Once again he had survived bankruptcy, and now it was time to take stock. But the bottom line was disappointing. He had nothing - no job, no money, no health, no strength, no thoughts, no desires, no fervor, no ambition, and, most importantly, no foothold on which to base his life. He was twenty-six years old, had failed for the fifth time, and no longer had the courage to begin anew.

He looked at himself in the mirror. His face had grown a slightly curly red beard. His hair had thinned, his luscious lips had dried and narrowed into a string, and his eyes had sunk deep down into dark caves. Everything that had once been Vincent Van Gogh shrank, froze, numbed, almost dead.

He asked Madame Denis for a bar of soap and, standing in the basin, washed thoroughly from head to foot. How thin and haggard he was, how his big, mighty body melted away! He shaved neatly, and was amazed to see how suddenly and incongruously his bones had protruded on his face. For the first time in many months he combed his hair as he had once combed it. Madame Denis handed him her husband's top shirt and a change of underwear. Vincent dressed and stepped into the comfortable kitchen. He sat down to lunch with Deny's wife: He had not tasted hot, homemade food since the explosion at the mine. The very thought of food surprised him. He felt as if he were chewing a hot mush of sawdust.

Although he never told the coal miners that he wasn't allowed to preach, nobody asked him to; apparently, they didn't need to preach now. Vincent seldom spoke to them. He seldom spoke to people at all anymore. He rarely spoke to people at all anymore, except to say "good afternoon," that's all. He no longer went into the coal miners' huts and took no interest in their lives. The workmen, guessing unaccountably about something, tacitly agreed not even to mention his name. They saw that he was alienated from them, but they never judged him for it. In their hearts they understood what was happening to him.

As the weeks passed. Vincent lived in a torpor, eating, sleeping, and staring off into space. His fever began to bother him less and less frequently. He began to gain strength, to put on weight. But his eyes were still as glassy as a corpse's. Summer came - the black fields, the chimneys, the heaps gleamed in the bright sunshine. Vincent often went out for walks. He did not walk to get some fresh air, nor did he walk for pleasure. He walked without realizing where he was going and without noticing anything around him. He walked only because he was tired of lying, sitting, standing still. And when he got tired of walking, he would sit or lie or stand again.

Soon after all his money was gone, he received a letter from Theo in Paris; his brother urged him not to waste his time in Borinage, but to take advantage of the amount he had enclosed and to take decisive steps to find his place in life again. Vincent gave the money to Madame Denis. He stayed in Borinage, not because he liked it here, but because there was nowhere else to go; besides, it took too much effort to move.

He had lost God and he had lost himself. And now he had lost the dearest thing on earth as well, the one person who had always been dear and close to him, who understood him the way Vincent wished he could be understood. Theo had forgotten his brother. Throughout the winter there had been letters from him, one or two a week, long, lively, cheerful letters in which his interest in Vincent resonated. Now there were no more letters. Theo, too, had lost faith in him; he no longer held out any hope. Vincent was lonely, infinitely lonely; he did not even have the Lord God anymore-he wandered like a dead man, alone in the world, wondering why he was still here.