! the beam will be burnt no less; and a cylindrical-conical ball will pierce the skin of the rhinoceros, despite the snow girl and the beggar! It is because the crowned fool will have told the truth about the fidelity of the fourteen daggers. After writing this guilty letter, Mervyn took her to the post office and returned to bed. Do not expect to find his guardian angel there. The fish tail will only fly for three days, that's true; but unfortunately! the beam will be burnt no less; and a cylindrical-conical ball will pierce the skin of the rhinoceros, despite the snow girl and the beggar! It is because the crowned fool will have told the truth about the fidelity of the fourteen daggers.

VI

I noticed that I had only one eye in the middle of the forehead! O silver mirrors, incrusted in the panels of the vestibules, how many services have you not rendered me by your reflective power! Since the day when an Angora cat gnawed at me for an hour the parietal bump, like a drill bit that pierces the skull, springing abruptly on my back, because I had boiled its young in a vat full of water, alcohol, I have not ceased to throw the arrow of torment against myself. To-day, under the impression of the wounds which my body has received under various circumstances, either by the fatality of my birth, or by the fact of my own fault; overwhelmed by the consequences of my moral fall (some have been fulfilled, who will foresee the others?); an impassive spectator of the acquired or natural monstrosities which decorate the aponeuroses and the intellect of the speaker, I cast a long glance of satisfaction on the duality that composes me ... and I find myself beautiful! Beautiful as the vice of congenital conformation of the sexual organs of man, consisting of the relative brevity of the canal of the urethra and the division or absence of its lower wall, so that this canal opens at a distance variable of the glans and below the penis; or, like the fleshy caruncle, of conical shape, furrowed by fairly deep transverse wrinkles, which rises on the base of the upper beak of the turkey; or rather, as the truth which follows: "The system of ranges, modes, and their harmonic chain is not based on invariable natural laws, but it is, on the contrary, the consequence of aesthetic principles which have varied with the progressive development of humanity, and which will still vary, and above all, like a corvette armored with turrets! Yes, I maintain the accuracy of my assertion. I have no presumptuous illusion, I boast of it, and I would find no profit in the lie; therefore, what I have said, you must not put any hesitation in believing it. For why should I inspire myself with horror at the glowing testimonies which spring from my conscience? I do not envy the Creator; but let him descend the river of my destiny through a growing series of glorious crimes. Otherwise, raising to the height of his forehead a look irritated by any obstacle, I will make him understand that he does not, is not the only master of the universe; that several phenomena, which are directly connected with a deeper knowledge of the nature of things, lay down in favor of the contrary opinion, and oppose a formal contradiction to the viability of the unity of power. It is because we are two of us contemplating the lashes of the eyelids, you see, and you know that more than once, in my mouth without lips, resounded the clarion of victory. Farewell, illustrious warrior; your courage in misfortune inspires esteem with your most fierce enemy; but Maldoror will find you soon to dispute the prey, which is called Mervyn. Thus will be fulfilled the prophecy of the cock, when he sees the future at the bottom of the candelabrum. Would to the sky that crab cake meets in time the caravan of the pilgrims,

V

On a bench at the Palais Royal, on the left side, and not far from the water-room, an individual, coming out of the Rue de Rivoli, came and sat down. His hair is disheveled, and his clothes reveal the corrosive action of a prolonged destitution. He dug a hole in the ground with a pointed piece of wood, and filled the earth with the hollow of his hand. He carried this food to his mouth and threw it back in haste. He got up, and, applying his head against the bench, he directed his legs up. But as this funambule-like situation is outside the laws of gravity which govern the center of gravity, it falls heavily on the board, the arms hanging, the cap hiding half of the figure, and the legs beating the gravel in a situation of unstable equilibrium, less and less reassuring. He remains in this position for a long time. To the north entrance, next to the rotunda which contains a coffee-room, the arm of our hero is leaning against the grating. Its view traverses the surface of the rectangle, so as not to let any perspective escape. His eyes return to themselves, after the investigation has been completed, and he sees, in the middle of the garden, a man who makes staggering gymnastics with a bench on which he endeavors to strengthen himself by performing miracles of strength and skill. But what can the best intention, brought to the service of a just cause, against the disorders of mental alienation? He advanced towards the madman, helped him kindly to restore his dignity in a normal position, stretched out his hand, and sat down beside him. He observes that madness is only intermittent; access has disappeared; his interlocutor answers logically to all questions. Is it necessary to relate the meaning of his words? Why, with a blasphemous eagerness, to reopen the pages of human miseries to any page? Nothing is more fruitful. Even if I had no real events to make you hear, I would invent imaginary tales to transfer them into your brain. But the patient has not become so for his own pleasure; and the sincerity of his intercourse blends perfectly with the credulity of the reader. "My father was a carpenter in the Rue de la Verrerie. Let the death of the three Marguerites fall upon his head, and that the beak of the canary gnaws at him eternally the axis of the ocular bulb! He had contracted the habit of getting drunk; at such moments, when he returned to the house, after running the counters of the cabarets, his fury became almost immeasurable, and he struck indiscriminately the objects which presented themselves before his eyes. But soon, before the reproaches of his friends, he corrected himself completely, and became taciturn. No one could approach him, not even our mother. He retained a secret resentment against the idea of ??duty which prevented him from behaving as he pleased. I had bought a canary for my three sisters; it was for my three sisters that I had bought a canary. They had locked him in a cage above the door, and the passers-by stopped, each time, to listen to the songs of the bird, admire its fleeting grace and study its learned forms. More than once my father had ordered the cage and its contents to disappear, for he imagined that the canary was making fun of his person by throwing him the bouquet of aerial cavatines of his talent as a vocalist. He detached the cage from the nail, and slipped from the chair, blinded by anger. A slight excoriation at the knee was the trophy of his company. After a few seconds pressing the swollen part with a chip, he lowered his trousers, frowning, took better precautions, put the cage under his arm and walked to the back of his studio. There, in spite of the cries and supplications of his family (we were very fond of this bird, which was, for us, like the genius of the house) he crushed the wicker box with his heels, while a varlop, whirling round his head, held the assistants at a distance. By chance, the canary did not die at once; this feathered flake still lived, despite the blood smear. The carpenter walked away, and closed the door noisily. My mother and I strove to hold back the life of the bird, ready to escape; it reached its end, and the motion of its wings no longer offered itself to view, but as the mirror of the supreme convulsion of agony. Meanwhile, the three Marguerites, when they perceived that all hope was about to be lost, clasped each other by the hand, and the living chain went squatting, after having pushed a few fat, behind the staircase, next to our dog's kennel. My mother did not discontinue her task, and held the canary in her fingers, to warm it with her breath. As for me, I ran madly through all the rooms, bumping into the furniture and the instruments. From time to time one of my sisters showed her head at the bottom of the staircase to inquire about the fate of the unfortunate bird, and withdrew it with sadness. The dog had gone out of her kennel, and as if she had understood the extent of our loss, she licked the robe of the three Marguerites with the tongue of sterile consolation. The canary had but a few moments to live. One of my sisters, in her turn (it was the youngest) presented her head in the dim light formed by the rarefaction of light. She saw my mother turn pale, and the bird, after having, during a flash, raised the neck, by the last manifestation of his nervous system, falling back between his fingers, inert for ever. She announced the news to her sisters. They uttered the rustling of no complaints, no murmurs. Silence reigned in the studio. One could only distinguish the jerky cracking of fragments of the cage which, by virtue of the elasticity of the wood, partly resumed the primordial position of their construction. The three Marguerites let no tears flow, and their faces did not lose their purple freshness; no, they remained motionless. They dragged themselves to the inside of the kennel, and stretched themselves on the straw, one beside the other, while the bitch, passive witness of their maneuver, watched them do with astonishment. Several times my mother called them; such did not render the sound of any answer. Fatigued by the previous emotions, they were asleep, probably! She searched every corner of the house without seeing them. She followed the bitch, who pulled her by the robe, towards the kennel. This woman lowered and placed her head at the entrance. The spectacle she had the opportunity of witnessing, apart from the unhealthy exaggerations of maternal fear, could only be heartbreaking, according to the calculations of my mind. I lit a candle and presented it to her; in this way, no detail escaped him. She brought back her head, covered with straw, from the premature tomb, and said to me: "The three Marguerites are dead." As we could not get them out of this place, they were tightly interwoven together, and went to fetch a hammer in the workshop, to break the canine's house. I immediately set to work on demolition, and the passers-by could believe, if they had any imagination, that work did not hinder us. My mother, impatient of these delays, which, however, were indispensable, broke her nails against the boards. Finally, the operation of the negative deliverance ended; the split kennel opened on all sides; and, after having separated them with difficulty, we removed the daughters of the carpenter one after the other. My mother left the country. I never saw my father again. As for me, it is said that I am mad, and I implore public charity. What I know, is that the canary does not sing any more. "The listener approves in his interior this new example brought to the support of his disgusting theories. As if, because of a man who had once been caught up in wine, he was entitled to accuse the whole of humanity. Such is at least the paradoxical reflection which he seeks to introduce into his mind; but it can not drive away the important lessons of serious experience. He consoled the fool with feigned compassion, and wiped his tears with his own handkerchief. He takes her to a restaurant, and they eat at the same table. They go to a fashion tailor and the protégé is dressed like a prince. They strike at the concierge of a large house in the Rue Saint-Honore, and the madman is installed in a rich apartment on the third floor. The bandit forces him to accept his purse, and, taking the vase of night under the bed, he puts it on the head of Aghone. "I crown you as king of intelligence," he exclaimed, with a premeditated emphasis: "at your slightest call I shall come; draws with my hands in my chests; body and soul I belong to you. At night you will bring back the alabaster crown to its usual place, with the permission of using it; but in the day, as soon as the dawn illuminates the cities, put it on your forehead, as the symbol of your power. The three Marguerites will live again in me, not to mention that I will be your mother. "Then the madman stepped back a few steps, as if he were the prey of an insulting nightmare; the lines of happiness were painted on his face, wrinkled with grief; he knelt, full of humiliation, at the feet of his protector. The recognition had entered, like a poison, into the heart of the crowned fool! He wanted to speak, and his tongue stopped. He leaned his body forward, and he fell back on the floor. The man with the bronze lips withdrew. What was his purpose? To acquire a friend at all times, naive enough to obey the least of his commandments. He could not meet better and chance had favored him. The one whom he found, lying on the bench, no longer knows, from an event of his youth, to recognize good from evil. It is Aghone himself. What was his purpose? To acquire a friend at all times, naive enough to obey the least of his commandments. He could not meet better and chance had favored him. The one whom he found, lying on the bench, no longer knows, from an event of his youth, to recognize good from evil. It is Aghone himself. What was his purpose? To acquire a friend at all times, naive enough to obey the least of his commandments. He could not meet better and chance had favored him. The one whom he found, lying on the bench, no longer knows, from an event of his youth, to recognize good from evil. It is Aghone himself.

VI

The Almighty had sent one of his archangels to earth in order to save the boy from certain death. He will be forced to go down himself! But we have not yet arrived at this part of our narrative, and I see myself obliged to close my mouth, because I can not say everything at once: every trick will appear in its place when the plot of this fiction will not be disadvantageous. In order not to be recognized, the archangel took the form of a crab crab, as large as a vicuña. He stood on the point of a rock in the middle of the sea, and waited for the favorable moment of the tide to make his descent on the shore. The man with the lips of jasper, hidden behind a sinuosity of the beach, watched the animal, a stick in his hand. Who would have liked to read in the minds of these two beings? The first did not conceal the fact that he had a difficult mission to accomplish: "And how to succeed," he exclaimed, as the swelling waves beat his temporary refuge where my master had more than once failed his strength and courage? I am only a limited substance, while the other, no one knows where it comes from and what its ultimate goal is. In his name, the heavenly armies tremble; and more than one tells, in the regions I have left, that Satan himself, Satan, the incarnation of evil, is not so formidable. "The second made the following reflections: they found an echo, even in the azure dome they defiled: "He looks inexperienced; I will settle his account with promptitude. He comes, no doubt, from above, sent by him who fears so much to come himself! We shall see, at work, whether it is as imperious as it seems; he is not an inhabitant of the terrestrial apricot; he betrays his seraphic origin by his wandering and undecided eyes. "The crab cake, which for some time had been looking out over a delimited area of ??the coast, caught sight of our hero (this one then rose from the height of his Herculean size), and apostrophized him in the following terms: "Do not try the struggle and surrender. I am sent by someone who is superior to both of us, in order to load you with chains, and to put the two accomplices of your thought in the impossibility of stirring. Tighten knives and daggers between your fingers, you must henceforth be forbidden to you, believe me; both in your interests and in the interests of others. Dead or alive, I shall have you; I have the order to bring you alive. Do not put me in the obligation to resort to the power that has been lent to me. I shall behave with delicacy; on your side, does not oppose me any resistance. It is thus that I shall acknowledge with eagerness and joy that you will have taken a first step towards repentance. "When our hero heard this harangue, marked by a salt so profoundly comic, he found it difficult to maintain the seriousness on the roughness of his tanned features. But, finally, everyone will not be surprised if I add that he ends up laughing. It was stronger than him! There was no bad intention! He certainly did not want to, attract crab cake reproaches! What efforts he made to drive away the hilarity! How many times did he not press his lips against each other, so as not to appear to offend his overwhelmed interlocutor! Unfortunately his character was part of the nature of humanity, and he laughed like the sheep do! At last he stopped! It was time! He had almost choked! The wind brought this answer to the archangel of the reef: "When your master will not send me snails and crayfish to settle his affairs, and he will deign to parley personally with me, I am sure of it, the means of arranging myself, since I am inferior to the one who sent you, as you have so rightly said. Until then, the ideas of reconciliation, appear premature, and capable of producing only a chimerical result. I am very far from misunderstanding what is supposed in each of your syllables; and, as we might tire our voice unnecessarily, in order to make it go three kilometers, it seems to me that you would act with wisdom, if you descended from your impregnable fortress, and gained the land by swimming: we shall discuss more conveniently the conditions of a surrender which, however legitimate it may be, is finally, for me, a disagreeable prospect. "The archangel, who did not expect this goodwill, from the depths of the crevice his head a notch, and replied, "O Maldoror, has there finally arrived the day when your abominable instincts will see the torch of" unjustifiable pride that leads them to eternal damnation! So I shall be the first to relate this praiseworthy change to the phalanges of the cherubim, happy to find one of their own. You know yourself and you have not forgotten that an era existed where you had the first place among us. Your name flew from mouth to mouth; you are currently the subject of our solitary conversations. Come, come, make a lasting peace with your old master; he will receive you as a lost son, and will not perceive the enormous amount of guilt you have, like a mountain of horns of elk raised by the Indians, piled on your heart. "He said, all the parts of his body from the bottom of the dark opening. He is radiant on the surface of the reef; thus a priest of religions when he has the certainty of bringing back a lost sheep. He will jump on the water, to swim towards the forgiven. But the man with the sapphire lips calculated a treacherous blow long beforehand. His staff is thrown forcefully; after many ricochets on the waves, he will strike at the head the archangel benefactor. The deadly crab falls into the water. The tide floats on the shore. He waited for the tide to make his descent easier. Well, the tide has come; she cradled him with his songs, and softly laid him down on the beach: was not the crab satisfied? What more does he need? And Maldoror, leaning on the sand of the shores, receives in his arms two friends, inseparably united by the hazards of the blade: the corpse crab cake and the homicidal stick! "I have not yet lost my address," he exclaimed; it asks only to be exercised; my arm retains its strength and my eye its correctness. "He looks at the inanimate animal. He is afraid that he will be asked to count the shed blood. Where will he hide the archangel? And, at the same time, he wonders if death has not been instantaneous. He put on his back an anvil and a corpse; he makes his way towards a vast piece of water, all the banks of which are covered and walled up by an inextricable clutter of large rushes. He wanted to take a hammer first, but it is too light a tool, while with a heavier object, if the corpse gives a sign of life, he will place it on the ground and put it in dust, anvil. However, is not the vigor that is lacking on his arm, go; it is the least of his embarrassments. Arrived in sight of the lake, he sees him populated with swans. He said to himself that it was a safe retreat for him; by means of a metamorphosis, without abandoning his charge, he mingles with the band of other birds. Notice the hand of Providence where it was tempted to find it absent, and make your profit from the miracle of which I am about to speak. Black as the wing of a raven, he swam three times among the group of palmipeds, of brilliant whiteness; three times he retained that distinctive color which assimilated it to a block of coal. It is because God, in his justice, did not allow his trick to deceive even a band of swans. In such a way that he remained ostensibly in the interior of the lake; but, every one stood aside, and no bird approached his shameful plumage, to keep him company. And then he circumscribed his dives in a distant bay, at the extremity of the body of water, alone among the inhabitants of the air, as he was among men! Thus he preluded the incredible event of the Place Vendome!

VII

The corsair with golden hair, received the reply of Mervyn. He follows in this singular page the trace of the intellectual troubles of him who wrote it, abandoned to the weak forces of his own suggestion. This one would have done much better to consult his parents, before answering the friendship of the unknown. No profit will result for him to meddle, as principal actor, in this equivocal intrigue. But, finally, he wanted it. At the appointed hour Mervyn, from the door of his house, went straight ahead, following the Boulevard Sebastopol, to the fountain of Saint-Michel. It takes the Quai des Grands-Augustins and crosses the Quai Conti; at the moment when he passed on the Quai Malaquais, he saw a man carrying a bag under his arm walk along the quai du Louvre, parallel to his own direction, and which seems to examine it with attention. The vapors of the morning have dissipated. The two passers-by open at the same time on either side of the Pont du Carrousel. Though they had never seen each other, they recognized each other. True, it was touching to see these two beings, separated by age, bring their souls closer by the grandeur of the feelings. At least, it would have been the opinion of those who would have stopped at this spectacle, that more than one, even with a mathematical mind, would have found it moving. Mervyn, his face in tears, reflected that he met, as it were, at the entrance of life, a precious support in future adversities. Be persuaded that the other said nothing. Here is what he did: he unfolded the sack he carried, cleared the opening, and, seizing the teenager by the head, he made the entire body pass through the canvas envelope. With his handkerchief he knotted the end which served as an introduction. As Mervyn shouted sharply, he removed the bag, as well as a bundle of linen, and several times struck the parapet of the bridge. Then the patient, seeing the creaking of his bones, was silent. A unique scene that no novelist will ever find! A butcher passed by, seated on the meat of his cart. An individual runs to him, and begs him to stop, and says to him: "Here is a dog, shut up in this bag; he has the itch: cut it down as quickly as possible. "The respondent is complacent. The switch, as he leaves, sees a young girl in rags holding out her hand to him. How far then is the height of audacity and impiety? He gives him almsgiving! Tell me if you want me to introduce you, a few hours later, to the door of a slaughterhouse. The butcher returned, and said to his comrades, throwing a burden to the ground: "Let us hurry to kill this mangy dog." They are four, and each one seizes the accustomed hammer. And yet, they hesitated, because the bag moved with force. "What emotion is taking hold of me?" Cried one of them, slowly lowering his arm. "This dog grows, like a child, groans of pain," said another; one would say that he understands the fate awaiting him. "" It is their habit, "replied a third; even when they are not sick, as is the case here, it is sufficient that their master should remain a few days absent from the house, so that they may begin to utter screams which, "Stop!" cried the fourth, before all the arms had risen in cadence to strike resolutely this time on the sack. Stop, I tell you; there is a fact here which escapes us. Who tells you that this canvas contains a dog? I want to make sure of it. "Then, in spite of the mockery of his companions, he untied the package and took Mervyn's members one after the other! He was almost suffocated by the gene of this position. He faints on seeing the light again. A few moments later he gave unmistakable signs of existence. The Savior said: "Learn, on another occasion, to put prudence into your profession. You have almost noticed, for your own sake, that it is useless to practice the non-observance of this law. "Butchers fled. Mervyn, his heart tight and full of disastrous presentiments, returns home and locks himself up in his room. Do I need to insist on this stanza? Eh! who will not deplore the events consumed! Let us wait until the end to make an even more severe judgment. The denouement will precipitate itself; and in these sorts of narratives, where a passion, of whatever kind, being given, it is not afraid of any obstacle to make a passage, there is no need to dilute in a cup the gum lacquer of four hundred banal pages. What can be said in half a dozen stanzas, it must be said, and then be silent. Let us wait until the end to make an even more severe judgment. The denouement will precipitate itself; and in these sorts of narratives, where a passion, of whatever kind, being given, it is not afraid of any obstacle to make a passage, there is no need to dilute in a cup the gum lacquer of four hundred banal pages. What can be said in half a dozen stanzas, it must be said, and then be silent. Let us wait until the end to make an even more severe judgment. The denouement will precipitate itself; and in these sorts of narratives, where a passion, of whatever kind, being given, it is not afraid of any obstacle to make a passage, there is no need to dilute in a cup the gum lacquer of four hundred banal pages. What can be said in half a dozen stanzas, it must be said, and then be silent.

VIII

To mechanically construct the brains of a sleeping tale, it is not enough to dissect nonsense and powerfully stultify the reader's intelligence with renewed doses, so as to render his faculties paralytic for the rest of his life by the infallible law of tiredness; it is necessary, besides, with good magnetic fluid, to put it ingeniously in the somnambulic impossibility of moving, forcing it to obscure its eyes against its natural by the fixity of yours. I mean, in order not to make myself understood better, but only to develop my thoughts which at the same time interest and irritate by a most penetrating harmony, which I do not think is necessary, in order to attain the goal which it is proposed to invent a poetry entirely outside the ordinary course of nature, and whose pernicious breath seems to upset even the absolute truths; but to bring about such a result (which, moreover, conforms to the rules of aesthetics, if one reflects on them properly), is not as easy as one thinks: that is what I meant. That is why I will make every effort to achieve it! If death stops the fantastic leanness of the two long arms of my shoulders, used to the lugubrious crushing of my literary gypsum, I want at least that the reader in mourning may say to himself: "We must do him justice. He really cretinized me. What would he not have done if he could have lived longer? he is the best teacher of hypnotism I know! "These touching words will be engraved on the marble of my tomb, and my spirits will be satisfied! -I go on! There was a fishtail that stirred at the bottom of a hole, next to a stale boot. It was not natural to ask, "Where is the fish? I only see the tail moving. "Because, precisely, it was implicitly admitted that he did not catch a glimpse of the fish, because he was not actually there. The rain had left a few drops of water at the bottom of this funnel, dug in the sand. As for the stale boot, some have thought since it came from some voluntary abandonment. The crab crab, by divine power, was to be reborn from its resolute atoms. He drew the fish's tail from the well, and promised to attach it to his lost body, if she announced to the Creator the powerlessness of his agent to dominate the waves in Maldororian sea fury. He lent him two wings, albatross, and the tail of fish took off. But she flew to the renegade's house, telling him what was happening and betraying the crab cake. The latter guessed the project of the spy, and, before the third day had come to an end, he pierced the fish's tail with an envenomed arrow. The throat of the spy uttered a low exclamation, which made the last breath before touching the earth. Then, a secular beam, placed on the top of a castle, rose from its full height, leaping upon itself, and demanded vengeance with loud cries. But the Almighty, changed into a rhinoceros, told him that this death was deserved. The beam calmed down, went to the bottom of the manor, resumed its horizontal position, and recalled the spooky spiders, that they might continue, as in the past, to weave their web at its corners. The man with the lips of brimstone learned the weakness of his ally; therefore he commanded the crowned fool to burn the beam and reduce it to ashes. Aghone executed this severe order. "Since, according to you, the time has come," he cried, "I have taken the ring which I had buried under the stone, and I tied it to one of the ends of the cable . Here is the packet. "And he presented a thick cord, rolled on itself, sixty yards in length. His master asked him what the fourteen daggers were doing. He replied that they remained faithful and stood ready for any event, if necessary. The convict inclined his head as a sign of satisfaction. He showed surprise, and even anxiety, when Aghone added, he had seen a cock crack with its beak a candelabrum in two, diving by turns in each of the parts, and exclaiming, beating its wings with a frenzied movement: "It is not so far that from the Rue de la Paix to the Place du Panthéon. The crab crab, mounted on a fiery horse, ran at full speed towards the reef, witnessing the launching of the stick by a tattooed arm, the asylum of the first day of his descent into the earth. A caravan of pilgrims was on the march to visit this place, henceforth consecrated by an august death. He hoped to reach him, to ask for urgent help against the plot which was being prepared, and of which he had been aware. You will see a few lines later, and that he did not arrive in time to tell them what a ragpicker had told him, hidden behind the scaffolding next to a house under construction, the day when the Pont du Carrousel, still imprinted of the damp dew of the night, saw with horror the horizon of his thoughts widening confusedly in concentric circles, the morning apparition of the rhythmic kneading of an icosahedron sac, against his limestone parapet! Before it stimulates their compassion, by remembering this episode, they will do well to destroy in them the seed of hope ... To break your laziness, put into use the resources of a good will, walk next to of me, and do not lose sight of this madman, his head surmounted by a vase of night, which pushes before him the hand armed with a stick, that which you would find it difficult to recognize, if I did not take care to warn you, and to recall to your ear the word which is pronounced Mervyn. How it is changed! With his hands tied behind his back, he walks before him, as if he were going to the scaffold, and yet he is not guilty of any crime. They arrived in the circular enclosure of the Place Vendôme. On the entablature of the massive column, leaning against the square balustrade, more than fifty meters above the ground, a man threw and unrolled a cable, which falls to the ground, a few steps from Aghone. With habit, one thing quickly makes one thing; but I can say that the latter did not employ much time to tie Mervyn's feet to the end of the rope. The rhinoceros had learned what was to come. Covered with sweat, he appeared panting, at the corner of the Rue Castiglione. He did not even have the satisfaction of undertaking the fight. The individual, examining the vicinity of the top of the column, cocked his revolver, visually inspected and pressed the trigger. The Commodore, who had been begging in the streets since the day he had begun what he thought was the madness of his son and his mother, who had been calledsnow girl, because of its extreme pallor, carried forward their chest to protect the rhinoceros. Useless care. The bullet pierced his skin like a spin; one might have thought, with an appearance of logic, that death must infallibly appear. But we knew that the substance of the Lord had been introduced into this pachyderm. He retired with grief. If it were not proved that he was too good for one of his creatures, I would pity the man of the column! The latter, with a dry blow of his wrist, brings back to himself the rope thus ballasted. Placed out of the normal, its oscillations swing Mervyn, whose head looks down. He seized with his hands a long garland of immortals, which united two consecutive angles of the base against which he banged his forehead. He takes with him, in the air, which was not a fixed point. After having placed a large part of the cable at his feet, in the form of superposed ellipses, so that Mervyn remains suspended at half the height of the bronze obelisk, the escaped convict makes his right hand take, teenager, an accelerated movement of uniform rotation, in a plane parallel to the axis of the column, and collects, with the left hand, the serpentine coils of the rope, which lie at his feet. The sling is whistling in space; Mervyn's body follows it everywhere, always distant from the center by centrifugal force, always keeping its position movable and equidistant, in an aerial circumference independent of matter. The civilized savage loosens little by little, to the other end, which he retains with a firm metacarpal, which wrongly looks like a steel bar. He runs around the balustrade, standing by the handrail. This maneuver has the effect of changing the original plane of the cable revolution, and of increasing its already considerable tension force. Henceforth, it turns majestically in a horizontal plane, after having successively passed through an insensible step through several oblique planes. The right angle formed by the column and the vegetal thread has its equal sides! The arm of the renegade and the murderous instrument are confounded in the linear unit, like the atomistic elements of a ray of light penetrating into the darkroom. The theorems of mechanics allow me to speak thus; Alas! we know that a force, added to another force, generates a resultant composed of the two primitive forces! Who would dare to pretend that the linear string would have already broken without the vigor of the athlete without the good quality of the hemp? The corsair with golden hair, abruptly and at the same time, stops its acquired speed, opens the hand and releases the cable. The counter-blow of this operation, so contrary to the preceding ones, creates the balustrade in its joints. Mervyn, followed by the rope, resembles a comet dragging after her flamboyant tail. The iron ring of the flowing knot, shimmering in the rays of the sun, engages to complete the illusion itself. In the course of his parable, the damned to death cleaves the atmosphere to the left bank, surpasses it by virtue of the impulse force I suppose infinite, and his body will strike the dome of the Pantheon, while the rope, partly, of its folds, the upper wall of the immense dome. It is on its spherical and convex surface, which resembles an orange only for the form, that one sees at any hour of the day, a dried skeleton, which has remained suspended. When the wind sways it, it is said that the students of the Latin Quarter, for fear of such a fate, make a short prayer: these are insignificant noises to which one is not bound to believe, and proper only to scary to small children. He holds in his clenched hands like a large ribbon of old yellow flowers. We must take account of distance, and no one can affirm, in spite of the proof of his good opinion, that these are really the immortals of whom I have spoken, and that an unequal struggle, engaged near the new Opera, saw detached from a grand pedestal. It is none the less true that draperies in the shape of a crescent moon no longer receive the expression of their definitive symmetry in the quaternary number: go and see it yourself if you do not want to believe me.

END OF CHANT SIX


To my friend ALBERT LACROIX.

INTRODUCTION

The current edition of Les Chants de Maldoror is the reprint, revised and corrected according to the original manuscript, of a work that has never appeared in bookstores. In the course of 1869, the Comte de Lautréamont had just delivered the last vouchers to be drawn from his book, and this one was to be broached, when the publisher, continually exposed to the persecutions of the Empire, suspended it put on sale because of certain violence of style that made the publication perilous. "I have published a book of poems by M. Lacroix. But once it was printed, he refused to make it appear, because life was painted in too bitter colors, and he feared the Attorney General. "

Thus the author expresses himself in the letter reproduced in facsimile at the head of this volume. The work of poetry in question, and which, thus presented, testifies to the lyrical aim attached to it by the author, is this. The Comte de Lautréamont refused to amend the violence of his text. It was only after he had long defended himself that he consented to the modifications which were demanded of him. Cartons intended to replace the passages deemed dangerous had to be fired. But in 1870 war broke out. The songs of Maldoror were no longer thought of . And suddenly the author died, having executed only a part of the revisions to which he had consented.

The text of the present edition is therefore in conformity with that of the original edition, the circulation of which went astray in the cellars of a Belgian bookseller, who, timidly, after four years, had copies reproduced with a title and a cover anonymous [1]. Only a handful of scholars know of these copies.

We thought that the reprint of such an interesting work would be well received. His vehemence of style can not frighten a period as literary as ours. However extreme they may be, they remain profoundly beautiful and have no pornographic character.

The Critics will appreciate, as appropriate, the Songs of Maldoror, a strange and unequal poem, in which, in a furious disorder, there are some admirable episodes, and others often confused. In writing this leaflet, we simply want to destroy a legend formed, nobody knows why, about the personality of the Comte de Lautréamont. Lately, M. Leon Bloy, whose mission here is to demolish everyone, the dead as well as the living, tried to accredit this legend in a long study devoted to volume [2]: he repeats it to satiety that the author was mad and that he died insane. "It is an insane man who speaks, the most deplorable, the most heartbreaking of the insane." - "The catastrophe which made this stranger an insane man." - "... For he is a real madman, alas ! A real madman who feels his madness. "And further:"The author died in a cabin, and that is all that is known of him . "In writing this, M. Leon Bloy has consciously done very bad work; in fact, from the very thorough investigation which we have made, it results from authentic documents that we have collected, that the author of the Songs of Maldorordid not die crazy. The Count de Lautréamont was extinct at the age of twenty, carried away in two days by a malignant fever. If M. Leon Bloy had read the alienists, and if physiological science had somewhat suckled him, he would have brought more reserve into the invention of a fable, interesting only from the point of view of the literary effect, he wished to produce. Science, in fact, teaches us that cases of true folly are extremely rare under twenty years of age. The author was born in Montevideo on 4 April 1850; his manuscript was handed over to the printing press in 1868; one can safely presume its complete completion in 1867; the Songs of Maldororcame out of the imagination and cerebral labor of a young man of seventeen. In addition, the extract of the minutes of the death certificates of the ninth arrondissement of Paris states that Isidore-Lucien Ducasse-that is his real name-died on Thursday, November 24, 1870, at eight in the morning, at his home, Faubourg- Montmartre, No. 7. The number 7 of the Faubourg-Montmartre was never a cabana or a house of madmen.

Our active investigations have not succeeded in penetrating, in its entirety, the mystery of which the life of the author in Paris seems to have been surrounded. The Prefecture of Police refused to assist us in these researches, because we had no official character to ask them. This, admittedly, is a very regrettable administrative rigor. What inconvenience can there be in furnishing a publisher with some information on the life of a man of letters who has died for twenty years? Bounded to our own inquiries, we have acquired the certainty that Ducasse had come to Paris in order to attend the courses at the Polytechnique or the Mines. In 1867, he occupied a room in a hotel located at number 23 Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. He had descended there on his arrival from America. C ' was a tall young man, brown, beardless, nervous, tidy, and industrious. He wrote only at night, seated at his piano. He declaimed, he forged his sentences, plating his prosopopes with chords. This method of composition made the despair of the tenants of the hotel, who, often awakened with a start, could only suspect an astonishing musician of the verb, a rare symphonist of the phrase sought, by striking his keyboard, the rhythms of his literary orchestration.

If such shortcuts in the life of a man are not sufficient to reconstitute a definite resemblance, they will nevertheless help to elucidate, for a small part, the mystery of this figure destined to remain obscure on almost every side. But is it not a bit of the domain of the occult sciences to restore a character with documents? At least, we have endeavored to shed light on this summary of portraiture by recourse to that of the sciences of that time, which, according to a text, applies itself to evoking the most fleeting directions of Soul and Thought. Since we had this fortune to possess the manuscripts of Ducasse, it seemed to us curious to ask a scholar for a graphologist to give his opinion of the author of Les Chants de Maldoror .

"-Oh! Oh! it's pretty, "he said (this is an expression familiar to graphologists when the subject seems interesting to them); singular mixture, for example. Look at order and elegance, that regular date at the top, that margin, those rigid lines, and that unexpected distraction which causes him to start his letter upside down, forgetting the initials that the paper carries. .. Harmonic harmonics: the V of Voltaire and the R of Rousseau and others. Then, look at childishnessof the P of Paris and the G of Grandes Têtes. As for the signature, it is literally a child; how to reconcile the inharmony of such a paraphrase with what I have just said? We will have the explanation by analyzing it. He signed: J. Ducasse, without parafe, he ought never to make, which, as you know, is one of the graphological signs of distinction. Then, remembering that he was asking for money, he added address, and to combine the two things, and logical order , he surrounded all in a very vague ellipse made a little "I will like you grows "and should not be confused in this analysis with the usual spiral parafe for lovers of family life. I repeat, there is no parafe,the sobriety of the rest .

"But let us continue: harmony has shown me an artist, and suddenly I discover a logician and a mathematician. The last words: " the goodness of my writing " does not he look like an algebraic formula, with the abbreviation of goodness , and a syllogism, with the narrow chain of words; and it is so narrow, this sequence, the writer is so obsessed with the logic he puts apostrophes after the term ended, and without missing a single one! It is admirable, perhaps I have not seen it ten times over the thousands of letters I have studied.

"Bars scrupulous and energetic with, sometimes, a small harpoon of selfishness (but who does not have?). There is just the dose necessary to alter in no way the kindness which bursts forth in the roundness of the letters; as there is a little prussic acid in almonds, if you will. A little detail: your man seems a little sensual, sometimes there is impasto; I'm not sorry for this little spot (if it is one), because really it was too beautiful.

"I am summing up: above all, balance: harmony or logic: perhaps he has never done anything, but I doubt it, for there is nothing lazy about writing: is an artist, he could have done as well a scientist: if he were a scientist, he could have been as easily a great artist.

"But then he is not crazy?"

"-What do you mean? Or all of the above is true, and all this does not sound like a madman, or graphology does not exist. "

Only then did we decide to deliver to our scholar the few details of the life of Ducasse that we knew and which we deliberately delayed communicating to him for fear of influencing him. Above all, we insisted on this madness which was reproached to him, and by which we seemed to wish to attenuate the consciousness of his talent.

"But I am astonished that such a legend has found credit among distinguished minds; you are not ignorant how rare cases of folly at this age are, I mean real madness, for idiots, idiots, melancholies, idiots, asylums are crowded, but a real madman, a twenty-year-old madman who, from his madness, would die in a shed, I doubt that one often sees it: even note that this sad and topical detail, death in a shed, makes me immediately think of a paralytic general, with all this classical succession: vivid intelligence, obscuration, persecution-megalomania, -excitation and complete decay, and the disappearance of the individual who has long since gone by shreds. Well, ask some specialists and ask them how many generous paralytics they have been able to count for twenty years! Bayle declares that he has never seen them before twenty-five years; Calmeil only observed it twice before thirty-two years. At last mania and circular madness remain, but these two forms of madness follow almost the same laws, and with rare exceptions, There is no furious madman of nineteen. Finally, if the volume appeared when Ducasse was nineteen, and he died at twenty, then there is an alienation that would have evolved in a year ... Is not it the case to say with Verlaine : All this is literature! "

Although Montévideen, Ducasse was French by birth. His father, Chancellor of the French legation at Montevideo, was born in Tarbes. The family had to be rich. She was in business with a banker in the Rue de Lille, M. Darasse, who paid the son a monthly pension. Thanks to the kindness of M. Dosseur, successor to M. Darasse, we have been able to acquaint ourselves with some of the correspondence of the young writer, and to give, at the head of this volume, one of his letters in facsimile. This letter contains, as it were, a literary profession of faith, and alludes to the circumstances which were opposed to the sale of his book, as well as to the preface of a new volume, which the publisher Lemerre never received. The correspondence of Ducasse is curious, and shows how keen his literary preoccupations were.

In a letter dated May 22, 1869, we note the following passages, which we reproduce only as mere curiosity:

"Sir, " It was yesterday that I received your letter dated May 21st; it was yours. Well, I can not, unfortunately, allow this opportunity to express my apologies. This is why, because if you had told me the other day, in ignorance of what might happen to the circumstances in which my person was placed, that the funds were exhausted, I would not have guarded to touch it; but certainly I should have felt as much joy at not writing these three letters as you would have felt yourself not reading them. You have put into force the deplorable system of mistrust vaguely prescribed by my father's eccentricity; but you guessed thatmy headache does not prevent me from carefully considering the difficult situation in which you have hitherto placed a sheet of paper from South America, the chief defect of which was the lack of clarity; for I do not take into account the unpleasantness of certain melancholy observations which are easily forgiven to an old man, and which appeared to me, at first reading, to have seemed to impose on you, in the future, perhaps, the need to get out of your strict role as a banker, vis-a-vis a gentleman who comes to live in the capital ...

"... Excuse me, sir, I have a prayer to make to you: if my father sent other funds before 1 stSeptember, when my body will appear before the door of your bank, will you have the goodness to let me know? Besides, I am at home at any hour of the day; but you will only have to write me a word, and it is probable that I will receive it almost as soon as the lady who draws the cord, or before I meet on the vestibule.

" And all this, I repeat, for an insignificant trifle of formality! Presenting ten dry nails instead of five, the beautiful thing: after much reflection, I confess that it seemed to me filled with a notable amount of zero importance ... "

The extreme youth of the author will doubtless attenuate the severity of certain judgments which will not fail to be borne on the Songs of Maldoror . If Ducasse had lived, he could have become one of the literary glories of France. He died too soon, leaving behind his work scattered to the four winds: and by a curious coincidence his mortal remains have suffered the same fate as his book. Buried on a temporary concession in the Northern Cemetery on November 25, 1870, he was exhumed on January 20, 1871, to be re-buried in another temporary concession. It is currently in the disused grounds and taken over by the City.

LG

Notes:

The cover and the title are thus composed: The Chants-de-Maldoror-by-the Count of Lautréamont- (Songs I, II, III, IV, V, VI) -Paris and Brussels-On sale in all booksellers-1874 . Below the cover, in the double net, this mention: All rights of translation and reproduction reserved . On the verso of the false title: Bruxelles-Typ. by E. Wittmann . This last indication is false, no printer having the name of Wittmann having existed in Brussels. Brown-brown cover.

In 1869 the author expressed the desire to possess a few copies of his book; a dozen of them were spoiled. The cover of these copies is yellow. She wears: Paris. On sale at all the booksellers (1869) . On the verso of the false title and on the fourth page of the cover: Brussels. Printed by A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven and Co., Boulevard de Waterloo, 42 .

[2] V. Pen , 2 e , No. 33.

[3] Photogravure restored the figure in its place. It is on the fourth page of the letter, crossed by a stroke of the pen.

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