In myself.  To myself I have become a subject of excruciating interest.  To myself I am a vastly more picturesque personage than any debonair hooligan of quattro-cento Verona.  He has faded into the dullest (and most offensive) dog of a ghost.  I only exist.  This sounds like the colossal vanity of Bedlam.  Heaven knows it is not.  If you are racked with toothache from ear to ear, from crown to chin, and from eyeball to cerebellum, is not the whole universe concentrated in that head of yours?  Are you not to yourself in that hour of torture the most vitally important of created beings?  And no one blames you for it.  Let me therefore be without blame in my hour of moral toothache.

In the days gone by I was the victim of a singular hallucination.  I flattered myself on being the one individual in the world not summoned to play his part in the comedy of Life.  I sat alone in the great auditorium like the mad king of Bavaria, watching with little zest what seemed but a sorry spectacle.  I thought myself secure in my solitary stall.  But I had not counted on the high gods who crowd shadowy into the silent seats and are jealous of a mortal in their midst.  Without warning was I wrested from my place, hurled onto the stage, and before my dazzled eyes could accustom themselves to the footlights, I found myself enmeshed in intolerable drama.  I was unprepared.  I knew my part imperfectly.  I missed my cues.  I had the blighting self-consciousness of the amateur.  And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real.  Amid the laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought to flee from the stage.  I came to Verona and find I am still acting my part.  I have always been acting.  I have been acting since I was born.  The reason of our being is to amuse the high gods with our histrionics.  The earth itself is the stage, and the starry ether the infinite auditorium.

The high gods have granted to their troupe of mimes one boon.  Each has it in his power to make the final exit at any moment.  For myself I feel that moment is at hand.  One last soliloquy, and then like the pagliacco I can say with a sigh, "La commedia e finita—­the play is played out,” and the rest will be silence.  At all events I will tell my own story.  My “History of Renaissance Morals” can lie in its corner and rot, whilst I shall concern myself with a far more vital theme—­The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne.  The rough entries in my diary have been a habit of many futile years; but they have never sufficed for self-expression.  I have not needed it till now.  But now, with Judith and Carlotta gone from me, my one friend, Pasquale, cut for ever from my life, even the sympathetic Polyphemus driven into eternity by my murderous hand, I feel the irresistible craving to express myself fully and finally for the first and last time of my life.  It will be my swan song.  What becomes of it afterwards I care not.

And when the last word is written, I shall go to the Pinacoteca and stand again before the Morone fresco, and if the Miseratrix Virginum Regina still simpers at me, I shall take it as a sign and a token.  I shall return to this marble cavern and make my final exit.  It will be theatrically artistic—­that I vow and declare—­which no doubt will afford immense pleasure to the high gods in their gallery.