(This letter was found on Vincent's body after his suicide on the 27th. It was evidently a draft of the final letter sent to Theo.)

My dear brother,

Thanks for your kind letter and the 50 fr. note it contained.

There are many things I should like to write you about, but I feel it is useless. I hope you have found those worthy gentlemen favorably disposed toward you.

Your reassuring me as to the peacefulness of your household was hardly worth the trouble, I think, having seen the weal and woe of it for myself. And I quite agree that rearing a boy on a fourth floor is a hell of a job for you as well as Jo.

Since the thing that matters most is going well, why should I say more about things of less importance? My word, before we have a chance of talking business more collectedly, there is likely to be a long way to go.

The other painters, whatever they think of it, instinctively keep themselves at a distance from discussions about actual trade.

Well, the truth is, we can only make our pictures speak. But still, my dear brother, there is this that I have always told you, and I repeat it once more with all the earnestness that can be imparted by an effort of a mind diligently fixed on trying to do as well as one can—I tell you again that I shall always consider that you are something other than a simple dealer in Corots, that through my mediation you have your part in the actual production of some canvases, which even in the cataclysm retain their quietude.

For this is what we have got to, and this is all or at the least the chief thing that I can have to tell you at a moment of comparative crisis. At a moment when things are very strained between dealers in pictures by dead artists, and living artists.

Well, I have risked my life for my work, and my reason has half-foundered because of it—all right— you can still choose your side, as far as I can tell you are not one of those dealers in men, I am sure you act with true humanity, but what do you expect?