Chapter 5

"Yes: for ten years I lived the most revolting 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 understand my crimes. Thus you
will see where and how began the drama that has led me to misfortune.

"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 children 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-hundredths 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 commandments 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 reprehensible. 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 devising and
teaching them ways by which not to have