"Let me go!"
"Stay here. I'll love you. I often followed you on the beach. I often roamed about the house where you are staying. I wanted you. Stay here!"
"Let me go, I tell you! You don't know how disgusting you are to me!"
And when she hung on my neck, I struck her. She groaned.
"Ah! My God! He is mad!"
Mad! Yes, I am mad! I have looked at myself in the mirror and I am afraid of my own image. My distended eyes shine from the midst of their orbits which are hollow; my bones protrude from under the yellow skin; my mouth is pale, trembling, hanging like the mouths of lascivious old men. My gestures are erratic, and my fingers, constantly agitated by nervous shocks, crack, seeking a prey in the air.
Mad! Yes, I am mad! Whenever Mother Le Gannec is moving about me, when I hear her slippers dragging on the floor, when her dress brushes against me, criminal notions come and take possession of me; they pursue me and I cry:
"Go away, Mother Le Gannec, go away."
Mad! Yes, I am mad! Often at night I stand for hours at the door of her room, my hand upon the knob, ready to plunge into the darkness of the room. I don't know what is holding me back. Fear, no doubt, for I say to myself: "She will struggle, cry, call for help and I shall be compelled to kill her!" Once, alarmed by the noise, she got up, bare-legged; she was dumbfounded for a moment, upon beholding me.
"What is the matter! It's you, friend Mintié? What are you doing here? Are you ill?"