BICETRE PRISON
Condemned to death!
These five weeks have I dwelt with this idea, — always alone with it, always frozen by its presence, always bent under its weight.
Formerly (for it seems to me rather years than weeks since I was free) I was a being like any other; every day, every hour, every minute had its idea. My mind, youthful and rich, was full of fancies, which it developed successively, without order or aim, but weaving inexhaustible arabesques on the poor and coarse web of life. Sometimes it was of youthful beauties, sometimes of unbounded possessions, then of battles gained, next of theatres full of sound and light, and then again the young beauties, and shadowy walks at night beneath spreading chestnut-trees. There was a perpetual revel in my imagination: I might think on what I chose, — I was free.
But now, — I am a Captive! Bodily in irons in a dungeon, and mentally imprisoned in one idea, — one horrible, one hideous, one unconquerable ideal I have only one thought, one conviction, one certitude, —
Condemned to death!
Whatever I do, that frightful thought is always here, like a spectre, beside me, — solitary and jealous, banishing all else, haunting me for ever, and shaking me with its two icy hands whenever I wish to turn my head away or to close my eyes. It glides into all forms in which my mind seeks to shun it; mixes itself, like a horrible chant, with all the words which are addressed to me; presses against me even to the odious gratings of my prison. It haunts me while awake, spies on my convulsive slumbers, and re-appears, a vivid incubus, in my dreams!
I have just started from a troubled sleep in which I was pursued by this thought, and I made an effort to say to myself, “Oh, it was but a dream!”
Well, even before my heavy eyes could read the fatal truth in the dreadful reality which surrounds me, — on the damp and reeking dungeon-walls, in the pale rays of my night-lamp, in the rough material of my prison-garb, on the sombre visage of the sentry, whose cap gleams through the grating of the door, — it seems to me that already a voice has murmured in my ear, —
“Condemned to death!”