* * * * *

Day and night I live in a deserted hut of peat into which I must crawl on
my hands and knees. Someone must have built it long ago and used it, for
lack of a better,--perhaps a man who was in hiding, a man who concealed
himself here for a few autumn days. There are two of us in the hut, that
is if you regard Madame as a person; otherwise there is only one. Madame
is a mouse I live with, to whom I have given this honorary title. She eats
everything I put aside for her in the nooks and corners, and sometimes she
sits watching me.

When I first came, there was stale straw in the hut, which Madame by all
means was allowed to keep; for my own bed I cut fresh pine twigs, as is
fitting. I have an ax and a saw and the necessary crockery. And I have a
sleeping bag of sheepskin with the wool inside. I keep a fire burning in
the fireplace all night, and my shirt, which hangs by it, smells of fresh
resin in the morning. When I want coffee, I go out, fill the kettle with
clean snow, and hang it over the fire till the snow turns to water.

Is this a life worth living?

There you have betrayed yourself. This is a life you do not understand.
Yes, your home is in the city, and you have furnished it with vanities,
with pictures and books; but you have a wife and a servant and a hundred
expenses. Asleep or awake you must keep pace with the world and are never
at peace. I have peace. You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and
books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky
that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content. If you ask
me intellectual questions and try to trip me up, then I will reply, for
example, that God is the origin of all things and that truly men are mere