A GARDEN DIARY 109 



central thought, the unendurable one ; the vision 

 that hangs before one's eyes day and night. 

 Death upon those iron hills ; death without the 

 possibility of accomplishing anything ; death under 

 the most unendurable of conditions ; shot help- 

 lessly, like the furred or the feathered beasts of 

 a battue. I write it down deliberately, in the 

 hope of thereby getting rid of it, for it haunts 

 one unendurably. With that perversity, which 

 makes us all at times our own most ingenious 

 torturer, my mind revolves continually around 

 the disaster before it comes, and fills up every 

 detail with the most diabolical distinctness. " Fall 

 of Ladysmith ! Fall of Ladysmith ! Destruction 

 of the garrison ! " It seems to reverberate along 

 the roads ; it presents itself upon every village 

 hoarding, as a friend of mine saw it several times 

 this winter upon those of the Paris boulevards. 

 Before I open my paper in the morning it seems 

 to be hidden under the folds, ready like an asp 

 to spring out and poison me. At night I fall 

 asleep to the thought of it, and in my dreams it 

 performs wild and Weirtz-like antics, projecting 

 itself in and out of them with all that monstrous 

 reduplication which the besetting idea has a 

 way of achieving for itself, when the brain 

 that originated it is nominally asleep, and at 

 peace. 



