Chapter 9
Far from appeasing my hunger, this prelude had rather sharpened it and I was waiting eagerly for the next course. I must have been somewhat agitated and could not control my impatience, thus attracting Mona's and the others'* attention, and all of them were now eying me ironically.
-I suppose, Mona told me, that the wide scope of your tastes leads you, now, to wish for a new kind of delicacy, but you must have been taught that excesses are the adversaries of pleasure... Quantity has always been the inverse function of quality... I know it is obvious... But here we are very fond of conversation and vividness of representations... At the bottom, to exite sexually the brains by stimulating the imagination, is sometimes stronger than working directly over the sex... Of course, the good novels think that they have solved all problems only by making their protagonists screw oftener and oftener, but it reveals a childlish confidence in the virtue of evident sexual potency... In fact, would the hero fuck ten men or ten women in a single day, that he would immediately ponders on the more intense pleasure: that is to fuck twenty-five people, and when he has reached this hoped-for number, he will dream of a hundred or of... God Here, on the contrary, we dream -if I may say so -to fuck as much as possible of ourselves, to succeed in exciting not only the most sensitive surface of our body but its deepest axis... to excite the being... We are bent on the quest of this delirious unity of oneself into which our I annuls and gives birth to itself. Sometimes quantity may be a mean but under the drastic condition that it makes us loathe the surface. And I think and until now this belief has never been checked -that spectacle, alone does owe this power of re-integration which we need... You must not think that I mean we have got to become Peeping Tom, not that... The problem has always been and still is of making oneself seeing, but the image inside which an actor undertakes to represent you, seems to me the only thing capable of upsetting you deep enough... From now on you must not he concerned any more with looking but with participating... Then everything rests in the quality of your eyes and of your gestures... When, a little while before, you officiated on Aldine's altar with the negro's prick, it may be that you abandoned yourself to a somewhat vulgar unlashing, but, if you have understood the meaning of this amputation, and after that the meaning of thir fucking and of the ensuing communion, perhaps did your depths thrilled with an appeal which, across the horrible parody we all took part in, has been strong enough to irradiate up your nerves a number of essential images capable to unleash for you some part of the mechanism of destiny... Jan's words were here like another form of accompaniment, as well as Aldine's prelude... Technic allows us some refinements unless it simplifies the initiation in some way... Thus, when you watched yourself on the screen, this morning, the fact that you were seing you as a person could contribute for you to the immediate revelation of the mechanism of spectacle when usually one has to imagine a transference, and only then does one live it... Our aim is the possession... tryly the possession of our own self... And all this setting represents our means... means that are necessarily dreadful in a world dedicated to horror... But you must be hungry?...
-I dare say T am, though your conversation has somewhat turned me away from this surface, quoting you...
You will find a nice meal and the best of the wines, but I beg to make you listen, in the same time, to a new music. Nora (that was the name of one of the three women, a splendid auburn-haired creature, whose golden hair rolled down as far as her waist and whose green eyes communicated to me wide surges of pleasure when she deigned look at me) would, if the ritual instaured by Sade and his 10 Days was observed narrate you her life-story, but I think that, since we will be busy with our succulent meal, it will be better if the Reader comes and reads us a story. The books contains the relation of a famous case which was judged in France, around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sergeant Bertrand's case...
Four negroes came in, laden with sundry victuals which they laid on our table. Behind them there walked a very queer creature, bespectacled, crowned whith truly looked like and old manuscript. He sat down mutely, without even looking at us, and waited patiently.
-You -may begin, Mona told him, and the extraordinary man did not even look up. I said we were going to hear, to-day, the deposition of the Sergeant Bertrand, consigned by Ambroise Tardieu in Medico-legal study on crimes against morality. We are listening to you.
The old man bowed, flapped noisily the leaves of his book, coughed several times, and started reading, while somebody was filling my plate with a delicious piece of venison with mushrooms.
-I started masturbating when I was still a me child, without realizing what I was doing; I never hid myself to do it. I did not think about women before the age of eight or nine years; but it turned into a real passion only around my fourteenth year. Then, I knew absolutely no bonds, I masturbated as much as seven or eight times every day, I was utterly excited by the mere sight of a woman's garment. When masturbating, I used to imagine that I was standing in a room where there stood women at my disposal; there, after having satisfied my passion with them and amused myself with tormenting them in every possible manner, I imagined them dead and I would perform on them many kinds of profanations. Other times, I felt an impulse to mangle male corpses, but not very often: it disgusted me.
Since I could not get myself human bodies, I went in the quest of dead carcases of animals, which I cut. I would rip the belly open and, after tearing off their entrails, I would masturbate, all the while contemplating them, and after that I went away, ashamed of myself and honestly determined never to do it again; but my passion was stronger than my will-power. During those happenings I felt an exceedingly keen pleasure, a fulfilment which I can't well describe, and, in order of making it last longer, I would masturbate very slowly, thus belating very much the coming of semen.
I have mutilated all kinds of animals from a horse down to little ones like cats, puppies, and so on.
I came to the La Villette Camp in 1844 and soon formed a habit of going to the Saint-Denis canal and pulling out of it drowned animals, dogs sheep, and so on, and I treated them in the same fashion as I have related above.
In 1846, I did not satisfy myself any more with dead carcases, I craved for living ones. In the La Villette Camp, the same as in every casern, there roved many dogs which did not belong to anyone, and followed one or the other of the soldiers, indiscriminately. I resolved upon taking those dogs to the country and killing them over there, which I effectively did three times; I snatched off their entrails, the way 1 dad done it to dead beasts, and I got as much pleasure as I had known with the latter.
It is only around the end of 1846 that I conceived the idea of unearthing corpses; my resolution came from the knowledge that it could very easely be done in the pauper's grave of the Est cemetery; but I did not carry it into execution, because I was held back by caution.
At the beginning of 1847, the regiment I belonged to went to Tours, and my own company was sent to the small town of Blere. It is in that town that I despoiled a tomb for the first time. It happened thus:
It was around noon; I had taken a walk in the country with a friend, and, out of curiosity, I entered the graveyard the enclosure of which was near the road. They had buried a dead the day before and -I was to learn all the day later, from citizens of the town -the grave -diggers had been caught in the rain and it had prevented them from filling up the grave complety. Moreover, they had abandoned their tools which where lying near by. This sight reawakened my most somber thoughts, I suffered from a violent headache, my heart began to pounr violently, I was beside myself with excitement.
"I took pretext of a prior engagement and came back at once to the town with my companion which I succeeded in leaving some time later. I went back to the graveyard and, without paying attention to laborers who worked in the vineyards which stretched their fields next to the mortuary enclosure, I grabbed a spade and began digging up the pit with a strength and a quickness which I would not have been capable of in another occasion. I had already pulled out the corpse, and, not carrying any kind of sharp tool to maim it, I started hitting it ith the spade I was still holding in hand, with a rags that I can't still now account for, when one of the laborers which worked closest to me, astonished by the noise I was making, came up to the gate of the graveyard. I took sight of him and I flattened myself down the pit, by the dead body, and remained here for a short time. The laborer went to the town in order to inform the authorities, and I immediately climbed out of the grave, shoveled earth over the corpse, and sneaked out of the cemetery by climbing over the wall.
My body was shaking all over, I was cavered with a cold sweat. I repaired to a close-by thicket here, in spite of the cold rain which had poured for many hours, 1 lay down amid shrubs and remained thus sprawled on the ground for three hours, in a state of total unconsciousness. When I waked out of this trancelike state, my body was aching all over, and I felt very weak in the head. Later on these things followed every one of my fits of madness.
Two days later, I went back to the graveyard of Blere, this time not at noontime but in the middle of the night, by a rainy weather. This time, there was no tools left and I digged in the pit with my bare hands; they were bleeding but nothing could stop me, I did not feel any pain; I had not been able to unearth more than the lower half of the body, I tore it to pieces, and filled back the pit in the same fashion that I had opened it.
We came back to Paris around the end of May. One day, I walked up to the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. I liked the loneliness one feeled in it and noticing that it was very easy to break into it, I resolved upon coming back during the same night. Indeed I entered it at ten o'clock PM by climbing over the wall. I paced up and down for some time, a prey to the darkest thoughts; after that I walked up to the pauper's grave and began to exhume a corpse. It was the body of a woman, about forty years old, in a fairly good state of preservation; I ripped the belly open, forcibly pulled out the entrails, cut the flesh in a thousand pieces; but I did not commit any act of impudicity on it.
During a whole fortnight, I went to this cemetery about every night. During this period I digged up three or four female corpses on which I committed the same actions as I had done on the first but without trying any immodest treatment.
When I had snatched out the entrails of these corpses I have just been telling about, I went away after masturbating two or three times, kneeling by the body. 1 masturbated with one hand while with the other I convulsively squeezed any part of the corpse, but more often the entrails.
I left Paris in November, and was sent first to Soissons, then to Douai. There I felt again the need to mutilate dead bodies. One night, about the tenth of March, I was on my way to the cemetery. I had to climb over the surrounding wall and to jump over a large and deep ditch. None of these difficulties refreined me from going on, not the cutting cold and the ice. As soon as I was inside the mortuary enclosure, I busied myself with unearthing a young girl, who must have been between fifteen and seventeen of age. This body is the first one upon which I abandonned myself to immodest assaults. I can't put into words the sensations that I was then experiencing, because all that we may fael with a living woman cannot, in any respect, be compared with it. I kissed the dead body of this woman all over, I hugged her to me with a curshing embrace; to be short I lavished upon her all the caresses a passionate lover can give his beloved. After playing for a quarter of an hour with tins inanimate body, I began maiming it, as I had done to all the other victims of my furor. I beheaded her, I cut off her breasts, I pierced her belly, then I gathered the pieces, covered them with earth and went back to the barracks.
My regiment came back to Paris in July and I was detailed to the Ivry Camp.
After a few quiet days, the illness seized me again, more violently than ever. Nothing could stall me, I left the camp almost every night to go to the Montparnasse cemetery where 1 abandoned myself to the maddest excesses.
The first victim of my rage was a young girl, about twelve or thirteen years old. Her body was already in a very advanced stale of decay but it did not prevent me from profaning it with immodest actions. After that, I split open the belly, tore out the genitals, masturbated again and went away.
In the Ivry cemetery, I happened to dig out, around the end of September, a female child no more than seven years old and a woman about thirty-eight or forty years old. I abandoned myself with these corpses to the same excesses that in the Montparnasse graveyard; but this time I did not snatch out the entrails nor did I scatter them all over, and I only ripped the bleey open. After mutilating the little girl, I put her back in the grave and covered the body with earth. The woman had been buried thirteen days ago.
The second time I visited the Montparnasse cemetery, I had unearthed a woman of sixty and a child two or three years old. I carried these corpses up to a somewhat remote tombstane and profanated and mutilated the woman's but did not do any tiling to the child's.
I could not force myself to main a man, and if it happened though a few times, it is because I was in a rage when I could not find women's corpses. Then, I did no more than giving them a blow with my saber on any part of their body. It goes without saying that I did not feel the need of masturbating before male corpses, on the contrary it disgusted me very much. Thus did it happen that I dug up twelve or fifteen male corpses without finding a single female one.
One night, I unearthed two women over sixty. After having satisfied my violent passion, after ripping their belly open and snatching the entrails out, I split their mouth, cut their limbs, lacerated their body in a thousand places, and I had never done such a wild thing. My rage was not appeased with these horrible actions; I seized the sectionned limbs, began to wring them, to crush them under my feet, to hack them and later kicked the head and played with it the way a cat plays with a mouse; I wished I could annihilate them totally, I had never been in such a frightful state... As usual I ended with masturbating.
On the sixth of November, at ten o'clock PM, I was on the verge of jumping down inside the cemetery when a shot was aimed at me pointblanck, but it did not get me. This happening did not drive me back. I lay on the wet ground, a few paces away from the cemetery, the night was very cold, and I remained thus for about two hours, after which I climbed back to the cemetery and dug out a yound woman, dead from drowning; she must have been about twenty-five years old and was in a very well-preserved state. I treated this woman as I had the other victims of my madness and left her only after pulling out her entrails, cutting her genitals, cleaving open her right thigh. The fulfillment I experienced with this woman topped yet all the other times.
Later I was shot at twice, each time in the Montparnasse cemetery. The first one missed me, but the second one got me about waist-high. Luckily, the bullet went through my overcoat, and I suffered no more than a mere bruise. Truly it would have been easy for me to break or to carry away the fire traps lain in order to catch me and many times I had unprimed them, but I never thought about it, and those traps never frightened me. I remember too that I sometimes met dogs, but they never tried to hurt me.
On the fifteenth of March 1849, I got out of the Luxembourg around ten o'clock PM in order to go to a rendez-vous, my luck made me take a street very close to the Montparnasse cemetery. I felt an impulse to enter it as usual and it is when I was climbing over the wall that I have been hit... I think that if the machine had missed me this time, I should never have entered a cemetery again though I am not sure of it. Every time I despoiled a tomb I had never premeditated my action; when the evil took hold of myself, no matter what time it was, midday or midnight, I had to do it, I could not postpone it.
After reading aloud the prisoner's confession, there followed his examination and the follwing questions were asked him:
-What sensation drove you to commit those kind of excesses?
-I don't know; I can't describe what went inside me.
-Do you acknowledge the preceding descriptions of your actions as true and total?
-I admit that I have been guilty of all the profanations I have related and which I am charged with committing.
-What your motive or you aim in thus despoiling tombs and letting yourself commit horrible deeds?
-I had no aim; 1 felt an irrepressible impulse to destroy and nothing could prevent me from going in a cemetery, in order to satisfy this kind of a rage for mutilating corpses, but without ex pressly wanting to appease a sexual need. Even now I can't recall clearly the sensations that were mine when I scattered pieces of dead bodies all over.
-What instrument did you use for cutting and lacerating limbs?
-Most of the time I used my short sword, and some other times either a knife or even a penknife.
-How were you able to unearth the corpses?
-I did it with my bare hands or with any instrument that I happened to find beside me. Sometimes my hands were bleeding, but I felt pain only the following day.
-What went inside you after having satisfied your passion?
-When I went away I had a raging fever which made my body shake all over, then I felt I needed to rest. .1 slept for several hours anywhere and in any conditions. While I was thus asleep I perceived everything that was going around me.
-Had not you any other motives beside the impulse to destroy the corpses?
-No, I had none.
-When you opened the corpses, did not you plunge your hands inside them?
-Yes, I did, in order to pull the entrails out, and sometimes I went as far as the upper areas whence I snatched the liver out.
-Did not you experience a feeling that would have made you realize all the odious horror of your actions?
-Yes, I did, and that was the stronger feeling I experienced, but I could not help myself and I did it all over again, even if I risked my life.
-How can you explain your behaviour?
-I don'y hnow... As early as my seventh or eighth year, my people noticed that I had a kind of madness, but it never drove me to any excesses. I would usually repair to the darkest thickets in a wood, where 1 sometimes remained whole days, a prey to a very deep sadness. It is only in 1847 that a kind of rage seized me and drove me to commit the. actions for which I am now a prisoner.
The Reader stood up swiftly and sneaked out. Silence fell, a strange silence in the bosom of which it seemed to me that our thoughts were rustling. The ghost which had read for us had disappeared so quickly that I was not convinced yet that he had ever existed. My eyes ran from the table to the sea but I did not actually see any one. Another world palpitated around me or, perhaps, inside me. I listened to its queer pounding.