illness comes, to have all my papers burnt before my eyes. If that be not
the case I count on the indulgence of my readers, who should remember
that I have only written my story to prevent my going mad in the midst of
all the petty insults and disagreeables which I have to bear day by day
from the envious rascals who live with me in this castle of Count
Waldstein, or Wallenstein, at Dux.

I write ten or twelve hours a day, and so keep black melancholy at bay.
My readers shall hear more of my sufferings later on, if I do not die
before I write them down.

The day after Corpus Christi I left Aix for Marseilles. But here I must
set down a circumstance that I had forgotten; I mean the procession of
Corpus Christi.

Everyone knows that this festival is celebrated with great ceremony all
over Christendom; but at Aix these ceremonies are of such a nature that
every man of sense must be shocked at my recital.

It is well known that this procession in honour of the Being of beings,
represented under the sacramental forms, is followed by all the religious
confraternities, and this is duly done at Aix; but the scandalous part of
the ceremony is the folly and the buffoonery which is allowed in a rite
which should be designed to stir up the hearts of men to awe and
reverence their Creator.

Instead of that, the devil, death, and the seven deadly sins, are
impersonated in the procession. They are clad in the most absurd
costumes, and make hideous contortions, beating and abusing each other in
their supposed vexation at having to join in the Creator's praises. The