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Remorse in Les Fleurs du mal is insistently compared to a corpse-eating worm. In order to assess the fertility of this analogy between remorse which gnaws at one’s heart and the worm that gnaws at the body, this paper studies its antecedents, its implications for Baudelaire, and its fortune with other poets. The image indeed has biblical roots and depends on the reinterpretation of fixed phrases. On it converge a certain number of the major components of the baudelairean psyche (diffuse guilt, fear of being devoured, of decomposition) and it is treated in an original rhetorical manner in Les Fleurs du mal. Finally, the comparison has had considerable posterity among poets who have remembered Baudelaire when bringing closer together the bite of remorse and that of a hungry worm.