ffering that teaches
charity; to confirm the novel in the practice of that religion which the
last century called by the vast and far-reaching name, _Humanity_:--it
needs no other warrant than the consciousness that that is its right.

_Paris, October, 1864._

SECOND PREFACE

PREPARED FOR A POSTHUMOUS EDITION OF GERMINIE LACERTEUX

_July 22, 1862._--The disease is gradually doing its work of destruction
in our poor Rose. It is as if the immaterial manifestations of life that
formerly emanated from her body were dying one by one. Her face is
entirely changed. Her expression is not the same, her gestures are not
the same; and she seems to me as if she were putting off every day more
and more of that something, humanly speaking indefinable, which makes
the personality of a living being. Disease, before making an end of its
victim, introduces into his body something strange, unfamiliar,
something that is _not he_, makes of him a new being, so to speak, in
whom we must seek to find the former being--he, whose joyous,
affectionate features have already ceased to exist.

_July 31._--Doctor Simon is to tell me very soon whether our dear old
Rose will live or die. I am waiting to hear his ring, which to me, is
equivalent to that of a jury at the assizes, announcing their return to
the court room with their verdict. "It is all over, there is no hope, it
is simply a question of time. The disease has progressed very rapidly.
One lung is entirely gone and the other substantially." And we must
return to the invalid, restore her serenity with a smile, give her
reason to hope for convalescence in every line of our faces. Then we
feel an unconquerable longing to rush from the room and from the poor
creature. We leave the house, we wander at random through the streets;
at last, overdone with fatigue, we sit down at a table in a cafe. We
mechanically take up a copy of _L'Illustration_ and our eyes fall at
once upon the solution of its last riddle: _Against death, there is no
appeal!_

_Monday, August 11._--The disease of the lungs is complicated with
peritonitis. She has terrible pains in the bowels, she cannot move
without assistance, she cannot lie on her back or her left side. In
God's name, is not death enough? must she also endure suffering, aye,
torture, as the final implacable breaking-up of the human organism? And
she suffers thus, poor wretch! in one of the servant's rooms, where the
sun, shining in through a windo