lgarity! The meaning of these words he understood clearly after
he had been in the baron's society. Even earlier he had begun to
feel the need of something loftier; something beyond those
pleasures of the senses--of fancy and of vanity--which he had
experienced, though these were considerable. The substance and
nature of these pleasures lay on the surface--they were
accessible to a considerable number of people. The baron, in the
manner usual with him, speaking somewhat through his nose and
teeth, said:

"We, the experienced and disenchanted, seek for new shivers, just
as alchemists of the Middle Ages sought for gold. We are in
search of the rare and of the novel."

In search of the rare and the novel in shivers, or universal
impressions: sensuous, mental, and aesthetic, Maryan went once
with the baron, and a second time alone, on a journey through
Europe. He visited many countries and capitals. To investigate
the Salvation Army, he joined its ranks for a period in England.
In Germany he was connected with the almost legendary,
politico-religious sect which bears the name Fahrende Leute; and,
again, for some time, in an immense wagon drawn by gigantic
Mechlenburgers, he wandered through the mountainous Hartz forest
and along the banks of the picturesque Saal; he spent most time
in Paris, where, with the theosophists he summoned up spirits,
and with the decadents, otherwise known as incoherents, and still
otherwise as the accursed poets; in the club of hashish-eaters he
had dreams and visions brought on by using narcotics. Besides, he
saw many other rare and peculiar things; but he was ever hampered
by slender financial means and the need of incurring great debts;
and was irritated by the impossibility of finding anything which
could satisfy him permanently, or, at least, for a long period.
He felt satisfactions, but brief ones. Everything of which he had
dreamed seemed less after he had attained it--more common, weaker
than in his imagining. The brightness was dimmed; on the glitter
there were defects; the warm inspirations which came from afar,
grew stiff when they were touched, stiffened, as oil does when
floating on water. In the taste of things, sweetness and tartness
became insipid and nauseous, the moment they reached his palate.

This was by no means a surfeit devoid of appetites; but, on the
contrary, such an immense flood of appetites that the insurgent
wave of them struck the region of the impossible with