"At Duret's found Léonie, the model who stood to him for his _Delilah_ in the last Salon: a somewhat wearied face, with a refined and arched nose, eyes of gleaming blackness, a strongly marked chin, with a slightly masculine appearance in the profile--the masculine appearance of theatrical women who act in burlesque--and a long countenance. But that is but the skeleton of the face. The slight moustache was tinged with black, the patch on the cheek underlined with black, the eyes made still larger with black, the complexion covered with powder, and the powder blending with the pale pink of the blood gave the woman an extravagant and sophisticated look which was completed by the brilliantly nacreous teeth that twinkled with the splendour of moist imitation pearls. "The toilet completed the woman. She had some black, gauzy material round her neck, a hat trimmed with gauze and flowers, a dress of variegated and friezed material, with a huge, red rose blooming on her left breast. "'She's a luxurious woman,' said René ironically, and, indeed, with the material of her dress, her gauze and her flower, she looked like a creature that lived on nothing but superfluity. I paid my addresses to her, pleased her, and did not leave her house until this morning. "O enchantment of the senses when the surcharge of thought comes not to mar physical intoxication! O enchantment of prostitutes, seen thus as dispensers of pleasure free from disquiet of heart! No asking whether or how one loves or is loved, no measuring of sensation with an ideal type of feeling that is perceived, and striven after, and that never can be felt! I write these lines, and see! already my enjoyment has evaporated. I write these lines and yet would that on a solitary terrace fronting a landscape of trees and waters a woman might appear having the eyes of which I long have dreamed--eyes which I know without having ever met them--and might swear to me that this life has been nothing but an evil dream! And she should tell me _all_, and by that all be made the dearer to me;--and then I should love!" "PARIS, _June_ 1879. "Luncheons and dinners; dinners and luncheons. Assignations and evening parties. Ah! how empty my life is! I do nothing that I like; nothing; for I like nothing. "In presence of the living creature, nothing at heart but pity for him who suffers, if he does suffer--who will suffer since he endures the evil of existence. "If death, inevitable death, were neither physically painful in the passage thither from life, nor terrible in its sequel to our imagining, ah! how I would seek that which has prompted thoughts to mar my life! "We live on--and why? We think--and why? Why between two glasses of delicate wine and amid naked shoulders does there come to me ceaselessly at table the image of the grave, and the insoluble question concerning the meaning of this deadly farce of nature, and the world, and life?