Scary Stories

Diary of a Madman - Guy de Maupassant

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Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 26 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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At your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub bully? Well, if you're installing a new conveyor belt system, dealing with the different components can sound like you're speaking a foreign language. Luckily, you've got a team ready to help. Granger's technical product specialists are fluent in maintenance, repair, and operations. So whenever you want to talk shop, just reach out. Call, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. The Diary of a Madman, by DiDemol Pesson. He was dead. The head of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate, whose irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France. Advocates, young counselors, judges had saluted, bowing low in token of profound respect, remembering that grand face, pale and thin, illumined by two bright, deep-set eyes. He had passed his life in pursuing crime and in protecting the weak. Swindlers and murderers had no more redoubtable enemy, for he seemed to read in the recesses of their souls their most secret thoughts. He was dead, now, at the age of 82, honored by the homage and followed by the regrets of a whole people. Soldiers and red breaches had escorted him to the tomb, and men in white croats had shed on his grave tears that seemed to be real. But listened to the strange paper found by the dismayed notary in the desk where the judge had kept file the records of great criminals. It was entitled "Why?" June 20, 1851 "I have just left court. I have condemned Blondell to death, now. Why did this man kill his five children? Frequently he won meets with people whom killing us a pleasure. Yes, yes, it should be a pleasure. The greatest of all, perhaps, are as not killing, most like creating, to make and to destroy. These two words contain the history of the universe, the history of all worlds, all that is, all! Why is it not intoxicating to kill?" June 25, 1851 "To think that there is a being who lives, who walks, who runs. A being? What is a being? An animated thing which bears in it the principle of motion, and a will rule in that principle. It clings to nothing, this thing. Its feet are independent of the ground, it is a grain of life that moves on the earth, and this grain of life, coming I know not to wince. One can destroy it, one's will, and nothing, nothing more. It perishes, it is finished." June 26, 1851 "Why, then, is that a crime to kill?" "Yes, why? A contrary, it is the law of nature. Every being has the mission to kill. He kills to live, and he lives to kill. The beast kills without ceasing, all day, an audience in of its existence, and man kills without ceasing to nourish himself. But since in addition he needs to kill for pleasure, he is invented the chase. The child kills the insects, he finds, the little birds, all the little animals that come in his way, but this does not suffice for the irresistible need of massacre that is of us. It is not enough to kill the beast, we must kill man, too. Long ago, this need was satisfied by human sacrifice. Now, the necessity of living in society has made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin, but as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct that death, we relieve ourselves from time to time by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and intoxicates the civilians, women and children who read by lamplied at night, a fever, a story of massacre. Do we despise those picked out to accomplish these butcheries of men? No, they are loaded with honours. They are clad in gold and it's in replenished stuffs. They wear plumes on their heads and ornaments on their breasts. They are given crosses, rewards, titles of every kind. They are proud, respected, loved by women, cheered by the crowd, solely because their mission is to shed human blood. They drag through the streets, their instruments of death, the passerby, clad in black, looks on with envy. But a kill is the great law put by nature in the heart of existence. There is nothing more beautiful and honorable than killing. June 30th. To kill is the law because nature loves eternal youth. Seems to cry in all our unconscious acts, quick, quick, quick, quick. The more she destroys, the more she renews herself. July 2nd. It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill to a place before you a living, thinking, being, to make it there in a little hole, to think about a little hole, and to see that red liquid flow which is the blood, that which is the life, and then to have before you only a heap of limp flesh, cold, and earth, void of thought. August 5th. I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing my words, pronounced, killing by the guillotine, those who are killed by the knife, I should do as all the assassins whom I have smitten have done. I, I, who would know it? August 10th. Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away with? August 22nd. I could resist no longer. I have killed a little creature as an experiment as a beginning. John, my servant, had a goldfinch and a cage hung in the office window. I sent him on an errand, and I took the little bird in my hand, and my hand where I felt its heartbeat. It was warm. I went up to my room. From time to time I squeezed it tighter, its heartbeat faster, but it was atrocious and delicious. I was nearly choking it, but I could not see the blood. Then I took scissors, short nail scissors, and I cut its throat in three strokes, 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 and washed my hands. I sprinkled water and took the body, the corpse, forgotten to hide it. I buried it under a strawberry plant. If one ever refound, every day I can eat a strawberry from that plant. How one can enjoy life when one knows how. I serve it cried, he thought his bird flowed. How could he suspect me? August 25th. I must kill a man. I must. August 30th. It is done. What a little thing. I had gone for a walk in the forest of Vene. It was sinking of nothing, literally nothing. See a child on the road, a little child eating a slice of bread and butter. She stops to see me pass and says, "Good day, Mr. President." And the thought enters my head, "Should I kill him?" I answered. "You are alone, my boy." "Yes, sir." All alone in the wood. "Yes, sir." The wish to kill him intoxicated me like wine. I approached him quite softly, persuaded that he was going to run away. And suddenly I seized him by the throat. He held my wrist in his little hands and his body rear you to like a feather on a fire. Then he moved no more. I threw the body in a ditch and some weeds on top of it. I returned home and dined well. What a little thing it was. In the evening I was very gay, light, rejuvenated and past the evening at the prefix. He found me witty, but I have not seen blood. I am not tranquil. August 31st. The body has been discovered. They are hunted for the assassin. September 1st. Two tramps have been arrested. Proofs are lacking. September 2nd. The parents have been to see me. They wept. October 6th. Nothing has been discovered. Some scrolling vagabond must have done the deed. Ah! I had seen the blood flow. But it seems to me I should be tranquil now. October 10th. Yet another. I was walking by the river after breakfast and I saw under a willow a fisherman asleep. It was noon. A spade so expressly put there for me was standing in a potato field nearby. I took it. I returned. I raised it like a club. Another one below the edge I cleft the fisherman's head. Oh! He bled this one. Rose-colored blood. It flowed into the water. Quite gently. I went away with a grey step. I had been seen. Ah! I should have made an excellent assassin. October 25th. The affair of the fisherman makes a great noise. His nephew, who fished with him, is charged with a murder. October 26th. The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is guilty. Everybody in town believes it. October 27th. The nephew defends himself badly. He had gone to the village to buy bread and cheese, he declares. He swears that his uncle had been killed in his absence. Who would believe him? October 28th. The nephew is all but confessed. So much if they made him lose his head. Haha! Justice! November 15th. There are overwhelming proofs against the nephew, who is his uncle's heir. I shall preside at the sessions. January 25th, 1852. To death, to death, to death! I have had him condemned to death! The advocate general spoke like an angel! Ah! Yet another! I shall go to see him executed. March 10th. It is done. The gigatined him this morning. He died very well, very well. That gave me pleasure. I'll find it is to see a man had cut off. Now, I shall wait. I can wait. It would take such a little thing to let myself be caught. The manuscript contained more pages, but told of no new crime. Alienist physicians to whom this awful story has been submitted declare that there are in the world many unknown madmen as a droid and as terrible as this monstrous lunatic. End of The Diary of a Madman by Guy Demoperson. If you're a facilities manager at a warehouse and your HVAC system goes down, it can turn up the heat, literally. But don't sweat it, Granger has you covered. 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