Jean Genet's close friend François Santin (1920-2010) tells the intricate story of the murderer Maurice Pilorge, executed in 1939, to whom Genet dedicated the poem “Death Man,” and the executioner Anatole Deibler, who suddenly died on the way to Pilorge's execution.

< p>The night spills out through his eyes and spreads across his face, which becomes like pine trees on stormy evenings, like gardens where I used to spend my days: slender trees, a hole in the wall, and trellises, these exciting patterned trellises. And slender trees. O Pilorzh! Your face is like a night garden, lonely among the Worlds with suns circling above them! And an imperceptible, barely noticeable sadness, like in a garden with slender trees. Your face is gloomy, as if on a clear day a shadow had fallen over your soul. You probably felt a slight chill, your body was trembling with an almost imperceptible shiver, as if a veil of thin, transparent tulle was lying on it, because it, your face, is covered with a veil of thousands of tiny wrinkles, thin, light, not carved, but drawn, it's like microscopic crosses. Jean Genet, “Our Lady of the Flowers”