* * * *
*
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.”
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.
