Brothers, in these letters written for you alone, which I prepare day by day, quivering yet from the terrible shocks I have received, I can be rough, sharp, revealing everything, emphasizing my confessions. I give myself up wholly, I spread my entire life out before you, I exhibit to you my flesh and my blood: I wish to take my heart from my breast, to show it to you, bleeding, sick, frank in its baseness and in its purity. I feel myself better and worthier in confessing myself to you; I have an immense pride amid my abasement; the deeper I descend, the more disdain, the more superb indifference, I acquire. What a delicious thing is frankness! Say to yourselves that, out of ten young men, eight have the same life, the same youth, as I: some two or three in a hundred, perhaps, become frightened and weep as I weep; the others, several thousands, accept their lot and live in peace, infamous and smiling. All lie. As for me, I wound myself, I admit to you with sobs what are my love affairs, and tell you with what a terrible weight they stifle me. Later, I will lie. Nothing exists now, except the love of Laurence, which I have not and which I exact. There is no more light, there is no longer a world, there is no longer a crowd; in the gloom, a man and a woman are brought face to face forever. The man, setting aside all his lofty aspirations, all his appreciation of beauty, wishes to be loved by the woman, because he is afraid of being alone, because he is cold and hungry, because he loves himself. At the final day, when humanity is expiring, and when but a single couple remain upon the earth, the struggle will be terrible, the despair immense, if the last adorer cannot awaken the last sweetheart from the dull sleep of the heart and the flesh. CHAPTER XXI A HORRIBLE PROPOSITION Marie changed her chamber yesterday; she now lodges upon the same landing as I, in an apartment separated from mine by a simple partition. The poor child is dying; she gives vent to a light and hollow cough, with a sort of rattling in her throat after each attack of coughing. Jacques, whose studious quietude was disturbed by this cough, decided that the invalid would be more at her ease alone in a separate chamber. He has engaged Pâquerette to watch over and take care of her. Last night, I heard for long hours Marie's cough and the rattling in her throat. Laurence slept on tranquilly. The sound of each half stifled fit which passed through the partition filled me with indescribable sadness. This morning, on arising, I went to see the dying girl. She was in bed, white, resigned, still smiling. Her head, raised upon two pillows, had a sort of gentle languor; her thin and almost transparent arms were stretched out on the sheet beside her poor body, the sharp and lamentable outlines of which could be seen beneath the covers.