did he invent virtue? Oh,
Heaven! here is a woman who speaks of love and who deceives me; here is a
man who speaks of friendship and counsels me to seek consolation in
debauchery; here is another woman who weeps and would console me with the
flesh; here is a Bible that speaks of God and says: "Perhaps; but nothing
is of any real importance."

I ran to the open window: "Is it true that you are empty?" I cried,
looking up at the pale expanse of sky which spread above me. "Reply,
reply! Before I die, grant that I may clasp in these arms of mine
something more than a dream!"

Profound silence reigned. As I stood with arms outstretched, eyes lost in
space, a swallow uttered a plaintive cry; in spite of myself I followed
it with my eyes; while the swallow disappeared from sight like a flash, a
little girl passed singing.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SEARCH FOR HEALING

Yet I was unwilling to yield.

Before taking life on its pleasant side--a side which to me seemed rather
sinister--I resolved to test everything. I remained thus for some time, a
prey to countless sorrows, tormented by terrible dreams.

The great obstacle to my cure was my youth. Wherever I happened to be,
whatever my occupation, I could think of nothing but women; the sight of
a woman made me tremble.

It had been my fate--a fate as rare as happy--to give to love my
unsullied youth. But the result of this was that all my senses united in
idealizing love; there was the cause of my unhappiness. For not being
able to think of anything but women, I could not help turning over in my
head, day and night, all the ideas of debauchery, of false love and of
feminine treason, with which my mind was filled. For me to possess a
woman was to love her; I thought of nothing but women, but I believed no
more in the possibility of true love.

All this suffering inspired me with a sort of rage. At times I was
tempted to imitate the monks and starve my body in order to conquer my
senses; at times I felt like rushing out into the street to throw myself
at the feet of the first woman I met and vow to her eternal love.

God is my witness that I did all in my power to cure myself. Preoccupied
from the first with the idea that the society of men was the haunt of
vice and hypocrisy, where all were like my mistress, I resolved to
separate myself from them and live in complete isolation. I resumed my
neglected studies, and plunged into history, poetry, and anatomy. There
happene