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You concluded your letter by saying: “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.” Ah! what coarseness of fibre does that reveal[21a]! What an entire lack of imagination! How callous, how common had the temperament by that time become! “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.” How often have those words come back to me in the wretched solitary cell of the various prisons I have been sent to. I have said them to myself over and over again, and seen in them, I hope unjustly, some of the secret of your strange silence. For you to write thus to me, when the very illness and fever from which I was suffering I had caught from tending you, was of course revolting in its coarseness and crudity; but for any human being in the whole world[21b] to write thus to another would be a sin for which there is no pardon, were there any sin for which there is none[21c].
你在信的结尾说道：“你像尊偶像，没了底座就没意思了。 下次你要是病了我马上走开。” 啊！活脱脱一副多么粗鄙的嘴脸[21a]！多么的缺乏想象力啊！那性情，到了那时候，变得多么无情，多么卑俗啊！ “你像尊偶像，没了底座就没意思了。下次你要是病了我马上走开。” 有多少次，在被关押过的各处监狱那凄凉的单人牢房里，这些话在我耳边响起过。我自言自语念着，一遍又一遍；在这些话中我看到了，但愿是冤枉了你，你奇怪的沉默背后的一些秘密。我为了照顾你而染上你的病，在我被高烧病痛折磨之际，你居然写了这些话给我，其粗鲁和鄙俗当然是令人心寒；但是普天之下[21b]，任何一个人写这样的信给另一个人，都是罪不可赦，如果天下还有不可赦之罪的话[21c]。21