I said to myself, "As I have the means of writing, why should I not do it? But of what shall I write?

Placed between four walls of cold and bare stone, without freedom for my steps, without horizon for my eyes, my sole occupation mechanically to watch the progress of that square of light which the grating of my door marks on the sombre wall opposite, and, as I said before, ever alone with one idea, an idea of crime, punishment, death, can I have anything to say, I who have no more to do in this world; and what shall I find in this dry and empty brain which is worthy the trouble of being written?

Why not? If all around me is monotonous and hueless, is there not within me a tempest, a struggle, a tragedy?

This fixed idea which possesses me, does it not take every hour, every instant a new form, becoming more hideous as the time approaches?

Why should I not try to describe for myself all the violent and unknown feelings I experience in my outcast situation?

Certainly the material is plentiful; and, however shortened my life may be, there will still be sufficient in the anguish, the terrors, the tortures, which will fill it from this hour until my last, to exhaust my pen and ink!

Besides, the only means to decrease my suffering in this anguish will be to observe it closely; and to describe it will give me an occupation.

And then, what I write may not be without its use.

This journal of my sufferings, hour by hour, minute by minute, torment after torment, if I have strength to carry it on to the moment when it will be physically impossible for me to continue, this history necessarily unfinished, yet as complete as possible, of my sensations, may it not give a grand and deep lesson?

Will not there be in this process of agonizing thought, in this ever increasing progress of pain, in this intellectual dissection of a condemned man, more than one lesson for those who condemned?