e talking
about matters which are quite indifferent to you in a language that
perhaps you do not understand. You have a terrible feeling, almost as if
you were lost, and you continue to walk on so as not to be obliged to
return to the hotel, where you would feel more lost still because you are
at home, in a home which belongs to anyone who can pay for it; and at
last you sink into a chair of some well-lighted cafe, whose gilding and
lights oppress you a thousand times more than the shadows in the streets.
Then you feel so abominably lonely sitting in front of the glass of flat
bock beer that a kind of madness seizes you, the longing to go somewhere
or other, no matter where, as long as you need not remain in front of
that marble table amid those dazzling lights.

And then, suddenly, you are aware that you are really alone in the world,
always and everywhere, and that in places which we know, the familiar
jostlings give us the illusion only of human fraternity. At such moments
of self-abandonment and sombre isolation in distant cities one thinks
broadly, clearly and profoundly. Then one suddenly sees the whole of life
outside the vision of eternal hope, apart from the deceptions of our
innate habits, and of our expectations of happiness, which we indulge in
dreams never to be realized.

It is only by going a long distance from home that we can fully
understand how short-lived and empty everything near at hand is; by
searching for the unknown, we perceive how commonplace and evanescent
everything is; only by wandering over the face of the earth can we
understand how small the world is, and how very much alike it is
everywhere.

How well I know, and how I hate and almost fear, those haphazard walks
through unknown streets; and this was the reason why, as nothing would
induce me to undertake a tour in Italy by myself, I made up my mind to
accompany my friend Paul Pavilly.

You know Paul, and how he idealizes women. To him the earth is habitable
only because they are there; the sun gives light and is warm because it
shines upon them; the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon their
skin and ruffles the soft hair on their temples; and the moon is charming
because it makes them dream and imparts a languorous charm to love. Every
act and action of Paul's has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all
his efforts and hopes are centered in them.

When I mentioned Italy to Paul he at first absolutely refused to leave
P