ungarian had met the young man, he would
at least have gotten rid of part of his bile. But the angry thought that
he, Varhely, had been associated in a vile revenge which had touched
Andras, was, for the old soldier, a constant cause for ill-humor with
himself, and a thing which, in a measure, poisoned his life.

Varhely had long been a misanthrope himself; but he tried to struggle
against his own temperament when he saw Andras wrapping himself up in
bitterness and gloomy thoughts.

Little by little, Zilah allowed himself to sink into that state where
not only everything becomes indifferent to us, but where we long for
another suffering, further pain, that we may utter more bitter cries,
more irritated complaints against fate. It seems then that everything is
dark about us, and our endless night is traversed by morbid visions,
and peopled with phantoms. The sick man--for the one who suffers such
torture is sick--would willingly seek a new sorrow, like those wounded
men who, seized with frenzy, open their wounds themselves, and irritate
them with the point of a knife. Then, misanthropy and disgust of life
assume a phase in which pain is not without a certain charm. There is
a species of voluptuousness in this appetite for suffering, and the
sufferer becomes, as it were, enamored of his own agony.

With Zilah, this sad state was due to a sort of insurrection of his
loyalty against the many infamies to be met with in this world, which he
had believed to be only too full of virtues.

He now considered himself an idiot, a fool, for having all his life
adored chimeras, and followed, as children do passing music, the
fanfares of poetic chivalry. Yes, faith, enthusiasm, love, were so many
cheats, so many lies. All beings who, like himself, were worshippers
of the ideal, all dreamers of better things, all lovers of love, were
inevitably doomed to deception, treason, and the stupid ironies of fate.
And, full of anger against himself, his pessimism of to-day sneering at
his confidence of yesterday, he abandoned himself with delight to his
bitterness, and he took keen joy in repeating to himself that the secret
of happiness in this life was to believe in nothing except treachery,
and to defend oneself against men as against wolves.

Very rarely, his real frank, true nature would come to the fore, and he
would say:

"After all, are the cowardice of one man, and the lie of one woman, to
be considered the crime of entire humanit