letter from ernest hemingway to his friend on february 22, 1953 (from the latest issue of Harper's):

"Dear Gianfranco:

Just after I finished writing you and was putting the letter in the envelope Mary came down from the Torre and said, "Something terrible has happened to Willie."  I went out and found Willie with both his right legs broken: one at the hip, the other below the knee.  A car must have run him over or somebody hit him with a club.  He had come all the way home on two feet of one side.  It was a multiple compound fracture with much dirt in the wound and fragments protruding.  But he purred and seemed sure that I could fix it. 

I had Rene get a bowl of milk for him and Rene held him and caressed him and Willie was drinking the milk while I shot him through the head.  I don't think he could have suffered and the nerves had been crushed so his legs had not begun to really hurt.  Monstruo wished to shoot him for me, but I could not delegate the responsibility or leave chance of Will knowing anybody was killing him. 

Afterwards I was crying when a Cadillac came to the door with a worse psycho than that big one I had to hit.  With him and his keeper, I still had the rifle and I explained to them that they had come at a bad time and to please understand and go away.  But the rich Cadillac psycho said, "We have come at a most interesting time.  Just in time to see the great Hemingway cry because he killed a cat." 

They were inside the house and so I locked both the doors and sent their chauffeur away.  The one said, "You have a gun.  There is always someone with a gun."

So I gave him the gun (cocked) and then he started to make compliments.  So I took his horned-rim spectacles off and took the gun away from him and put it away in Mary's room.  Then I humiliated him as he should be humiliated, omit details, and then the awful thing happened.  He thanked me and his keeper thanked me and said that was what he needed and what he came for.  What sort of people are these?

He was a rich boy, officer in the 11th Airbourne Div., which never jumped in combat (not their fault); they would have made the assault in Japan if we had not used the atomic bomb and I suppose never got over it.

Certainly missed you.  Miss Uncle Willie.  Have had to shoot people but never someone I knew and loved for eleven years.  Not anyone that purred with two broken legs."