You know how ardently I have sought physical beauty, what importance I attach to physical form, and what affection I have conceived for the visible world; it must be because I am too corrupt and too _blasé_ to believe in moral beauty, and to pursue it with any constancy.--I have completely lost the power to distinguish between good and evil, and, by force of depravity, I have almost reverted to the ignorance of the savage and the child. In fact, nothing seems praiseworthy or blameworthy to me, and the most extraordinary actions surprise me but little. My conscience is a deaf mute. Adultery seems to me the most innocent thing in the world; I find it quite natural that a girl should prostitute her person; it seems to me that I would betray my friends without the slightest remorse, and I should not have the slightest scruple in kicking over a precipice people who annoyed me, if I were walking on the brink with them.--I could witness the most atrocious scenes with indifference, and there is something that is not unpleasant to me in the sufferings and woes of humanity.--I have the same sensation of acrimonious, bitter joy when some great disaster falls on the world, that one feels when one takes revenge for an old insult. O world, what hast thou done to me that I should hate thee so? Who has so filled me with gall against thee? what did I expect from thee that I should bear thee such rancor for having deceived me? what high hope didst thou disappoint? what eaglet's wings didst thou clip?--What doors shouldst thou have opened that have remained closed, and which of us two has failed the other?