head rejoins the body, it is a phantom; the phantom
gazes into the darkness with wild, baleful eyes, rises, grows
bigger and blue, hovers for an instant and then speeds away
to the zenith to open the door of the palace of the sun
where butterflies flit from flower to flower and angels
flit from star to star.

In all these strange, concordant phenomena appears the
inadmissibility of the principle that is all of man. The
mysterious marriage which we have just related, marriage
of servitude with captivity, exaggerates the ideal from the
very fact that it is weighed down by all the most hideous
burdens of destiny. A frightful combination! It is the
From it rises a miasm, a phosphorescent glow. It shines
meeting of these two redoubtable words in which human
existence is summed up: enjoy and suffer.

Alas! And how can we prevent this cry from escaping
us? For these hapless ones, enjoy, laugh, sing, please, and
love exist, persist; but there is a death-rattle in sing, a
grating sound in laugh, putrefaction in enjoy, there are
ashes in please, there is night in love. All these joys are
attached to their destiny by coffin-nails.

What does that matter? They thirst for these lugubrious,
chimerical glimpses of light that are full of dreams.

What is tobacco, that is so precious and so dear to the
prisoner? It is a dream. "Put me in the dungeon," said
a convict, "but give me some tobacco." In other words: