ge asked the accused the customary question:

"Prisoner, is there anything that you wish to add to your defense?"

The man stood up.

He was a short, flaxen blond, with calm, clear, gray eyes. A strong,
frank, sonorous voice came from this frail-looking boy and, at the first
words, quickly changed the opinion which had been formed of him.

He spoke loud in a declamatory manner, but so distinctly that every word
could be understood in the farthest corners of the big hall:

"Your honor, as I do not wish to go to an insane asylum, and as I even
prefer death to that, I will tell everything.

"I killed this man and this woman because they were my parents.

"Now, listen, and judge me.

"A woman, having given birth to a boy, sent him out, somewhere, to a
nurse. Did she even know where her accomplice carried this innocent
little being, condemned to eternal misery, to the shame of an
illegitimate birth; to more than that--to death, since he was abandoned
and the nurse, no longer receiving the monthly pension, might, as they
often do, let him die of hunger and neglect!

"The woman who nursed me was honest, better, more noble, more of a
mother than my own mother. She brought me up. She did wrong in doing her
duty. It is more humane to let them die, these little wretches who are
cast away in suburban villages just as garbage is thrown away.

"I grew up with the indistinct impression that I was carrying some
burden of shame. One day the other children called me a 'b-----'. They
did not know the meaning of this word, which one of them had heard at
home. I was also ignorant of its meaning, but I felt the sting all the
same.

"I was, I may say, one of the cleverest boys in the school. I would have
been a good man, your honor, perhaps a man of superior intellect, if my
parents had not committed the crime of abandoning me.

"This crime was committed against me. I was the victim, they were the
guilty ones. I was defenseless, they were pitiless. Their duty was to
love me, they rejected me.

"I owed them life--but is life a boon? To me, at any rate, it was a
misfortune. After their shameful desertion, I owed them only vengeance.
They committed against me the most inhuman, the most infamous, the most
monstrous crime which can be committed against a human creature.

"A man who has been insulted, strikes; a man who has been robbed,
takes back his own by force. A man who has been deceived, played upon,
tortured, kills; a man who