I took it.  I returned; I raised it like a club, and with one blow of the edge I cleft the fisherman’s head.  Oh! he bled, this one!  Rose-colored blood.  It flowed into the water, quite gently.  And I went away with a grave step.  If I had been seen!  Ah! ah!  I should have made an excellent assassin.

25th October.  The affair of the fisherman makes a great stir.  His nephew, who fished with him, is charged with the murder.

26th October.  The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is guilty.  Everybody in town believes it.  Ah! ah!

27th October.  The nephew makes a very poor witness.  He had gone to the village to buy bread and cheese, he declared.  He swore that his uncle had been killed in his absence!  Who would believe him?

28th October.  The nephew has all but confessed, they have badgered him so.  Ah! ah! justice!

15th November.  There are overwhelming proofs against the nephew, who was his uncle’s heir.  I shall preside at the sessions.

25th January.  To death! to death! to death!  I have had him condemned to death!  Ah! ah!  The advocate-general spoke like an angel!  Ah! ah!  Yet another!  I shall go to see him executed!

10th March.  It is done.  They guillotined him this morning.  He died very well! very well!  That gave me pleasure!  How fine it is to see a man’s head cut off!

Now, I shall wait, I can wait.  It would take such a little thing to let myself be caught.

The manuscript contained yet other pages, but without relating any new crime.

Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare that there are in the world many undiscovered madmen as adroit and as much to be feared as this monstrous lunatic.

THE MASK

There was a masquerade ball at the Elysee-Montmartre that evening.  It was the ‘Mi-Careme’, and the crowds were pouring into the brightly lighted passage which leads to the dance ball, like water flowing through the open lock of a canal.  The loud call of the orchestra, bursting like a storm of sound, shook the rafters, swelled through the whole neighborhood and awoke, in the streets and in the depths of the houses, an irresistible desire to jump, to get warm, to have fun, which slumbers within each human animal.

The patrons came from every quarter of Paris; there were people of all classes who love noisy pleasures, a little low and tinged with debauch.  There were clerks and girls—­girls of every description, some wearing common cotton, some the finest batiste; rich girls, old and covered with diamonds, and poor girls of sixteen, full of the desire to revel, to belong to men, to spend money.  Elegant black evening suits, in search of fresh or faded but appetizing novelty, wandering through the excited crowds, looking, searching, while the masqueraders seemed moved above all by the desire for amusement.  Already the far-famed