And he decomposed his own personality into its elements, as he had done only too often in his periods of "Hamletism," as he called his analytic crises of inward paralysis. He recognised the first beginning of his egotism in the absence of family life; he took cognisance of the fact that college life had too early polluted his imagination, and the sight of the slaughter in the civil war too early awaked his misanthropy. He could see himself losing his religious faith by precocious reading, becoming uninterested in all ambition for lack of a cause in which he could believe, and because he was rich enough to live without a profession. Then he watched the long, useless, and fatal series of his love experiences unfold itself down to the hour when he had met Madame Chazel. "How could I have judged of her otherwise than I did?" he went on. "She in a measure threw herself at my head. Could I understand that this was the madness of a romantic, irrational, but sincere nature? I thought she was a woman like the rest. I thought so, and it was inevitable that I should think so." He thrust the words expressive of necessity--"it was inevitable"--into his heart, like a lever wherewith he might raise the weight of his remorse, but the weight continued there still. His striving was in vain; something within him that was stronger than himself constrained him to consider himself the author of this woman's ruin. Then he exerted himself to devise some other process of alleviation. He reverted in imagination to all the halting-places in their mutual intrigue, and he passed along this road of perdition seeking for the crossways, the moments when he might have entered and caused her to enter upon a different route. Why during the first few weeks of the Chazels' stay in Paris had he, when walking with Helen, taken pains to assume a sentimental attitude towards her? That he might appeal to her thoughts and influence them to curiosity. Could he have helped it? "No," he replied, angrily; "seduction is a part of my nature, as the chase is of the nature of a greyhound." A moment had come when he had perceived that Helen was beginning to love him. Could he then have withdrawn himself from her life? Yes, if he had believed himself to be her first love. But does a man command himself to believe this or that, to think in one way or another? What would he not now have given to judge of Helen as he formerly did, and this was impossible just as it had been impossible that he should judge of her during that period as he did now! On the night before their first secret interview, he could again see himself hesitating and on the point of writing her a truthful letter in order to break with her before the irreparable hour had come. But could he have prevented such or such an image from beleaguering his thought and restraining his pen?