and reflections. A year later, however, because of the labor involved in
transcribing the cryptographic characters I had chosen I discarded them
and used the ordinary letters; but I continued my work with the greatest
secrecy, and I kept my manuscript under lock and key as if it were an
interdicted book. I inscribed there, not so much the events of my almost
colorless existence, as my incoherent impressions, the melancholy that
I felt at twilight, my regret for past summers, and my dreams of distant
countries. . . . I already had a longing to give my fugitive emotions a
determinative quality, I needed to wrestle against my own weaknesses
and frailties and to banish, if possible, the dream-like element that
I seemed to discover in all the things about me, and for that reason I
continued my journal until a few years ago. . . . But at that time the
mere idea that a day might come when someone would have a peep at it was
insupportable to me; so much so indeed that if I left home and went to
the Island or elsewhere for a few days, I always took care to seal up my
journal, and with the greatest solemnity I wrote upon the packet: "It is
my last wish that this book be burned without being read."

God knows, I have changed since then. But it would be going too far
beyond the limits of this story of my childhood to recount here through
what changes in my life's view-point it chances that I now sing aloud
of my woes, and cry out to the passers-by, for the purpose of drawing
to myself the sympathy of distant unknown ones; and I call out with the
greater anguish in proportion as I feel myself approaching nearer and
nearer to the final dust. . . . And who knows? perhaps as I grow older
I may write of those still more sacred things which at present cannot be
forced from me,--and by that means try to prolong beyond the bounds of
my individual life, memory of my being, of my sorrows, and joys, and
love.