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You can now understand — can you not?—a little of what I am suffering. Some paper, the Pall Mall Gazette I think, describing the dress-rehearsal of one of my plays, spoke of you as following me about like my shadow: the memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks with me here: that seems never to leave me: that wakes me up at night to tell me the same story over and over till its wearisome iteration makes all sleep abandon me till dawn[34a]: at dawn it begins again: it follows me into the prison-yard and makes me talk to myself as I tramp round: each detail that accompanied each dreadful moment I am forced to recall: there is nothing that happened in those ill-starred years that I cannot recreate in that chamber of the brain which is set apart for grief or for despair: every strained note of your voice, every twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word, every poisonous phrase[34b] comes back to me: I remember the street or river down which we passed, the wall or woodland that surrounded us, at what figure on the dial stood the hands of the clock, which way went the wings of the wind, the shape and colour of the moon.对我正蒙受的痛苦，你现在应该明白一二了吧——难道还能不明白吗？有份报纸，我想是《泼尔穆尔报》吧，报道了我一出戏的彩排，说你像影子似的跟随着我：对你我友谊的回忆，就是在这里随我左右的影子，像是永不分离似的——深夜里唤我醒来，一遍又一遍地说着同一个故事，直磨得人睡意全无，醒到天明[34a]；天明时分又开始了，跟着我到牢房外的院子里，害得我一边步履沉重地走着一边喃喃自语——我被迫回想着每一个痛苦时刻的每一点细节，在那些个倒霉的年头里发生的事，没有哪一件我不能在那留给悲伤和绝望的脑室里再造重演：你每一点不自然的话音、每一个紧张兮兮的手势、每一句冷言恶语[34b]，都涌上了心头；我记着我们到过的街道和河流，四周的墙壁和树林，时钟的针正指着哪一点，风正吹向哪一面，月色月影又是什么模样。
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