be that."

And the judge, still smiling, said:

"Didn't I tell you that my explanation would not satisfy you?"

A TRESS OF HAIR

The walls of the cell were bare and white washed. A narrow grated
window, placed so high that one could not reach it, lighted this
sinister little room. The mad inmate, seated on a straw chair, looked at
us with a fixed, vacant and haunted expression. He was very thin, with
hollow cheeks and hair almost white, which one guessed might have turned
gray in a few months. His clothes appeared to be too large for his
shrunken limbs, his sunken chest and empty paunch. One felt that this
man's mind was destroyed, eaten by his thoughts, by one thought, just as
a fruit is eaten by a worm. His craze, his idea was there in his brain,
insistent, harassing, destructive. It wasted his frame little by little.
It--the invisible, impalpable, intangible, immaterial idea--was mining
his health, drinking his blood, snuffing out his life.

What a mystery was this man, being killed by an ideal! He aroused
sorrow, fear and pity, this madman. What strange, tremendous and
deadly thoughts dwelt within this forehead which they creased with deep
wrinkles which were never still?

"He has terrible attacks of rage," said the doctor to me. "His is one of
the most peculiar cases I have ever seen. He has seizures of erotic and
macaberesque madness. He is a sort of necrophile. He has kept a journal
in which he sets forth his disease with the utmost clearness. In it you
can, as it were, put your finger on it. If it would interest you, you
may go over this document."

I followed the doctor into his office, where he handed me this wretched
man's diary, saying: "Read it and tell me what you think of it." I read
as follows:

"Until the age of thirty-two I lived peacefully, without knowing love.
Life appeared very simple, very pleasant and very easy. I was rich. I
enjoyed so many things that I had no passion for anything in particular.
It was good to be alive! I awoke happy every morning and did those
things that pleased me during the day and went to bed at night
contented, in the expectation of a peaceful tomorrow and a future
without anxiety.

"I had had a few flirtations without my heart being touched by any true
passion or wounded by any of the sensations of true love. It is good to
live like that. It is better to love, but it is terrible. And yet those
who love in the ordinary way must experience ardent happiness