The debauchees, more than all others, are exposed to that fury, and the reason is very simple: ordinary life is the limpid surface; the debauchees, the rapid current turning over and over, and, at times, touching the bottom. Coming from a ball, for instance, where they have danced with a modest girl, they seek the company of bad characters, and spend the night in riotous feasting. The last words they addressed to a beautiful and virtuous woman are still on their lips; they repeat them and burst into laughter. Shall I say it? Do they not raise, for some pieces of silver, the vesture of chastity, that robe so full of mystery, that seems to respect the being it embellishes and surrounds without touching? What idea can they have of the world? They are like comedians in the greenroom. Who, more than they, is skilled in that research at the bottom of things, in that groping, profound and impious? See how they speak of everything; always in terms the most barren, the most crude and abject; such words appear true to them; all the rest is only parade, convention, prejudice. Let them tell a story, let them recount some experience, they will always use the same dirty and material expression, always the letter, always death! They do not say "That woman loved me;" they say: "I have possessed that woman;" they do not say: "I love;" they say: "I desire;" they never say: "If God wills;" they say: "If I will." I do not know what they think of themselves and such monologues as these. Hence, of a necessity, either idleness or curiosity; for while they strive to find what there is of evil, they do not understand that others still believe in the good. Therefore, they are either so nonchalant that they stop their ears, or the noise of the rest of the world suddenly startles them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but a stage. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and sees what has taken place in him during an hour passed in the society of brutal reality! He says to himself: "My sister is not like that creature I have just left!" And from that day he is disturbed and uneasy.