"You may perhaps have noticed a woman outside there. That is my wife. I married because I fancied that I should thereby find rest for my soul. I imagined how happy I should be if I were to have a child. I should then have something to knit me to life, to the world again. No, I said to myself, he shall not inherit the curse of my abhorred existence. I will choose for him a career in which he will be happy, honoured, and respected. I will provide him with a comfortable maintenance and have him educated far from me and my house. I will make a worthy, honest, sensible man of him. For two years I comforted myself with such visions and was happy. My mind shook off its horrors and became bright and cheerful. And then--then I began drinking heavily again. Evil memories commenced assailing me worse than ever, and my fair hopes abandoned me--for life and death, sir, are both lodged in a woman's heart, and some find the one and some the other. Once more I was visited by that midnight sighing, by that speechless moaning, by those voices that terrified my solitude and pursued me sleeping and waking, and I began to drink and run riot again once more." The man hid his drooping head in his hands. Even now those dreadful memories weighed him down when he thought upon them. "Suddenly I began to be deaf. A continuous humming sounded in my ears which kept me in a perpetual whirl. I did not understand a single word unless I looked at the lips of the speaker. I never noticed anyone coming into my room until I suddenly caught sight of him. Oh! deafness is indeed a horrible torture. The deaf man is far more completely shut off from the world than the blind. At first I hid my wretchedness lest they should make sport of me. Nobody is merciful to the deaf. Whenever two people talked to each other in my presence I fancied they were plotting against me. I feared to go to sleep lest I should be murdered without hearing my door burst open. And then, too, in the night, in the darkness, in my lonely deafness, I had an ear all the keener for those sighs and moans which nobody could hear but myself. And in vain I drank, in vain I sang riotously. After every bumper of wine it seemed to me as if I was plunged more and more deeply into a roaring bottomless sea, and at last I could not even hear my own howling. Then my soul died away within me, I cast myself despairingly on my bed, and then for the first time in my life it occurred to me to pray. The only thing I could think of to say was: 'My God! my God!' as I wrung my hands, and the tears ran down my cheeks." And at these words tears stood once more in the headsman's eyes.