g a clean sweep of all those finer emotions which
harass more complicated organisms! Enviable zoophytes, that live only to
digest!--who would not be of the brotherhood?"

In another he wrote:--

"I seem to have lived years in the last five or six weeks, and to have
grown suddenly old and cynical. Some French writer (I think it is
Alphonse Karr) says, 'Nothing in life is really great and good, except
what is not true. Man's greatest treasures are his illusions.' Alas! my
illusions have been dropping from me in showers of late, like withered
leaves in Autumn. The tree will be bare as a gallows ere long, if these
rough winds keep on blowing. If only things would amuse me as of old! If
there was still excitement in play, and forgetfulness in wine, and
novelty in travel! But there is none--and all things alike are 'flat,
stale, and unprofitable,' The truth is, Damon, I want but one thing--and
wanting that, lack all."

Here is one more extract, and it shall be the last:--

"You ask me how I pass my days--in truth, wearily enough. I rise with
the dawn, but that is not very early in September; and I ride for a
couple of hours before breakfast. After breakfast I play billiards in
some public room, consume endless pipes, read the papers, and so on.
Later in the day I scowl through a picture-gallery, or a string of
studios; or take a pull up the river; or start off upon a long, solitary
objectless walk through miles and miles of forest. Then comes
dinner--the inevitable, insufferable, interminable German table-d'hote
dinner--and then there is the evening to be got through somehow! Now and
then I drop in at a theatre, but generally take refuge in some plebeian
Lust Garten or Beer Hall, where amid clouds of tobacco-smoke, one may
listen to the best part-singing and zitter-playing in Europe. And so my
days drag by--who but myself knows how slowly? Truly, Damon, there comes
to every one of us, sooner or later, a time when we say of life as
Christopher Sly said of the comedy--''Tis an excellent piece of work.
Would 'twere done!'"

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE VICOMTE DE CAYLUS.

It was after receiving the last of these letters that I hazarded a third
visit to Madame de Courcelles. This time, I ventured to present myself
at her door about midday, and was at once ushered upstairs into a
drawing-room looking out on the Rue Castellane.

Seeing her open work-table, with the empty chair and footstool beside
it, I thought at the first gl