1. Read: ‘We are being put to the test (by life) in a similar way’; cf. Luke 23:40.

2. 1 Tim. 6:12.

3. Cf. Luke 24:18.

4. John 8:55.

5. 2 Cor. 7:10.

6. Cf. 2 Thess. 3:3; Matt. 6:13 and Luke 11:4.

7. Cf. Ps. 51:19 (in KJ Ps. 51:17), ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise’; and rhy. ps. 147:2, ‘He heals the broken-hearted’.

8. Van Gogh then quotes 1 Kings 19:3-15, leaving out all but the beginning of verses 14 and 15.

a. Here Van Gogh filled in the contracted ‘ging’ (it’s not in the Bible).

9. Luke 22:43.

10. Matt. 26:38 and Mark 14:34.

11. Acts 12:7.

12. Acts 18:9, ‘Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid’; Van Gogh’s wording seems to be a mixture of this passage and Luke 2:10.

13. Regarding the Jewish cemetery, see letter 115, n. 12.

14. At that time the Oosterspoor (eastern railway) had its station on the Oosterdoksdijk; in 1876 work began on a project to fill in three islands to accommodate the railway. The new Central Station, which opened in 1889, was built on the middle island, making it possible to extend the lines of the Oosterspoor.

15. Van Gogh’s notation must mean up to (but not including) verse 33.

16. 2 Cor. 6:10.

17. ‘If our... our powers’ is most likely a quotation.

18. Van Gogh probably enclosed several pages of text from La Néerlande et la vie hollandaise (1859) by Henri Alphonse Esquiros; they have been preserved the estate (FR b1458-b1461). See also RM11 and cf. Pabst 1988, pp. 72-82. It is not certain which of these loose leaves were enclosed, because one text was duplicated: in addition to ‘Siège de Leyde’ and ‘Siège de Harlem’, Van Gogh copied the passage ‘Scheveningen’ twice. The materials used offer no clues either.

19. ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ (Ps. 23), ‘The panting hart’ (Ps. 42) and ‘The secret place of the most High’ (Ps. 91), which includes the sentence ‘he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence’ (Ps. 91:3), to which Van Gogh referred in letter 112.

[Three appendices]

[Appendix 1]

20. Original manuscript. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b1458 V/1962. This passage was copied, with a few minor discrepancies, from La Néerlande et la vie hollandaise. See Esquiros 1859, pp. 67-74.

21. Van Gogh omitted a long note here.

22. Esquiros wrote: ‘Fistula dulce canit, volucrem dum decipit auceps’ (Disticha Catonis, I, 27). Van Gogh first left an open space and then returned to it to insert his translation in French.

[Appendix 2]

23. Original manuscript. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b1459 V/1962. This passage was copied, with a few minor discrepancies, from La Néerlande et la vie hollandaise. See Esquiros 1859, pp. 286-291.

24. Van Gogh mistakenly copied out the sentence beginning ‘La ville de Harlem’ twice.

25. Esquiros wrote : ‘240,000’.

26. Taken from Emile Souvestre, Les derniers Bretons. Paris 1858, deuxième partie, pp. 216-217 (chap. 3, § 2, ‘Une messe sur la mer’). There are a few minor discrepancies. Van Gogh also copied out this passage in the Visitors’ book of Annie Slade-Jones. See Pabst 1988, p. 67.

27. 1 Cor. 11:23-26.

[Appendix 3]

28. Original manuscript. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b1460 V/1962. The passage was copied from La Néerlande et la vie hollandaise. See Esquiros 1859, pp. 231-238. Van Gogh omitted several sentences and phrases, and there are a few other, more minor discrepancies.

29. Esquiros wrote: ‘Os homini sublime dedit’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses, i, 85).

30. Esquiros added: ‘ces hommes simples et ignorants’, which Van Gogh did include in his second copy (see RM11).