Alas: my life was little more than a few mild madnesses.

Fine. Make any face you want.

Unquestionably, we are beyond the world. Not a single sound. My sense of touch is gone. My château, my Saxony, my willow grove. Evenings, mornings, nights, days … How weary I am!

There should be a hell for my anger, a hell for my pride—and a hell for every caress: a satanic symphony.

I die of weariness. Here is my tomb, I join the worms—horror of horrors! Satan, you joker: you would see me consumed by your charms. I protest! I protest! Give me the pitchfork’s sting, the fire’s flame.

Ah, to rise back to life! To look once again upon our deformities. And this poison, this kiss countlessly cursed! My weakness; worldly cruelty! O God have pity, hide me, I am wicked!—I am hidden and I am not.

Flames rise again, bearing the damned.

DELIRIA

I
FOOLISH VIRGIN
Hellish Husband

Hear a hellmate’s confession:

“O heavenly Husband, O Lord, do not refuse this confession from the saddest of your servants. I am lost. I am drunk. I am impure. O this life!

“Forgive, heavenly Lord, forgive! Ah! Forgive. Too many tears! And, I hope, too many tears to come.

“Later, I’ll meet my heavenly Husband. I was born beneath His yoke. But now, I’m someone else’s whipping boy!

“Now I’m at the bottom of the world. O the women I call my friends … No, not my friends … I’ve never known such delirium and torture … It’s ridiculous!

“How I suffer, how I scream: I truly suffer. There’s nothing I wouldn’t contemplate doing now, burdened as I am with the contempt of the most contemptible of hearts.

“So enough, let’s confess, even if it means repeating it twenty times over—however dreary and insignificant.

“I am the slave of a hellish Husband, to him who undid foolish virgins. There’s no doubt he’s the same demon. He’s no ghost, no phantom. But I, whose wisdom has been squandered, who is damned and dead to the world—I won’t be killed! —How can I explain all of this? I barely know how to talk anymore. I’m in mourning; I weep; I’m afraid. A breath of fresh air, O Lord, if you would, if you would please!

“I am widowed …—I was widowed … but yes, I was, once, very proper, and I wasn’t born simply to become bones! —He was very nearly a child … His mysterious ways seduced me. I forgot all my earthly duties in order to follow him. O this life! Real life is elsewhere. We aren’t of this earth. I go where he goes, how can’t I? And yet he blows up at me all the time, me —poor soul. That demon! —He’s doubtless a demon, for he is certainly not a man.

“He says: ‘I don’t like women. Love must be reinvented, that much is clear. Women want security.