ne of expansive friendship. She told
me her sorrows, I told her mine, and between these two experiences which
touched each other, I felt arise a sweetness, a celestial accord born of
two voices in anguish. All this time I had seen nothing but her face.
Suddenly I noticed that her dress was in disorder. It appeared singular
to me that, seeing my embarrassment, she did not rearrange it, and I
turned my head to give her an opportunity. She did nothing. Finally,
meeting her eyes and seeing that she was perfectly aware of the state she
was in, I felt as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt, for I now
clearly understood that I was the plaything of her monstrous effrontery,
that grief itself was for her but a means of seducing the senses. I took
my hat without a word, bowed profoundly, and left the room.

CHAPTER VII

THE WISDOM OF SIRACH

Upon returning to my apartments I found a large box in the centre of the
room. One of my aunts had died, and I was one of the heirs to her
fortune, which was not large.

The box contained, among other things, a number of musty old books. Not
knowing what to do, and being afflicted with ennui, I began to read one
of them. They were for the most part romances of the time of Louis XV; my
pious aunt had probably inherited them herself and never read them, for
they were, so to speak, catechisms of vice.

I was singularly disposed to reflect on everything that came to my
notice, to give everything a mental and moral significance; I treated
events as pearls in a necklace which I tried to string together.

It struck me that there was something significant about the arrival of
these books at this time. I devoured them with a bitterness and a sadness
born of despair. "Yes, you are right," I said to myself, "you alone
possess the secret of life, you alone dare to say that nothing is true
and real but debauchery, hypocrisy, and corruption. Be my friends, throw
on the wound in my soul your corrosive poisons, teach me to believe in
you."

While buried in these shadows, I allowed my favorite poets and text-books
to accumulate dust. I even ground them under my feet in excess of wrath.
"You wretched dreamers!" I said to them; "you who teach me only
suffering, miserable shufflers of words, charlatans, if you know the
truth, fools, if you speak in good faith, liars in either case, who make
fairy-tales of the woes of the human heart. I will burn the last one of
you!"

Then tears came to my aid