The Mystics Of Anarchy - Part 3

And Léauthier, that wretch who attacked an unknown man in a Paris restaurant, choosing his victim purely because he was wearing his medals. In his written defence before the jury at the Seine Assizes he too developed a certain vague poetic sentimentality for the mad dreams that lead to anarchy and murder;

“Oh, Good God! It must change

Enough of drink!

We must get out of the mine

Let us open the dykes

Government, boss, Jesuit

All the wretched informers

Let’s fuck ’em up with dynamite!

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When we have hunger in our bellies

Why go around begging

All means are good means

Everything is permitted  -  steal! Kill!

Dynamite the parasite

You cannot count on others

To work! Time is short.

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When we go to the barracks

Where they want to stupefy us

With a load of twaddle

That we must obey

To all those brothers who are sleeping

Speaking of a general strike

We are preparing

The Society of the Indomitable

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Mr. Bourgeois, you make us constipated

With your great principles

Your laws and your virtues

That I crap on.’

‘On a beautiful day in the month of October,’ he said, ‘Paris was on holiday. Everyone could hear the sound of music and brass bands. On the boulevards arches of triumph had been built and bedecked with flowers and painted brightly. In the evening there were fireworks and fabulous illuminations all shining brightly in their magnificence. There were sumptuous banquets, parties, entertainments, extravagant ornamentation shocking debauchery. The gold of the poor of this world was being spent, wasted, thrown about by the crooks in government. And me, slunk in my poor attic, I was without dinner.

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Thousands of unfortunates sleep under the stars while so many Paris apartments lie empty waiting for someone to rent them.

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I will tremble before a lizard but I will not tremble before men; I will cry before a child and I will smile under your guillotine.’