Passion and criminality in France : a legal and literary study / by Louis Proal ; translated from the French by A. R. Allinsom [!].

  • Proal, Louis, 1843-
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Passion and criminality in France : a legal and literary study / by Louis Proal ; translated from the French by A. R. Allinsom [!]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    to encounter your scorn no more, and I am away whither you send me, to a land where Love can give no further pain, where is oblivion of all sorrows.—I am mad with grief, exclaimed an unhappy lover before putting an end to his life. . . my tears hinder me from writing more.— I am sorry to quit this world, writes another in his despair ; still I am happy to think I shall find rest in eternal sleep.—The eternal repose of the tomb seems infinitely sweet to me . . . my pain is greater than I can bear, are the words of yet another ill-starred lover before killing himself —A young workwoman, an embroiderer by trade, who had been unable to marry the man of her choice, wrote before ending her days : Life has been for me nothing but one huge sorrow ; may my death be the awakening to true happiness ! — How soundly I shall sleep ! God grant my hand fail me not ! writes one desperate man.— Another unhappy lover prefaces his death with the words : I am wretched on these shores, and I am away to see what lies on the other side.— I admit I am an arrant coward, but my suffering is more than I can bear, and I am at the end of my endurance, writes a domestic servant, who empties two chambers of a revolver into her body, because she cannot obtain fulfilment of a promise of marriage that had been made her.—Another woman whose lover had forsaken her, writes : My agony is too great, I can endure my life no longer ; my poor head cannot bear the pain of desertion any more. The lover, whose love is not reciprocated, is so terribly unhappy for this reason, that he has concentrated all his thoughts, all his desires, all his plans, all his hopes on one single being. This being failing him, what is left.'' Every- thing is ended, he cries ; to live without you is an im- possibility. My only hope is to find peace and quietness in a better world.—In her love letters to Bothwell, Mary Queen of Scots again and again gives expression to this thought, that she cares for life for his sake only, that his love is the sole and only stay of her life and that without him all she could wish for would be instant death. The