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CHAPTER V.
"Yes: for ten years I lived the most revolting existence, while dreaming
of the noblest love, and even in the name of that love. Yes, I want
to tell you how I killed my wife, and for that I must tell you how I
debauched myself. I killed her before I knew her.
"I killed THE wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and
then it was that I killed MY wife. Yes, sir: it is only after having
suffered, after having tortured myself, that I have come to understand
the root of things, that I have come to understand my crimes. Thus you
will see where and how began the drama that has led me to misfortune.
"
It is necessary to go back to my sixteenth year, when I was still at
school, and my elder brother a first-year student. I had not yet known
women but, like all the unfortunate children of our society, I was
already no longer innocent. I was tortured, as you were, I am sure, and
as are tortured ninety-nine one-hundredths of our boys. I lived in a
frightful dread, I prayed to God, and I prostrated myself.
"I was already perverted in imagination, but the last steps remained to
be taken. I could still escape, when a friend of my brother, a very
gay student, one of those who are called good fellows,--that is, the
greatest of scamps,--and who had taught us to drink and play cards, took
advantage of a night of intoxication to drag us THERE. We started.
My brother, as innocent as I, fell that night, and I, a mere lad of
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