pirituel de Paris,
c'est-a-dire, dans le monde_, the success of Georges Ohnet and the
talent of Gustave Dore. But with all this vulgarity of taste certain
appreciations, certain ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of
sentiment certain elevations and depravities,--depravities in the
legitimate sense of the word, that is to say, a revolt against the
commonplace....

Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming. I wish I had not been awoke from my
reverie, it was pleasant.

The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes
that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that one
morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer honey and
a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant letter. My
agent's handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained a cheque, has
never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in me;--so hateful
is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible even knowing how I
stand at my banker's. Therefore the odour of honey and milk, so evocative
of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that morning for me; and it was
some time before I slipped on that beautiful Japanese dressing-gown, which
I shall never see again, and read the odious epistle.

That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I may
not be deprived of my _demi-tasse_ at _Tortoni's_; that I may not
be forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python--monstrous.
And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they will
find pity!

Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. The
great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to interrupt
the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak shall be
trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the strong shall
be really strong,--that the strong shall be glorious, sublime. A little
bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, cry the moderns.

Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale socialist
of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. His divinity
is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He dreamed; again He is
denied by His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who hold nought else pitiful,
pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at
least art picturesque, and in a way beautiful in the midst of the somb