sun is high in the heavens
he walks about with downcast eye; he goes to church, to the ball, to
the assembly, and when evening has come he removes his mantle and there
appears a naked bacchante with the hoofs of a goat."

But such thoughts aroused a feeling of horror, for I felt that if the
body was under the clothing, the skeleton was under the body. "Is it
possible that that is all?" I asked in spite of myself. Then I returned
to the city, I saw a little girl take her mother's arm, and I became
like a child.

Although I had followed my friends into all manner of dissipation, I had
no desire to resume my place in the world of society. The sight of women
caused me intolerable pain; I could not touch a woman's hand without
trembling. I had decided never to love again.

Nevertheless I returned from the ball one evening so sick at heart that
I feared that it was love. I happened to have had beside me at supper
the most charming and the most distinguished woman whom it had ever been
my good fortune to meet. When I closed my eyes to sleep I saw her image
before me. I thought I was lost, and I at once resolved that I would
avoid meeting her again. A sort of fever seized me, and I lay on my
bed for fifteen days, repeating over and over the lightest words I had
exchanged with her.

As there is no spot on earth where one can be so well-known by
his neighbors as in Paris, it was not long before the people of my
acquaintance who had seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being
a great libertine. In that I admired the discernment of the world: in
proportion as I had passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the
time of my rupture with my mistress, I was now considered corrupt and
hardened. Some one had just told me that it was clear I had never loved
that woman, that I had doubtless merely played at love, thereby paying
me a compliment which I really did not deserve; but the truth of it was
that I was so swollen with vanity I was charmed with it.

My desire was to pass as blase, even while I was filled with desires and
my exalted imagination was carrying me beyond all limits. I began to
say that I could not make any headway with the women; my head was
filled with chimeras which I preferred to realities. In short, my unique
pleasure consisted in altering the nature of facts. If a thought were
but extraordinary, if it shocked common sense, I became its ardent
champion at the risk of advocating the most dangerous sentiment