15th August.  The temptation has come to me.  It pervades my whole being; my hands tremble with the desire to kill.

22d August.  I could resist no longer.  I killed a little creature as an experiment, for a beginning.  Jean, my servant, had a goldfinch in a cage hung in the office window.  I sent him on an errand, and I took the little bird in my hand, in my hand where I felt its heart beat.  It was warm.  I went up to my room.  From time to time I squeezed it tighter; its heart beat faster; this was atrocious and delicious.  I was near choking it.  But I could not see the blood.

Then I took scissors, short-nail scissors, and I cut its throat with three slits, quite gently.  It opened its bill, it struggled to escape me, but I held it, oh!  I held it—­I could have held a mad dog—­and I saw the blood trickle.

And then I did as assassins do—­real ones.  I washed the scissors, I washed my hands.  I sprinkled water and took the body, the corpse, to the garden to hide it.  I buried it under a strawberry-plant.  It will never be found.  Every day I shall eat a strawberry from that plant.  How one can enjoy life when one knows how!

My servant cried; he thought his bird flown.  How could he suspect me?  Ah! ah!

25th August.  I must kill a man!  I must—­

30th August.  It is done.  But what a little thing!  I had gone for a walk in the forest of Vernes.  I was thinking of nothing, literally nothing.  A child was in the road, a little child eating a slice of bread and butter.

He stops to see me pass and says, “Good-day, Mr. President.”

And the thought enters my head, “Shall I kill him?”

I answer:  “You are alone, my boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All alone in the wood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The wish to kill him intoxicated me like wine.  I approached him quite softly, persuaded that he was going to run away.  And, suddenly, I seized him by the throat.  He looked at me with terror in his eyes—­such eyes!  He held my wrists in his little hands and his body writhed like a feather over the fire.  Then he moved no more.  I threw the body in the ditch, and some weeds on top of it.  I returned home, and dined well.  What a little thing it was!  In the evening I was very gay, light, rejuvenated; I passed the evening at the Prefect’s.  They found me witty.  But I have not seen blood!  I am tranquil.

31st August.  The body has been discovered.  They are hunting for the assassin.  Ah! ah!

1st September.  Two tramps have been arrested.  Proofs are lacking.

2d September.  The parents have been to see me.  They wept!  Ah! ah!

6th October.  Nothing has been discovered.  Some strolling vagabond must have done the deed.  Ah! ah!  If I had seen the blood flow, it seems to me I should be tranquil now!  The desire to kill is in my blood; it is like the passion of youth at twenty.

20th October.  Yet another.  I was walking by the river, after breakfast.  And I saw, under a willow, a fisherman asleep.  It was noon.  A spade was standing in a potato-field near by, as if expressly, for me.