* * * * *

When he had finished the reading of these fragments, the advocate continued: 

“Decency, gentlemen of the jury, hinders me from communicating to you the extraordinary avowals of this shameless, idealistic fool.  The fragments that I have just submitted to you will be sufficient, in my opinion, to enable you to appreciate this instance of mental malady, less rare in our epoch of hysterical insanity and of corrupt decadence than most of us believe.

“I think, then, that my client is more entitled than any women whatever to claim a divorce, in the exceptional circumstances in which the disordered senses of her husband has placed her.”

WHO KNOWS?

I

My God!  My God!  I am going to write down at last what has happened to me.  But how can I?  How dare I?  The thing is so bizarre, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so silly!

If I were not perfectly sure of what I have seen, sure that there was not in my reasoning any defect, no error in my declarations, no lacune in the inflexible sequence of my observations, I should believe myself to be the dupe of a simple hallucination, the sport of a singular vision.  After all, who knows?

Yesterday I was in a private asylum, but I went there voluntarily, out of prudence and fear.  Only one single human being knows my history, and that is the doctor of the said asylum.  I am going to write to him.  I really do not know why?  To disembarrass myself?  For I feel as though I were being weighed down by an intolerable nightmare.

Let me explain.

I have always been a recluse, a dreamer, a kind of isolated philosopher, easy-going, content with but little, harboring ill-feeling against no man, and without even having a grudge against heaven.  I have constantly lived alone, consequently, a kind of torture takes hold of me when I find myself in the presence of others.  How is this to be explained?  I for one cannot.  I am not averse from going out into the world, from conversation, from dining with friends, but when they are near me for any length of time, even the most intimate friends, they bore me, fatigue me, enervate me, and I experience an overwhelming torturing desire, to see them get up to depart, or to take themselves away, and to leave me by myself.

That desire is more than a craving; it is an irresistible necessity.  And if the presence of people, with whom I find myself, were to be continued; if I were compelled, not only to listen, but also to follow, for any length of time, their conversation, a serious accident would assuredly take place.  What kind of accident?  Ah! who knows?  Perhaps a slight paralytic stroke?  Yes, probably!

I like so much to be alone that I cannot even endure the vicinage of other beings sleeping under the same roof.  I cannot live in Paris, because when there I suffer the most acute agony.  I lead a moral life, and am therefore tortured in my body and in my nerves by that immense crowd which swarms, which lives around even when it sleeps.  Ah! the sleeping of others is more painful still than their conversation.  And I can never find repose when I know, when I feel, that on the other side of a wall, several existences are interrupted by these regular eclipses of reason.