“The week at Rheims was filled with shouts of applause, it was a veritable triumphal progress. You were not there, you cannot imagine it. The boldest hopes accompanied our flights. I had my share of glory. The intoxication of success which I had formerly been so eager to taste even in small measure, exaggerated and magnified now, went to my head and for the moment made me forget. I was introduced to this young girl, who shone with enthusiasm as the windows of an unknown city blaze in the sun. When I came to myself I was her fiancé. Do you know that the day of our marriage has been announced? It is set for next month. Since my return here, I have recognised my mistake. The days have passed; they are passing now, and I am still silent and they are waiting for me. But understand me, it is impossible, it would be monstrous.” He addressed me with increasing violence, and I endeavoured to reassure him. Life holds us captive, I urged, in spite of ourselves. Youth has an aptitude for happiness which may be nothing more than the faculty of beginning over again. He stopped me. “No, no, you don’t understand.” Two manuscript portfolios were lying on the table, one open and the other closed. With a movement that seemed almost inspired, he suddenly picked them up and handed them to me. “Here, read this,” he said. “You will understand then. You will learn that there are silent dramas more tragic than the bloodiest crimes. Now leave me. Good-bye till to-morrow. Oh, don’t fear for me. Your presence this evening has dissipated bad ideas.” It was his secret that I was about to learn. PART II AND EACH MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES I KILLED the one I loved ... Raymond Cernay had said to me on that mournful night. It is almost the phrase of the “Ballad of Reading Gaol” which I have used at the head of this transcription:--the explanation will come later: “Yet each man kills the thing he loves.” The first note-book was dated November of the year following the death of Mme. Cernay. The second, also dated November, the month he consecrated to thoughts of the past, was written one year later, and one year therefore before my visit to the Sleeping Woods. In the course of that same Autumn night in which I believed I had seen death, I read the two without a pause. _FIRST NOTE BOOK_ November 19-- Six months, day by day, have already passed since the moment when I lost her. And already when I wish to recall them, many recollections evade and escape me, or seem inconsistent. I shall try to fix here all that I can grasp of joy and sorrow, from our first meeting to her last breath. Thus, perhaps, I may be able to keep her nearer me. Each effort to find suitable words will help me to commune with her, as the faithful commune with God in prayer.... * * *