This night of danger and death is one of the sweetest that ever spread its blue veil over the face of the heavens. The sea darkens, and in its innumerable pulsations the nocturnal phosphoresence is already discernible. Here and there the rippled surface of the sea glitters with an internal light as a quivering eyelid, disclosing mysterious glances. The new moon is like a burning handful of sulphur. Ever and anon the black cloud of smoke rising from the funnels hides it or appears to drag it in its spirals like a moving flame. Life is not an abstraction of aspects and events, but a sort of diffused sensuousness, a knowledge offered to all the senses, a substance good to touch, smell, taste, feel. In fact, I feel all the things near to my senses, like the fisherman walking barefooted on the beach covered with the incoming tide, and who now and then bends to identify and pick up what moves under the soles of his feet. The aspects of this maritime city are like my passions and like the monuments of Nineveh and Knossus, places of my ardor and creations of my fancy, real and unreal, products of my desire and products of time. This city is one of those tumultuous harmonies whence often the most beautiful elements of my art are born. Nothing escapes the eyes Nature gave me, and everything is food for my soul. Such a craving for life is not unlike the desire to die in order to achieve immortality. In fact, to-night death is present like life, beautiful as life, intoxicating, full of promises, transfiguring. I stand on my feet, wearing shoes that can easily be unlaced, on the deck of a small ironclad on which there is only space enough for the weapons and the crew. Steam is up. The black smoke of the three funnels rises toward the new moon, shining yellow in the cloud, burning like a handful of sulphur. The sailors have already donned life-saving belts and inflated the collars which must support the head in the agony of drowning. I hear the voice of the second officer giving the order to place in the only two boats the biscuits and the canned meat. A young officer, muscular, but agile as a leopard, who has Boldness' very eyes, and has to his credit already an admirable manoeuvre in conducting the destroyer from the arsenal to the anchorage, pays for the champagne. We drink a cup sitting around the table on which the navigation chart is spread, while the commander of the flotilla dictates, standing, to the typist the order of the nocturnal operation, which is to be issued to the commanders of the other ships. A suppressed joy shines in the eyes of all. The operation is fraught with danger, is most difficult, and the cup we drink may be our last.