he read:

"The end is reached. My hour is striking. Put to sleep by me, Edmond is
dead without having been roused from his unconsciousness by the fire of
the poison. My own death-agony is beginning. I am suffering all the
tortures of hell. My hand can hardly write these last lines. I suffer,
how I suffer! And yet my happiness is unspeakable.

"This happiness dates back to my visit to London, with Edmond, four
months ago. Until then, I was dragging on the most hideous existence,
hiding my hatred of the woman who detested me and who loved another,
broken down in health, feeling myself already eaten up with an
unrelenting disease, and seeing my son grow daily more weak and languid.

"In the afternoon I consulted a great physician and I no longer had the
least doubt left: the malady that was eating into me was cancer. And I
knew besides that, like myself, my son Edmond was on the road to the
grave, incurably stricken with consumption.

"That same evening I conceived the magnificent idea of revenge. And such
a revenge! The most dreadful of accusations made against a man and a
woman in love with each other! Prison! The assizes! Penal servitude! The
scaffold! And no assistance possible, not a struggle, not a hope!
Accumulated proofs, proofs so formidable as to make the innocent
themselves doubt their own innocence and remain hopelessly and helplessly
dumb. What a revenge!... And what a punishment! To be innocent and to
struggle vainly against the very facts that accuse you, the very
certainty that proclaims you guilty.

"And I prepared everything with a glad heart. Each happy thought, each
invention made me shout with laughter. Lord, how merry I was! You would
think that cancer hurts: not a bit of it! How can you suffer physical
pain when your soul is quivering with delight? Do you think I feel the
hideous burning of the poison at this moment?

"I am happy. The death which I have inflicted on myself is the beginning
of their torment. Then why live and wait for a natural death which to
them would mean the beginning of their happiness? And as Edmond had to
die, why not save him a lingering illness and give him a death which
would double the crime of Marie and Sauverand?

"The end is coming. I had to break off: the pain was too much for me. Now
to pull myself together.... How silent everything is! Outside the house
and in the house are emissaries of the police watching over my crime. At
no great distance, Marie, in obedie