'So I left Florence and came to Pisa, the dead city whose sweet silence had enchanted me in days gone by. I had taken an immense fancy to the square in which stand the Dome, the Baptistery, and the Belfry, with a cemetery wall and the remains of a battlemented rampart to enclose it. Then there was the shore of the Gombo two hours distant--a sandy desert among the pines--and the yellow Arno flowing sluggishly by! My room looked out upon the dreary river, but it was full of sunshine, warm and clear, and I had come there filled with a glorious plan. An old maxim of Goethe had come into my mind, "Poetry is deliverance!" "I will try it," I said to myself, and I swore not to leave Pisa before I had turned my grief into literature. Perhaps, in making bubbles out of the tears I had already shed, I might forget to shed fresh ones. These bubbles grew into a story which I called _Analysis._ You have no doubt read it in the _Revue parisienne._ Don't you think it as good as anything I have done? As you see, it is the whole story of my sad love; every detail is absolutely correct, from the episode of the letter to my jealousy of the Sapphos. What do you think of Colette--isn't she well drawn? And of me? Alas! my dear fellow, would that I had obtained peace of mind by besmirching the image of her I have so loved, by dragging in the dirt the idol once adorned with freshest roses, by dishonouring the dear past with all the strength at my command! Hear the result of this noble effort--I had no sooner posted the manuscript of this story than I went home and wrote to Colette asking her to forgive me. An excellent joke, this maxim of Goethe--a sublime Philistine and a Jupiter, as they used to style him! I have plunged a pen into my wound to use my blood for ink, and I have only poisoned myself afresh. If I am to be cured at all, time is the only thing that will cure me. But, after all, why be cured? 'Yes, why? I have been proud--I am proud no longer. I have struggled against the passion that abased me--I will struggle no more. If I had the cancer in my cheek, should I be ashamed of it? Well, I have a cancer in my soul, and make no attempt to check its growth. Listen to the end of my story. Colette did not answer my letter. Could I expect her to be kind to me after my behaviour? I had already begun to humble myself by writing to her. I went on doing so. Then I commenced to feel such delight as I had never felt before--that of degrading myself before her, of letting her trample upon my manly dignity. I wrote to her a second, a third, a fourth time.