4 
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. 1 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. 
