By my throne,--what was that love I prattled of when I donned this human form? To whom was it that I opened my embraces? Was it you...comrade? By my throne!--if I was Love but _for a single moment_, henceforth I am Hate and _eternally_ thus I remain.
Let us halt at this point to-day, dear comrade. It has been quite some time since I moved my pen upon this paper and I must now grow accustomed anew to your dull and shallow face, smeared o'er with the red of your cheeks. I seem to have forgotten how to speak the language of respectable people who have just received a trouncing. Get thee hence, my friend. To-day I am a brass trumpet. Tickle not my throat, little worm. Leave me.
It was a month ago that Thomas Magnus _blew_ me up. Yes, it is true. He really blew me up and it was a month ago, in the holy City of Rome, in the Palazzo Orsini, when I still belonged to the billionaire Henry Wondergood--do you remember that genial American, with his cigar and patent gold teeth? Alas! He is no longer with us. He died suddenly and you will do well if you order a requiem mass for him: his Illinois soul is in need of your prayers.
Let us return, however, to his last hours. I shall try to be exact in My recollections and give you not only the emotions but also the words of that evening--it was evening, when the moon was shining brightly. Perhaps I shall not give you quite the words spoken but, at any rate, they will be the words I heard and stored away in my memory.... If you were ever whipped, worthy comrade, then you know how difficult it was for you to count all the blows of the whip. A change of gravity! You understand? Oh, you understand everything. And so let us receive the last breath of Henry Wondergood, blown up by the culprit Thomas Magnus and buried by..._Maria_.
I remember: I awoke on the morning after that _stormy_ evening, calm and even gay. Apparently it was the effect of the sun, shining into that same, broad window through which, at night, there streamed that unwelcome and too highly significant moonlight. You understand: now the moon and now the sun? Oh, you understand everything. It is probably for the very same reason I acquired my touching faith in the integrity of Magnus and awaited toward evening that cloudless bliss. This expectation was all the greater because his collaborators...you remember his collaborators?--had begun to _greet_ and _bow_ to me. What is a greeting?--ah, how much it means to the faith of man!