Free The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler by Reggie Oliver

encouraged my feelings, but it was then—I freely admit it—that I made a tragic mistake. Instead of biding my time and slowly regaining the trust of all, on a reckless impulse I hired a pair of ruffians to seize the girl on her way to confession and bring her to me.
    ‘ “They succeeded, but Maria had been put into such a state of shock by their clumsy violence that she resisted all my efforts to calm her. Perhaps I tried too hard to pacify her, but she was overwhelmed by it all. In short—I will not burden you with the details, signor—she perished in my arms. I had crushed the flower which I longed to nurture. Then, of all the outrageous acts of hypocrisy, those guttersnipes I had hired to capture the girl suddenly became full of remorse, and unknown to me, they went to the authorities.
    ‘ “The morning after Maria had died—I had spent a virtually sleepless night on her account—I woke to the sound of a hammering on my door. I looked out of my bedroom window to see the Carabinieri at the head of a rabble howling for my blood. Fortunately I was still fully dressed and I had a way of leaving my house secretly through a passage in my cellar which let me in to the next door house. I had not a moment to lose though, so seizing a loaded pistol from a drawer—I always kept one by me for such eventualities—I made for the cellar and the secret passage. Barely had I bolted the cellar door behind me when that stinking rout of rogues and Pharisees burst into my house.
    ‘ “In the event I was only a few minutes ahead of them. I knew by this time that there was only one means of escape, so I climbed the hill towards the Garden of Strangers. I heard their baying behind me and knew fear, but also a strange kind of exhilaration. At least my death would not be a slow descent into neglect and debility. I was past sixty, with all the ills that attend such an age, but for a while the chase put blood and fire into my old limbs. I gained the gate of the Garden with the rabble still a few hundred paces behind me.
    ‘ “Even in death I won a victory. I cheated them. I reached this very bench with the mob hard on my heels. My old legs had begun to give way so that my pursuers had all but caught up with me. I showed them my gun, which held the cowards at bay, but my time had run out, and I prepared to die. I placed the muzzle of my pistol behind my left ear, slightly pointing upwards into the cranium. It was how an old Austrian General had once told me I should perform the act. That had been in my youth after the first of my disgraces, and I had repaid the General for his kind advice by using my pistol on him rather than myself. Then, as my persecutors closed in, I pulled the trigger. There was a momentary flash of agony, then I was dead and laughing at my persecutors with their shirt fronts and faces filthied by my blood and brains. So I remain, beyond them all, for ever.
    ‘ “I am not like the others here in this Garden of Strangers. I am one of the elect. I am not miserable like them; I am in ecstasy! I have an eternity to myself in which I can remember every twitch of pleasure, every gradation of the exquisite corruption of the flesh, every touch of my wrinkled finger on soft skin, every convulsion of pain, every scarlet scratch on the smooth white surface of youth, every hot tear that scalded the innocence of heaven. My soul still runs like fire through the lilies of God and scorches them with my everlasting lust!”
    ‘What else that monster shrieked in my ear—vile things that I will carry with me to my grave—I dare not repeat. I, Oscar Wilde—I, who thought he had plumbed the depths of sin!—could take no more of this. I knew that I must leave that garden at once; because, whereas my first two visitants had been sad creatures drifting through limbo, this last thing was a soul in Hell. I knew that I must escape him or risk eternal damnation.
    ‘The Count went on whispering his carnal litany in my ear as I tried to