Unfortunately, Gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked Charles Morice to collaborate. Morice thereupon wrote a series of highly florid descriptions and poems, inspired by Gauguin's pictures, in a style strongly tinged with the influence of Stéphane Mallarmé. These poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of Gauguin's recital.[1] The result is that "Noa Noa" contains two books; the first Gauguin's, the second, Morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused unless he remembers that the sections by Gauguin are all headed "Le Conteur Parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous story. Morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded. It is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions add anything to Gauguin's recital. Some people may even prefer the glow of Morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of Gauguin's poetry. Gauguin himself philosophically remarked that he wished Morice's work to stand beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a civilized decadent and a naïve and brutal savage. [Footnote 1: They have been wisely omitted from the English translation.] PART V: THE FIGHT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 1895-1903 I With Gauguin's last return to Tahiti there opened for him the final and most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against encroaching civilization. The letters that he sent to de Monfreid during this period are painful reading. They breathe the weary cry of a man who knows that Fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but to fight on. For Gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. The wound in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under the climate of Tahiti, it reopened. Owing to the rash exposure of his skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by eczema. Night after night was spent in sleepless pain. To add to his troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. It seemed to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies.