I said to myself, “As I have the means of writing, why should I not do
it? But of what shall I write? Placed between four walls of cold and
bare stone, without freedom for my steps, without horizon for my eyes,
my sole occupation mechanically to watch the progress of that square of
light which the grating of my door marks on the sombre wall opposite,
and, as I said before, ever alone with one idea,--an idea of crime,
punishment, death,--can I have anything to _say_, I who have no more to
_do_ in this world; and what shall I find in this dry and empty brain
which is worthy the trouble of being written?
“Why not? If all around me is monotonous and hueless, is there not
within me a tempest, a struggle, a tragedy? This fixed idea which
possesses me, does it not take every hour, every instant a new form,
becoming more hideous as the time approaches? Why should I not try to
describe for myself all the violent and unknown feelings I experience in
my outcast situation? Certainly the material is plentiful; and, however
shortened my life may be, there will still be sufficient in the anguish,
the terrors, the tortures, which will fill it from this hour until my
last, to exhaust my pen and ink! Besides, the only means to decrease my
suffering in this anguish will be to observe it closely; and to describe
it will give me an occupation. And then, what I write may not be without
its use. This journal of my sufferings, hour by hour, minute by minute,
torment after torment, if I have strength to carry it on to the moment
when it will be _physically_ impossible for me to continue,--this
history necessarily unfinished, yet as complete as possible, of my
sensations, may it not give a grand and deep lesson? Will not there be
in this process of agonizing thought, in this ever increasing progress
of pain, in this intellectual dissection of a condemned man, more than
one lesson for those who condemned? Perhaps the perusal may render them
less heedless, when throwing a human life into what they call ‘the scale
of justice.’ Perhaps they have never reflected on the slow succession of
tortures conveyed in the expeditious formula of a sentence of death.
Have they ever paused on the important idea, that in the man whose days
they shorten there is an immortal spirit which had calculated on life, a
soul which is not prepared for death? No! they see nothing but the
execution, and doubtless think that for the condemned there is nothing
anterior or subsequent!”
These sheets shall undeceive them. Published, perchance, some day, they
will call their attention a few moments to the suffering of the mind;
for it is this which they do not consider. They triumph in the power of
being able to destroy the body, almost without making it suffer. What an
inferior consideration is this! What is mere physical pain compared to
that of the mind? A day will come,--and perhaps these memoirs, the last
revelations of a solitary wretch, will have contributed--
That is, unless after my death the wind carries away these sheets of
paper into the muddy court, or unless they melt with rain when pasted to
the broken windows of a turnkey.