All this is not very interesting, my poor friend, and hardly worth the trouble of writing, is it? But as you insist upon it that I must write to you, I must tell you what I think and what I feel, and must give you the history of my ideas, in default of events and acts.--It may be that there will be little order and little novelty in what I shall have to say to you; but you must blame nobody but yourself for it. You would have it. You are the friend of my childhood, I was brought up with you; we lived our lives in common for a long, long while, and we are accustomed to exchange our most secret thoughts. I can tell you, therefore, without blushing, all the absurd things that pass through my unoccupied brain; I will not add a word, I will not cut out a word, I have no self-love with you. So I will be absolutely frank--even in petty, shameful things; not before you, certainly, will I cover my nakedness. Beneath the shroud of indifferent, depressed ennui to which I have referred just now, there stirs sometimes a thought that is benumbed rather than dead, and I have not always the sad and gentle tranquillity that melancholy gives.--I have relapses and fall back into my old attacks of agitation. Nothing in the world is so fatiguing as those motiveless paroxysms, those aimless impulses.--On those days, although I have no more to do than on any others, I rise very early in the morning, before sunrise, I have such a feeling of being in a hurry, of not having all the time I need; I dress in hot haste, as if the house were on fire, tossing on my clothes at random and bewailing a wasted minute.--Any one who happened to see me would think that I was going to keep an assignation or to hunt for money.--Not at all.--I have no idea where I shall go; but go I must, and I should think my salvation endangered if I remained at home.--It seems to me as if somebody were calling me outside, as if my destiny were passing through the street at the moment and the question of my life or death were on the point of being decided.