ocles saw a sword suspended over his head. Thus
libertines seem to have something over their heads which says: "Go on,
but remember, I hang not by a thread." Those masked carriages that
are seen during Carnival are the faithful images of their life. A
dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; some
laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are
in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed
and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. They float
and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of
nothing, and over which, it is said, a pitying God watches.

But if the first impression be astonishment, the second is horror, and
the third pity. There is evident so much force, or rather such an
abuse of force, that often the noblest characters and the strongest
constitutions are ruined. The life appears hardy and dangerous to these;
they would make prodigies of themselves; bound to debauchery as Mazeppa
to his horse, they gallop, making Centaurs of themselves and seeing
neither the bloody trail that the shreds of their flesh leave, nor the
eyes of the wolves that gleam in hungry pursuit, nor the desert, nor the
vultures.

Launched into that life by the circumstances that I have recounted, I
must now describe what I saw there.

Before I had a close view of one of those famous gatherings called
theatrical masked balls, I had heard the debauchery of the Regency
spoken of, and a reference to the time when a queen of France appeared
disguised as a violet-seller. I found there flower-merchants disguised
as vivandieres. I expected to find libertinism there, but in fact I
found none at all. One sees only the scum of libertinism, some blows,
and drunken women lying in deathlike stupor on broken bottles.

Ere I saw debauchery at table I had heard of the suppers of Heliogabolus
and of the philosophy of Greece, which made the pleasures of the senses
a kind of natural religion. I expected to find oblivion or something
like joy; I found there the worst thing in the world: ennui trying to
live, and some Englishmen who said: "I do this or that, and so I amuse
myself. I have spent so many sovereigns, and have procured so much
pleasure." And thus they wear out their life on that grindstone.

I had known nothing of courtesans when I heard of Aspasia, who sat on
the knees of Alcibiades while discussing philosophy with Socrates.
I exp