This, then, is the tone I shall adopt in speaking of Mettray, Harcamone and the prison. Nothing will prevent me, neither close attention nor the desire to be exact, from writing words that sing. And though the evocation of Bulkaen may bring me back to a more naked view of events, I know that, as soon as it ceases, my song, in reaction against this nakedness, will be more exalted. But let there be no talk of improbability or of my having derived this phrase from an arrangement of words. The scene was within me, I was present, and only by writing about it am I able to express my worship of the murderer less awkwardly. The very day following this prodigy I forgot all about it in my infatuation with Bulkaen.

Blond, close-cropped hair, eyes that were perhaps green but certainly grim-looking, a thin, lithe body—the expression that best renders it is: “grace in leaf and love at rest"—an air of being twenty years old: that’s Bulkaen. I had been at Fonte-vrault a week. I was going down for the medical examination when, at a turn of the stairway, I saw him. He was dressing or undressing. He must have been swopping his homespun jacket for a newer one. I had time enough to see, spread across his golden chest and wide as a coat of arms, the huge wings of a blue eagle. The tattoo wasn’t dry, and the scabs made it stand out in such relief that I thought it had been carved with a chisel. I was seized with a kind of holy terror. When the youngster stood up straight, his face was smiling. It was gleaming with stars. He was saying to the crony with whom he was making the swop, “. . . and besides, I’ve been given a ten-year injunction.”1 He threw his jacket over his shoulders and kept it there. I was holding a few cigarette butts in my hand, which was on a level with his eyes because of our positions on the stairs—I was on the way down. He looked at them and said, “Someone’s got cigarettes.” I said “I have” and kept going, feeling a little ashamed of smoking Gauloises. The cigarette is the prisoner’s gentle companion. He thinks of it more than of his absent wife. His charming friendship with it is largely due to the elegance of its shape and the gestures it requires of his fingers and body. It was boorish of me not to offer Bulkaen one of my white maidens. That was our first meeting. I was too struck by the brilliance of his beauty to dare say another word. I spoke of him to no one, but I carried off in my eyes the memory of a dazzling face and body. I prayed for him to love me. I prayed for him to be the kind of person who could love me. I already knew he would lead me to death. I know now that this death will be beautiful. I mean that he was worthy of my dying for him and because of him. But may he lead me to it quickly. In any case, sooner or later it will be because of him. I shall die worn out or shattered. Even if, at the end of this book, Bulkaen proves to be contemptible because of his stupidity or vanity or some other ugly quality, the reader must not be surprised if, though aware of these qualities (since I reveal them), I persist in changing my life by following the star to which he points (I am using his terms, despite myself. When he sent me notes later on, he would write: “I’ve got my star . . .”, for his role of demon requires that he show me this new direction, He brings a message which he himself does not quite understand but which he implements in part. Fatality will first utilize my love of him. But when my love—and Bulkaen—disappear, what will be left?