There are moments when shame sends the blood to my cheeks and to my ear-tips. Selfishness, ingratitude, malice, envy, pride--all the deadly sins weave their ghostly dance before my awakened conscience. While my mind thus tortures itself, my health deteriorates, my strength decreases, and, together with the emaciation of the body, the soul begins to have a presentiment of her deliverance, from the mire. At present I read Töpffer's Le Presbytere and Dickens's _Christmas Tales_, and they impart to me an indescribable inward calm and joy. I return to the ideals of the best period of my youth, and recover the treasures which I had squandered in the game of life. Faith returns, and with it, trust in the natural goodness of men; faith in innocence, unselfishness, virtue. Virtue! This word has disappeared from modern use; it has been declared null and void and thoroughly false. Just now I see in the papers that my drama, _Herr Bengt's Wife_, has been acted in _Copenhagen_. In this play love and virtue triumph just as in the _Secret of Gilde_. The drama has not pleased the public any more than when it was first acted in 1882. Why? Because this fuss about virtue is considered idle talk. I have again read Maupassant's _Horla_. That is the finale out of _Don Juan_ over again. Some one steals unseen into the bedroom in the middle of the night. He drinks water and milk, and finishes by sucking the blood of the wretched Don Juan, who, hunted to death, is forced to lay hands on himself. That is a real experience. I recognise myself in it, and 1 confess that my senses are disturbed; but some one has a hand in it. * * * * * My health constantly gets worse, for there are cracks in the wall so that smoke penetrates into my room. To-day when I walked in the street the pavement moved under my feet like the deck of a ship swaying up and down. Only with considerable difficulty can I make the ascent to the Garden of the Luxembourg. My appetite grows continually less, and I only eat in order to still the pangs of hunger. An occurrence which has often happened since my arrival in Paris has caused me to make various reflections. Inside my coat, on the left side, exactly over the heart, there is heard a regular ticking; it reminds me of the ticking noise in walls produced by the insect called, in Sweden, "the carpenter" and also the "death-watch," believed to presage somebody's death. I thought at first it was my watch, but found it was not so, as the ticking continued after I had laid the watch aside. It is not the buckle of my suspenders, nor the lining of my vest. I accept the explanation of the death-watch, as it suits me best.