The next scene that came through the lens was one of the most envied of Christendom. Men and women of the highest birth and best breeding were moving to and fro in brilliantly lit and decorated rooms, in the largest of which the dance was proceeding. In another room a luxurious supper was laid, varied and fine enough to tempt the eye and palate of the most fastidious gourmand. Voluptuous music and scents filled the air; witty conversation was stirring even the most languid faces to smiles. What could be more perfect on earth than the enjoyment of such a scene? Yet this was a deeper slough of hell than any I had yet viewed. The whole of life was concentrated in the senses, the least progressive of all the organs of human nature, the organs soonest sated with what they desire. And what a horror of life was revealed beneath all this brilliancy! A crescendo of such pleasures was needed to drive off ennui; and such a crescendo was not to be found. The young still lived in hopeful mirage. The middle-aged were sick of it all. The old sneered cynically over everything or babbled the senility of second childhood. The vulgar consequences of vice or the entanglements of crime, the surfeit of pleasure or the tedium of life kept most of them within one step of suicide. Their course was ever downwards. I pitied these magnificent voluptuaries, in all their ephemeral pursuits and aims. The brilliancy was only an attempt to hide the ghastly grinning of death and corruption in the reality underneath. Another change of the point of view, and the world of fame revealed itself in its gilded horrors. I watched the struggling poet trampled beneath the foot of luxury and contempt, happy if only he died early in the hateful wrestle for glory. I saw the drowning agonies of the novices in the sea of literature, appealing in vain for help to the wealthy as they passed in barges lulled by the rich music of flattery; here and there a frantic swimmer clutched at help, and out again he was thrust into the depths by the minions of literary fame. How little the rejected knew of the reality that they strove after! I looked into the hearts of the famous and saw corrupt masses of jealousy and hate, or hollow shells echoing the misery of life. The most appalling sight was, not the failures in art and learning, science and commerce, but the successes. Behind a mask of smiling prosperity and conventional enjoyment of the world there was but a handful of dust that bore the weary load of existence in agony.