see, the essen­tial is to cease being free and to obey, in repent­ance, a greater rogue than oneself. When we are all guilty, that will be democracy. Without count­ing, cher ami, that we must take revenge for hav­ing to die alone. Death is solitary, whereas slavery is collective. The others get theirs, too, and at the same time as we—that’s what counts. All together at last, but on our knees and heads bowed.

Isn’t it good likewise to live like the rest of the world, and for that doesn’t the rest of the world have to be like me? Threat, dishonor, police are the sacraments of that resemblance. Scorned, hunted down, compelled, I can then show what I am worth, enjoy what I am, be natural at last. This is why, très cher, after having solemnly paid my respects to freedom, I decided on the sly that it had to be handed over without delay to anyone who comes along. And every time I can, I preach in my church of Mexico City , I invite the good people to submit to authority and humbly to solicit the comforts of slavery, even if I have to present it as true freedom.

But I’m not being crazy; I’m well aware that slavery is not immediately realizable. It will be one of the blessings of the future, that’s all. In the meantime, I must get along with the present and seek at least a provisional solution. Hence I had to find another means of extending judgment to everybody in order to make it weigh less heavily on my own shoulders. I found the means. Open the window a little, please; it’s frightfully hot.

Not too much, for I am cold also. My idea is both simple and fertile. How to get everyone involved in or­der to have the right to sit calmly on the outside myself? Should I climb up to the pulpit, like many of my illustrious contemporaries, and curse human­ity? Very dangerous, that is! One day, or one night, laughter bursts out without a warning. The judgment you are passing on others eventually snaps back in your face, causing some damage. And so what? You ask. Well, here’s the stroke of genius.

I discovered that while waiting for the masters with their rods, we should, like Copernicus, re­verse the reasoning to win out. Inasmuch as one couldn’t condemn others without immediately judging oneself, one had to overwhelm oneself to have the right to judge others. Inasmuch as every judge someday ends up as a penitent, one had to travel the road in the opposite direction and prac­tice the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge. You follow me? Good. But to make myself even clearer, I’ll tell you how I operate.

First I closed my law office, left Paris, trav­eled. I aimed to set up under another name in some place where I shouldn’t lack for a practice. There are many in the world, but chance, convenience, irony, and also the necessity for a certain mortifi­cation made me choose a capital of waters and fogs, girdled by canals, particularly crowded, and visited by men from all corners of the earth. I set up my office in a bar in the sailors’ quarter.

The clientele of a port-town is varied. The poor don’t go into the luxury districts, whereas eventually the gentlefolk always wind up at least once, as you have seen, in the disreputable places. I lie in wait particularly for the bourgeois, and the straying bourgeois at that; it’s with him that I get my best results. Like a virtuoso with a rare violin, I draw my subtlest sounds from him.

So I have been practicing my useful profes­sion at Mexico City for some time. It consists to be­gin with, as you know from experience, in indulging in public confession as often as possible. I ac­cuse myself up and down. It’s not hard, for I now have acquired a memory. But let me point out that I don’t accuse myself crudely, beating my breast.

No, I navigate skillfully, multiplying distinctions and digressions, too—in short, I adapt my words to my listener and lead him to go me one better. I mingle what concerns me and what concerns oth­ers. I choose the features we have in common, the experiences we have endured together, the failings we share—good form, in other words, the man of the hour as he is rife in me and in others. With all that I construct a portrait which is the image of all and of no one.

A mask, in short, rather like those carnival masks which are both lifelike and stylized, so that they make people say: “Why, surely I’ve met him!” When the portrait is finished, as it is this evening, I show it with great sorrow: “This, alas, is what I am!” The prosecutor’s charge is finished. But at the same time the portrait I hold out to my contemporaries becomes a mirror.

Covered with ashes, tearing my hair, my face scored by clawing, but with piercing eyes, I stand before all humanity recapitulating my shames without losing sight of the effect I am producing, and saying: “I was the lowest of the low.” Then imperceptibly I pass from the “I” to the “we.” When I get to “This is what we are,” the trick has been played and I can tell them off. I am like them, to be sure; we are in the soup together. However, I have a superiority in that I know it and this gives me the right to speak.

You see the advantage, I am sure. The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you. Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden. Ah, mon cher, we are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives, there’s no lack of occasions to amaze and horrify ourselves. Just try. I shall listen, you may be sure, to your own confession with a great feel­ing of fraternity.

Don’t laugh! Yes, you are a difficult client; I saw that at once. But you’ll come to it inevitably. Most of the others are more sentimental than intel­ligent; they are disconcerted at once. With the in­telligent ones it takes time. It is enough to explain the method fully to them. They don’t forget it; they reflect. Sooner or later, half as a game and half out of emotional upset, they give up and tell all.

You are not only intelligent, you look polished by use. Admit, however, that today you feel less pleased with yourself than you felt five days ago? Now I shall wait for you to write me or come back. For you will come back, I am sure! You’ll find me unchanged. And why should I change, since I have found the happiness that suits me? I have accepted duplicity instead of being upset about it. On the contrary, I have settled into it and found there the comfort I was looking for throughout life.

I was wrong, after all, to tell you that the essential was to avoid judgment. The es­sential is being able to permit oneself everything, even if, from time to time, one has to profess vo­ciferously one’s own infamy. I permit myself ev­erything again, and without the laughter this time. I haven’t changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and to make use of others. Only, the confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to taste a double enjoyment, first of my nature and secondly of a charming re­pentance.

Since finding my solution, I yield to every­thing, to women, to pride, to boredom, to resent­ment, and even to the fever that I feel delightfully rising at this moment. I dominate at last, but for­ever. Once more I have found a height to which I am the only one to climb and from which I can judge everybody. At long intervals, on a really beautiful night I occasionally hear a distant laugh and again I doubt. But quickly I crush everything, people and things, under the weight of my own in­firmity, and at once I perk up.

So I shall await your respects at Mexico City as long as necessary. But remove this blanket; I want to breathe. You will come, won’t you? I’ll show you the details of my technique, for I feel a sort of affection for you. You will see me teaching them night after night that they are vile. This very evening, moreover, I shall resume. I can’t do with­out it or deny myself those moments when one of them collapses, with the help of alcohol, and beats his breast.

Then I grow taller, très cher, I grow taller, I breathe freely, I am on the mountain, the plain stretches before my eyes. How intoxicating to feel like God the Father and to hand out defini­tive testimonials of bad character and habits. I sit enthroned among my bad angels at the summit of the Dutch heaven and I watch ascending toward me, as they issue from the fogs and the water, the multitude of the Last Judgment. They rise slowly; I already see the first of them arriving.

On his be­wildered face, half hidden by his hand, I read the melancholy of the common condition and the de­spair of not being able to escape it. And as for me, I pity without absolving, I understand without for­giving, and above all, I feel at last that I am being adored!

Yes, I am moving about. How could