26th June.  Why then is it a crime to kill?  Yes, why?  On the contrary, it is the law of nature.  The mission of every being is to kill; he kills to live, and he kills to kill.  The beast kills without ceasing, all day, every instant of his existence.  Man kills without ceasing, to nourish himself; but since he needs, besides, to kill for pleasure, he has invented hunting!  The child kills the insects he finds, the little birds, all the little animals that come in his way.  But this does not suffice for the irresistible need to massacre that is in us.  It is not enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too.  Long ago this need was satisfied by human sacrifices.  Now the requirements of social life have made murder a crime.  We condemn and punish the assassin!  But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of death, we relieve ourselves, from time to time, by wars.  Then a whole nation slaughters another nation.  It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and that intoxicates civilians, women and children, who read, by lamplight at night, the feverish story of massacre.

One might suppose that those destined to accomplish these butcheries of men would be despised!  No, they are loaded with honors.  They are clad in gold and in resplendent garments; they wear plumes on their heads and ornaments on their breasts, and they are given crosses, rewards, titles of every kind.  They are proud, respected, loved by women, cheered by the crowd, solely because their mission is to shed human blood; They drag through the streets their instruments of death, that the passer-by, clad in black, looks on with envy.  For to kill is the great law set by nature in the heart of existence!  There is nothing more beautiful and honorable than killing!

30th June.  To kill is the law, because nature loves eternal youth.  She seems to cry in all her unconscious acts:  “Quick! quick! quick!” The more she destroys, the more she renews herself.

2d July.  A human being—­what is a human being?  Through thought it is a reflection of all that is; through memory and science it is an abridged edition of the universe whose history it represents, a mirror of things and of nations, each human being becomes a microcosm in the macrocosm.

3d July.  It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill; to have there before one the living, thinking being; to make therein a little hole, nothing but a little hole, to see that red thing flow which is the blood, which makes life; and to have before one only a heap of limp flesh, cold, inert, void of thought!

5th August.  I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing by the spoken word, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by the knife, I, I, if I should do as all the assassins have done whom I have smitten, I—­I—­who would know it?

10th August.  Who would ever know?  Who would ever suspect me, me, me, especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away with?