18–24 April 1814

There is ice at both poles, north and south—all extremes are the same—misery belongs to the highest and the lowest only, to the emperor and the beggar, when unsixpenced and unthroned. There is, to be sure, a damned insipid medium—an equinoctial line—no one knows where, except upon maps and measurement. "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death." I will keep no further journal of that same hesternal torch-light; and, to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this volume, and write, in Ipecacuanha,—"that the Bourbons are restored!!!"—"Hang up philosophy." To be sure, I have long despised myself and man, but I never spat in the face of my species before—"O fool! I shall go mad."