And I swear to you here and now, by my every hope
of Heaven, that what I say is true. I loathed the thing I did.
Yet for my own sake and the sake of my order I must do it. Ask
yourself whether M. de Vilmorin would have hesitated for a moment
if by procuring my death he could have brought the Utopia of his
dreams a moment nearer realization.
"After that. You determined that the sweetest vengeance would be
to frustrate my ends by reviving in yourself the voice that I had
silenced, by yourself carrying forward the fantastic apostleship
of equality that was M. de Vilmorin's. You lacked the vision that
would have shown you that God did not create men equals. Well,
you are in case to-night to judge which of us was right, which
wrong. You see what is happening here in Paris. You see the foul
spectre of Anarchy stalking through a land fallen into confusion.
Probably you have enough imagination to conceive something of what
must follow. And do you deceive yourself that out of this filth
and ruin there will rise up an ideal form of society? Don't you
understand that society must re-order itself presently out of all
this?
"But why say more? I must have said enough to make you understand
the only thing that really matters - that I killed M.
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