Letters from prison between the sadism of imagination and the sadism of reality

Yes I'm a punk, I admit it, I've fantasized about everything you could possibly imagine in this genre, but I certainly haven't done everything you've imagined and I certainly never will. I am a reprobate, but neither a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am obliged to place my apology alongside my self-defense, I will say: It may be very likely that those who unjustly condemn me, were, like me, unable to counterbalance their defects, by good deeds of such value as those I can. To meet her with my mistakes. I am immoral, but there are three families residing in your area who have lived through five years of my benevolence, and I have saved them from the last stages of extreme poverty. I am a sinner, but I saved a soldier fleeing from death, abandoned by his entire regiment and his commander. I'm a dissolute, but in the eyes of all your family, at Evry, I saved, at the risk of my life, a child who was going to be crushed under the wheels of a horse-drawn carriage, when I rushed upon him myself. I am immoral, but I did not risk my wife's health. I have not all the other forms of liberation which are so often fatal to children's fortunes: have I ruined them by gambling or by other expenditures which might once have deprived them or even damaged their inheritance? Did I mismanage my property when I had it? In short, did I produce anything in my youth that indicated a heart capable of the blackness we assume it has today? Did I not always love all that was to be loved and all that was to be dear to me, did I not love my father? (Unfortunately, I still cry about him every day) Did I behave badly with my mother?