nely existence, whose dreams have
disappeared; it gives the reason for these tragic ends, which only
nervous and high-strung people can understand.

Here it is:

"It is midnight. When I have finished this letter I shall kill myself.
Why? I shall attempt to give the reasons, not for those who may read
these lines, but for myself, to kindle my waning courage, to impress
upon myself the fatal necessity of this act which can, at best, be only
deferred.

"I was brought up by simple-minded parents who were unquestioning
believers. And I believed as they did.

"My dream lasted a long time. The last veil has just been torn from my
eyes.

"During the last few years a strange change has been taking place within
me. All the events of Life, which formerly had to me the glow of a
beautiful sunset, are now fading away. The true meaning of things has
appeared to me in its brutal reality; and the true reason for love has
bred in me disgust even for this poetic sentiment: 'We are the eternal
toys of foolish and charming illusions, which are always being renewed.'

"On growing older, I had become partly reconciled to the awful mystery
of life, to the uselessness of effort; when the emptiness of everything
appeared to me in a new light, this evening, after dinner.

"Formerly, I was happy! Everything pleased me: the passing women, the
appearance of the streets, the place where I lived; and I even took an
interest in the cut of my clothes. But the repetition of the same sights
has had the result of filling my heart with weariness and disgust, just
as one would feel were one to go every night to the same theatre.

"For the last thirty years I have been rising at the same hour; and, at
the same restaurant, for thirty years, I have been eating at the same
hours the same dishes brought me by different waiters.

"I have tried travel. The loneliness which one feels in strange places
terrified me. I felt so alone, so small on the earth that I quickly
started on my homeward journey.

"But here the unchanging expression of my furniture, which has stood for
thirty years in the same place, the smell of my apartments (for, with
time, each dwelling takes on a particular odor) each night, these and
other things disgust me and make me sick of living thus.

"Everything repeats itself endlessly. The way in which I put my key in
the lock, the place where I always find my matches, the first object
which meets my eye when I enter the room, make me