Commonplace Book

'Where was he? What was he doing there? By degrees, in the reflected light from the little garden, the room appeared to him to be all white, lighted up from underneath; the large portrait of Fanny rose opposite to him, and the recollection of his fall came upon him without the least astonishment. As soon as ever he had entered and faced that bed he had felt himself lost; and had said to himself, "If I fall here, I fall without reprieve and forever." He had fallen, and under the melancholy disgust for his cowardice, he felt some sort of relief in the idea that he would never emerge from his pit. He had the miserable comfort of the wounded man who, losing blood and dragging his wounded limb, stretched himself upon the dung-heap to die, and[,] weary of suffering, of struggling, all his veins opened, sinks deliciously into the soft and fetid warmth.'

from Sapho by Alphonse Daudet (Chapter XIV)