ut sleep; at last you acquire the constitution of a
colonel of cuirassiers; and in this way you create yourself afresh, as
if to fly in the face of Providence.

"A man transformed after this sort is like a neophyte who has at last
become a veteran, has accustomed his mind to shot and shell and his legs
to lengthy marches. When the monster's hold on him is still uncertain,
and it is not yet known which will have the better of it, they roll over
and over, alternately victor and vanquished, in a world where everything
is wonderful, where every ache of the soul is laid to sleep, where only
the shadows of ideas are revived.

"This furious struggle has already become a necessity for us. The
prodigal has struck a bargain for all the enjoyments with which life
teems abundantly, at the price of his own death, like the mythical
persons in legends who sold themselves to the devil for the power of
doing evil. For them, instead of flowing quietly on in its monotonous
course in the depths of some counting-house or study, life is poured out
in a boiling torrent.

"Excess is, in short, for the body what the mystic's ecstasy is for
the soul. Intoxication steeps you in fantastic imaginings every whit as
strange as those of ecstatics. You know hours as full of rapture as a
young girl's dreams; you travel without fatigue; you chat pleasantly
with your friends; words come to you with a whole life in each, and
fresh pleasures without regrets; poems are set forth for you in a few
brief phrases. The coarse animal satisfaction, in which science has
tried to find a soul, is followed by the enchanted drowsiness that men
sigh for under the burden of consciousness. Is it not because they all
feel the need of absolute repose? Because Excess is a sort of toll that
genius pays to pain?

"Look at all great men; nature made them pleasure-loving or base, every
one. Some mocking or jealous power corrupted them in either soul or
body, so as to make all their powers futile, and their efforts of no
avail.

"All men and all things appear before you in the guise you choose,
in those hours when wine has sway. You are lord of all creation; you
transform it at your pleasure. And throughout this unceasing delirium,
Play may pour, at your will, its molten lead into your veins.

"Some day you will fall into the monster's power. Then you will have, as
I had, a frenzied awakening, with impotence sitting by your pillow. Are
you an old soldier? Phthisis attacks y