"Behold! the approach of the day that thou fain wouldst have tried to bring nearer by thy prayers, if a jealous fate had not deferred it; for which thou didst often sigh; behold the moment which is to remove the capricious yoke of fortune from the trammels of human society, from the venomous attacks of thy fellow-creatures. Thou thinkest thou wilt cease to exist and that thought torments thee.... Well, but what proves to thee that thou wilt be annihilated? All the ages have retained a hope in immortality. The belief in a spiritual life was not merely a dogma of a few religious creeds; it was the need and the cry of all nations that have covered the face of the earth. The European, in the luxuries of his capital towns, the aboriginal American-Indian under his rude huts, both equally dream of an immortal state; all cry to the tribunal of nature against the incompleteness of this life. "If thou sufferest, it is well to die; if thou art happy or thinkest thou art so, thou wilt gain by death since thy illusion would not have lasted long. Thou passest from a terrestrial habitation to a pure and celestial one. Why look back when thy foot is upon the threshold of its portals? The eternal distributor of good and evil, our Sovereign Master, calls thee to Himself; it is by His desire thy prison flies open; thy heavy chains are broken and thy exile is ended; therefore rejoice! Thou wilt soar to the throne of thy King and Saviour! "Ah! if thou art not shackled with the weight of some unexpiated crime, thou wilt sing as thou diest; and, like the Roman emperor, thou wilt rise up in thy agony at the very thought, and thou wouldst die standing with eyes turned towards the promised land! "O Saint Preux and Werther! O Jacob Ortis! how far were you from reaching such heights as that! Orators even to the death agony, your brains alone it is which lament; man in his death throes, this actually dying creature, it is his heart that groans, his flesh that cries out, his spirit which doubts. Oh! how well one feels that all that hollow philosophising does not reassure him as to the pain of the supreme moment, and especially against that terror of annihilation, which brought drops of sweat to the brow of Hamlet! "One more cry--the last, then silence shall fall on him who suffered much." Moreover, Alphonse Rabbe wished there to be no doubt of how he died; hear this, his will, which he signed; there was to his mind no dishonour in digging himself a grave with his own hands between those of Cato of Utica and of Brutus-- "31 _December_ 1829