ecipher the book of life! Courage,
scholar, launch out on the Styx, the deathless flood, and let the waves
of sorrow waft you to oblivion or to God."

CHAPTER IV

MARCO

"All the good there was in it, supposing there was some good in it, was
that false pleasures were the seeds of sorrow and of bitterness which
fatigued me to the point of exhaustion." Such are the simple words spoken
with reference to his youth by a man who was the most manly of any who
have lived--St. Augustine. Of those who have done as I, few would say
those words; all have them in their hearts; I have found no others in
mine.

Returning to Paris in the month of December, I passed the winter
attending pleasure parties, masquerades, suppers, rarely leaving
Desgenais, who was delighted with me: not so was I with him. The more I
went about, the more unhappy I became. It seemed to me after a short time
that the world which had at first appeared so strange would hamper me, so
to speak, at every step; yet where I had expected to see a spectre, I
discovered, upon closer inspection, a shadow.

Desgenais asked what ailed me.

"And you?" I asked. "What is the matter with you? Have you lost some
relative? Or do you suffer from some wound?"

At times he seemed to understand and did not question me. Occasionally we
sat down at a cafe table and drank until our heads swam; or in the middle
of the night took horses and rode ten or twelve leagues into the country;
returning to the bath, then to table, then to gambling, then to bed; and
on reaching mine, I fell on my knees and wept. That was my evening
prayer.

Strange to say, I took pride in passing for what I was not, I boasted of
being worse than I really was, and experienced a sort of melancholy
pleasure in doing so. When I had actually done what I claimed, I felt
nothing but ennui, but when I invented an account of some folly, some
story of debauchery, or a recital of an orgy with which I had nothing to
do, it seemed to me that my heart was better satisfied, although I know
not why.

Whenever I joined a party of pleasure-seekers and visited some spot made
sacred by tender associations I became stupid, went off by myself, looked
gloomily at the trees and bushes as if I would like to trample them under
my feet. Upon my return I would remain silent for hours.

The baleful idea that truth is nudity beset me on every occasion.

"The world," I said to myself, "is accustomed to call its disguise
virt