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?”