Journal of the Marquis de Sade

I have reacted to the last week with relative patience, I feel. I suppose I can understand the turmoil everyone seems to be experiencing over the port, but I cannot say I completely empathize.

Unless you were unfortunate enough to be on the Barge when it was exploded? You did not die during the last port. You were not killed during the last port. No more than Orpheus killed himself in descending to the Underworld in order to collect Eurydice. The effects, morbid as they were, were tame compared to floods we have had in the past. It was not "mass murder." Since many of you have the rare experience of actual death in recent memory, I balk at the notion that a single one of you would count what has occurred as such. You know it's much worse, no matter how mundane the cause, even with the promise of coming back.

To anyone that truly was killed, you have my deepest sympathies.