Letter from former C.I.A. director Richard Helms to his three year-old son Dennis, personal stationery of Adolf Hitler, 1945.
“Dear Dennis, the man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe - three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat - a boon to mankind. But thousands died that it might be so. The price for ridding society of bad is always high. Love, Daddy”
To Verlaine
London, Friday afternoon.
[4 July 1873]
Come back, come back, dear friend, one friend, come back. I swear I’ll be good. If I was surly with you, it was a joke I persisted with, I’m sorrier for it than I can say. Come back, it’ll soon be forgotten. How unfortunate that you should have believed in that joke. I haven’t stopped crying for two days now.
Come back. Be brave, dear friend. Nothing’s been lost. You need only make the journey again. We’ll live here again very bravely, patiently. Oh, I implore you! It’s for your own good, moreover. Come back, you’ll find all your things. I hope you really know now that nothing was true in the argument we had. What a ghastly moment! But when I signaled to you to get off the boat, why didn’t you come? We’ve been living together for two years only to come to this! What are you going to do? If you won’t come back here, do you want me to come and find you where you are?
Yes, it’s I who was in the wrong.
Oh, say you won’t forget me?
No, you can’t forget me.
I still have you here.
Tell me, answer your friend, shouldn’t we live together any more?
Be brave, answer me quickly.
I can’t stay here any longer.
Listen only to your kind heart.
Quickly, say whether I’m to join you.
Yours for as long as I live.
RIMBAUD