the reason a
victim to empty hopes or to dark despair. I resolved to be on my guard;
and for the first time in my life, at the age of thirty, I called
philosophy to my assistance. I had within me all the seeds of philosophy,
but so far I had had no need for it.

I am convinced that most men die without ever having thought, in the
proper sense of the word, not so much for want of wit or of good sense,
but rather because the shock necessary to the reasoning faculty in its
inception has never occurred to them to lift them out of their daily
habits.

After what I had experienced, I could think of sleep no more, and to get
up would have been useless as I could not stand upright, so I took the
only sensible course and remained seated. I sat thus till four o'clock in
the morning, the sun would rise at five, and I longed to see the day, for
a presentiment which I held infallible told me that it would set me again
at liberty. I was consumed with a desire for revenge, nor did I conceal
it from myself. I saw myself at the head of the people, about to
exterminate the Government which had oppressed me; I massacred all the
aristocrats without pity; all must be shattered and brought to the dust.
I was delirious; I knew the authors of my misfortune, and in my fancy I
destroyed them. I restored the natural right common to all men of being
obedient only to the law, and of being tried only by their peers and by
laws to which they have agreed-in short, I built castles in Spain. Such
is man when he has become the prey of a devouring passion. He does not
suspect that the principle which moves him is not reason but wrath, its
greatest enemy.

I waited for a less time than I had expected, and thus I became a little
more quiet. At half-past four the deadly silence of the place--this hell
of the living--was broken by the shriek of bolts being shot back in the
passages leading to my cell.

"Have you had time yet to think about what you will take to eat?" said
the harsh voice of my gaoler from the wicket.

One is lucky when the insolence of a wretch like this only shews itself
in the guise of jesting. I answered that I should like some rice soup, a
piece of boiled beef, a roast, bread, wine, and water. I saw that the
lout was astonished not to hear the lamentations he expected. He went
away and came back again in a quarter of an hour to say that he was
astonished I did not require a bed and the necessary pieces of furniture,
"for" said he, "