I read and re-read the wonderful words in which you say you
loved me from the beginning, but when you plead that I shall not turn
in loathing from your memory--with these words you smash me to the
ground.
Most glorious woman, I never loved you so well and so passionately as
the day you stood at the trial, ringed round with the wolves, the
clever lawyers, the stolid witnesses, the ponderous books, the cynical
air of religious solemnity with which the machinery of the law thinly
cloaks its lust for blood--for a life.
Even when my ears heard the sentence, I could not believe it would be
carried out. The firing party, the chair, the bandage. Oh, God! spare
me these awful thoughts. To think of your breasts lacerated by
the----Oh! this is unendurable! Stop, madman that I am!
* * * * *
I am calmer now; I have read your letter again and rescued the journal
from the grate into which I flung it.
The fire was out; I am not sorry; my journal is all I have left, and in
its pages are enshrined small, feeble word-pictures of paradise on
earth. To read them is to catch an echo of the music we both loved so
well. Music! you were all music to me, my Zoe. Your voice, your
movements, your caresses all seemed to me to speak of music.
I ask myself, I shall always ask myself until the last hour, whether
all that could be done to save you was done. I tried to telegraph to
the Kaiser for you, Zoe, but the wire never got further than Bruges
post office; they stopped it, and put me under arrest.
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