My taxing social obligation of yesterday afternoon left me spent and reeling. My compatriot’s loathesome nattering was incessant. It was all I could do to not end his pain and my own with the implement at hand. I retired to the library with a crashing headache. With the aid of a tincture mixed specially for me by the good doctor Richter, I was finally able to slip into the netherworld between sleep and reality.

My thoughts drifted back to my childhood, as they often do.

O wasted youth! A time unfettered by the understanding of the cares of life. Although I do not toil as a common peasant, I sometimes long for a spot of hard labor. An aching back would be a welcome distraction. Let my muscles sing their song of sadness, let my mind be blissfully blank.

Now where in blazes is Emil? The privet hedge needs a good pruning. It is simply frightful! And the polo field could use a soil rotation. Emil! You lazy cur!

I awoke melancholy, here from a nightmare about my mother. I barely knew her, but she haunts me still, a ghostly figure in my dreams, her teat long grown cold.

This afternoon I am supposed to go on a shooting lark with a tiresome acquaintance. He will doubtless brag of his recent conquest of some obscure countess in Monserrat, or his prowess at whist.

Ah Maman! When will the night terrors stop? I have scarcely the energy to drag myself to the solarium and prepare for this onerus social obligation. A piping hot Turkish coffee is just the ticket. I anticipate its bitter fire.

I see that the lady S–– has sent me another of her cloyingly perfumed social cards. Is it possible she is still unaware that I detest her? Surely not. Still, her egomania knows no bounds, and perhaps she simply cannot comprehend how vile she is.

* * * *

After fifteen minutes of ringing distractedly, Emil still fails to answer my summons. My ire swells within me. He is in for a sound drubbing! Without coffee, my suffering can only blossom.

Les bains de soufre de l’Islande ont épuré mon corps, mais mon âme se décompose toujours puer, faible et shriveled.

The sulfur baths of Iceland purified my body, but my soul still rots- stinking weak, and shriveled.

Mon athéisme n’est plus toléré par les villageois ignorants.

(My atheism is no longer tolerated by the ignorant villagers.)

Mon père était un maître brutal. Mais même sa rossée plus douloureuse était un sursis bienvenu des pensées de ma propre mortalité.

(My father was a brutal schoolmaster. But even his most painful thrashing was a welcome respite from thoughts of my own mortality.)

Je suis le Ténébreux- le Veuf- l’Inconsolé

(I am the dark one- the widower- unconsoled)

Dans exile de mon royaume.

(In exile from my kingdom.)

Je nais!

(I am born!)

N’importe quel un de ces putains a pu être ma mère.

(Any one of these whores could be my mother.)