The furrow is open and the seed is in its bowels--'GERMINAL!'[1] as a friend of my exile shouted as he saw the last rays of the setting sun from the scaffold of the gibbet.

I am dying, and I think I have the right to rest for a few months.

I wish to enjoy for the first time in my life the sweets of silence, of absolute quiet, of incognito; to be no one, for no one to know me; to inspire neither sympathy nor fear.

I should wish to be as a statue on the doorway, as a pillar in the Cathedral, immovable, over whose surface centuries have glided without leaving the slightest trace or emotion.

To wait for death as a body that eats or breathes, but cannot think or suffer, nor feel enthusiasm; this to me would be happiness, brother.