"The unsolvable enigma of the world, the existence of evil and
pain, the fierce madness of mankind, and the stupid cruelty that it
inflicts hourly and everywhere on the most inoffensive beings and
on itself--all this has reduced me to the state of unhappy and
forlorn resignation of a scorpion surrounded by live coals. The
most I can do is not to wound myself with my own dart."[42]

"I am in my sixty-first year; and I have no more hopes or illusions
or aspirations. I am alone; and my contempt for the stupidity and
dishonesty of men, and my hatred for their wicked cruelty, are at
their height. Every hour I say to Death, 'When you like!' What is
he waiting for?"[43]

[Footnote 41: Letter to Bennet. He did not believe in patriotism.
"Patriotism? Fetichism! Cretinism!" (_Mémoires_, II, 261).]

[Footnote 42: Letter to the Princess of Wittgenstein, 22 July, 1862.]

[Footnote 43: _Mémoires_, II, 391.]

And yet he fears the death he invites. It is the strongest, the
bitterest, the truest feeling he has. No musician since old Roland de
Lassus has feared it with that intensity. Do you remember Herod's
sleepless nights in _L'Enfance du Christ_, or Faust's soliloquy, or the
anguish of Cassandra, or the burial of Juliette?--through all this you
will find the whispered fear of annihilation. The wretched man was
haunted by this fear, as a letter published by M. Julien Tiersot
shows:--