_April_ 1.

It is over.... Life is over. I shall certainly die to-day. It's hot
outside ... almost suffocating ... or is it that my lungs are already
refusing to breathe? My little comedy is played out. The curtain is
falling.

Sinking into nothing, I cease to be superfluous ...

Ah, how brilliant that sun is! Those mighty beams breathe of eternity
...

Farewell, Terentyevna!... This morning as she sat at the window she was
crying ... perhaps over me ... and perhaps because she too will soon
have to die. I have made her promise not to kill Tresor.

It's hard for me to write.... I will put down the pen.... It's high
time; death is already approaching with ever-increasing rumble, like a
carriage at night over the pavement; it is here, it is flitting about
me, like the light breath which made the prophet's hair stand up on
end.

I am dying.... Live, you who are living,

'And about the grave
May youthful life rejoice,
And nature heedless
Glow with eternal beauty.

_Note by the Editor_.--Under this last line was a head in profile with