I knew the church condemned ACCIDIA, but the whole idea seemed to
me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who
knew nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand
how Dante, who says that 'sorrow remarries us to God,' could have
been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any
such there really were. I had no idea that some day this would
become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life.

While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one
desire. When after two months in the infirmary I was transferred
here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health,
I was filled with rage. I determined to commit suicide on the very
day on which I left prison. After a time that evil mood passed
away, and I made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a king
wears purple: never to smile again: to turn whatever house I
entered into a house of mourning: to make my friends walk slowly
in sadness with me: to teach them that melancholy is the true
secret of life: to maim them with an alien sorrow: to mar them
with my own pain. Now I feel quite differently. I see it would be
both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when
my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still
longer in order to show their sympathy; or, if I desired to
entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs
and funeral baked meats. I must learn how to be cheerful and
happy.

The last two occasions on which I was allowed to see my friends
here, I tried to be as cheerful as possible, and to show my
cheerfulness, in order to make them some slight return for their
trouble in coming all the way from town to see me. It is only a