All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.--_De Profundis_. DOMESTICITY AT BERNEVAL DIEPPE, June 1st, 1897. My Dear Robbie,--I propose to live at Berneval. I will _not_ live in Paris, nor in Algiers, nor in Southern Italy. Surely a house for a year, if I choose to continue there, at 32 pounds is absurdly cheap. I could not live cheaper at a hotel. You are penny foolish, and pound foolish--a dreadful state for my financier to be in. I told M. Bonnet that my bankers were MM. Ross et Cie, banquiers celebres de Londres--and now you suddenly show me that you have no place among the great financial people, and are afraid of any investment over 31 pounds, 10s. It is merely the extra ten shillings that baffles you. As regards people living on me, and the extra bedrooms: dear boy, there is no one who would stay with me but you, and you will pay your own bill at the hotel for meals; and as for your room, the charge will be nominally 2 francs 50 centimes a night, but there will be lots of extras such as _bougie, bain_ and hot water, and all cigarettes smoked in the bedrooms are charged extra. And if any one does not take the extras, of course he is charged more:-- Bain, 25 C. Pas de bain, 50 C. Cigarette dans la chambre a coucher, 10 C. pour chaque cigarette. Pas de cigarette dans la chambre a coucher, 20 C. pour chaque cigarette. This is the system at all good hotels. If Reggie comes, of course he will pay a little more: I cannot forget that he gave me a dressing-case. Sphinxes pay a hundred per cent more than any one else--they always did in Ancient Egypt. But seriously, Robbie, if people stayed with me, of course they would pay their _pension_ at the hotel. They would have to: except architects. A modern architect, like modern architecture, doesn't pay. But then I know only one architect and you are hiding him somewhere from me. I believe that he is as extinct as the dado, of which now only fossil remains are found, chiefly in the vicinity of Brompton, where they are sometimes discovered by workmen excavating. They are usually embedded in the old Lincrusta Walton strata, and are rare consequently.