University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

"YES: for ten years I lived the most revolt-
ing 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 under-
stand my crimes. Thus you will see where and
how began the drama that has led me to mis-
fortune.

"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 chil-
dren 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-hun-
dredths 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 sixteen,
polluted myself and helped to pollute a sister-

woman, without understanding what I did.

Never had I heard from my elders that what I
thus did was bad. It is true that there are the
ten commandments of the Bible; but the com-
mandments are made only to be recited before
the priests at examinations, and even then are
not as exacting as the commandments in regard
to the use of
ut
in conditional propositions.

"Thus, from my elders, whose opinion I
esteemed, I had never heard that this was rep-
rehensible. On the contrary, I had heard people
whom I respected say that it was good. I had
heard that my struggles and my sufferings
would be appeased after this act. I had heard
it and read it. I had heard from my elders that
it was excellent for the health, and my friends
have always seemed to believe that it contained
I know not what merit and valor. So nothing is
seen in it but what is praiseworthy. As for the
danger of disease, it is a foreseen danger. Does
not the government guard against it? And even
science corrupts us."

"How so, science?" I asked.

"Why, the doctors, the pontiffs of science.

Who pervert young people by laying down such

rules of hygiene? Who pervert women by de-
vising and teaching them ways by which not to
have children?

"Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent
in curing diseases were spent in curing debauch-
ery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist,
whereas now all efforts are employed, not in ex-
tirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by as-
suring the harmlessness of the consequences.

Besides, it is not a question of that. It is a
question of this frightful thing that has hap-
pened to me, as it happens to nine-tenths, if not
more, not only of the men of our society, but of
all societies, even peasants,—this frightful thing
that I had fallen, and not because I was sub-
jected to the natural seduction of a certain
woman. No, no woman seduced me. I fell be-
cause the surroundings in which I found myself
saw in this degrading thing only a legitimate
function, useful to the health; because others
saw in it simply a natural amusement, not only
excusable, but even innocent in a young man.

I did not understand that it was a fall, and I
began to give myself to those pleasures (partly
from desire and partly from necessity) which

I was led to believe were characteristic of my
age, just as I had begun to drink and smoke.

"And yet there was in this first fall something
peculiar and touching. I remember that straight-
way I was filled with such a profound sadness
that I had a desire to weep, to weep over the
loss forever of my relations with woman. Yes,
my relations with woman were lost forever.

Pure relations with women, from that time for-
ward, I could no longer have. I had become
what is called a voluptuary; and to be a volup-
tuary is a physical condition like the condition
of a victim of the morphine habit, of a drunk-
ard, and of a smoker.

"Just as the victim of the morphine habit, the
drunkard, the smoker, is no longer a normal
man, so the man who has known several women
for his pleasure is no longer normal? He is ab-
normal forever. He is a voluptuary. Just as
the drunkard and the victim of the morphine
habit may be recognized by their face and man-
ner, so we may recognize a voluptuary. He may
repress himself and struggle, but nevermore will
he enjoy simple, pure, and fraternal relations
toward woman. By his way of glancing at a

young woman one may at once recognize a
voluptuary; and I became a voluptuary, and I
have remained one.