“I have learned from your works the remedy for such feelings, and in opposing to the image of approaching death the sentiment of inevitable necessity, and in diminishing the vision of my mother’s grief by the recollection of the psychological laws which govern consolations, I shall arrive at a relatively calm state of mind. Certain sentences of yours will suffice for this, that, for example, in the fifth chapter of the second volume of your “Anatomy of the Will,” which I know by heart: “‘The universal interweaving of phenomena causes each to bear the weight of all the others, in the same way that each portion of the universe, and at each moment, may be considered as a _résumé_ of all that has been, of all that is, and of all that will be. It is in this sense that it is permissible to say that the world is eternal in its detail as well as in its whole.’ “What a sentence, and how it envelops, as well as affirms and demonstrates the idea that everything is necessary in and around us since we too are a parcel and a moment of this eternal world! Alas! why is it that this idea which is so lucid when I reason, as one ought to reason, with my mind, and in which I acquiesce with all the strength of my being, cannot overcome in me a species of suffering so peculiar, which invades my heart when I recall certain actions which I have willed, and others of which I am the author, although indirectly, in the drama through which I have passed? “To tell you all in a few words, my dear master, though once more I say that I did not kill Mlle. de Jussat, I have been connected in the closest manner with the drama of her poisoning, and I feel remorse, although the doctrines in which I believe, the truths which I know, and the convictions which form the essence of my intellect, make me consider remorse the most silly of human illusions. “These convictions are powerless to procure me the peace of certainty, which once was mine. I doubt with my heart that which my mind recognizes as truth. I do not think that for a man whose youth was consumed by intellectual passions, there can be a worse punishment than this. But why try to interpret by literary phrases a mental condition which I wish to expose to you in detail--to you the great connoisseur in maladies of the mind--in order that you may give me the only aid which can do me any good; some word which shall explain me to myself, which shall attest to me that I am not a monster, which shall sustain me in the disorder of my beliefs, which shall prove to me that I have not been deceived all these years, in adhering to the new faith with all the energy of a sincere being. “Indeed, my dear master, I am very miserable, and I must speak out all my misery. To whom shall I address myself, if not to you, since I should have no hope of being intelligible to any one not familiar with the psychology in which I have been educated.