you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the world
better than you found it. The one eternal and immutable delight of life is
to think, for one reason or another, that we are better than our
neighbours. This is why I wrote this book, and this is why it is affording
you so much pleasure, O exquisitely hypocritical reader, my friend, my
brother, because it helps you to the belief that you are not so bad after
all. Now to resume.

The knell of my thirtieth year has sounded, in three or four years my youth
will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so now while
standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on the valley I
lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; and a fool and
a weakling I should he if I did. I know the worth and the rarity of more
than fifteen years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided me with as
perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she ever turned out
of her workshop; my stomach and brain are set in the most perfect equipoise
possible to conceive, and up and down they went and still go with measured
movement, absorbing and assimilating all that is poured into them without
friction or stoppage. This book is a record of my mental digestions; but it
would take another series of confessions to tell of the dinners I have
eaten, the champagne I have drunk! and the suppers! seven dozen of oysters,
pate-de-foie-gras, heaps of truffles, salad, and then a walk home in the
early morning, a few philosophical reflections suggested by the appearance
of a belated street-sweeper, then sleep, quiet and gentle sleep.

I have had the rarest and most delightful friends. Ah, how I have loved my
friends; the rarest wits of my generation were my boon companions;
everything conspired to enable me to gratify my body and my brain; and do
you think this would have been so if I had been a good man? If you do you
are a fool, good intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle
selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of life's
pie than the seven deadly virtues. If you are a good man you want a bad one
to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to go out on the spree
with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place your hand upon your
heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical _tete-a-tete_ which
will happen never again in your life, admit that you feel just a little
interested in my wickedness, admit tha