Then I returned to the city; I lost myself in its obscure streets; I looked up at the lights in all its windows, all those mysterious family nests; I watched the passing carriages; I saw man jostling against man. Oh! what solitude! How sad the smoke on those roofs! What sorrow in those tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a cloaca where there is only society of bodies, while souls are solitary and alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prostitutes! "Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man; it is written with charcoal on city walls, on its streets with mud, on its faces with extravasated blood. And at times, when seated in the corner of some salon I watched the women as they danced, some rosy, some blue, and others white, their arms bare and hair clustered gracefully about their shapely heads, looking like cherubim drunk with light, floating in their spheres of harmony and beauty, I would think: "Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss that you are walking in your flower-strewn gauze; it is on this hideous truth you run like gazelles on the tips of your little toes!" "But why take things so seriously?" said Desgenais. "That is something that is never seen. You complain because bottles become empty? There are many casks in the vaults, and many vaults in the hills. Make me a good fish-hook gilded with sweet words, with a drop of honey for bait, and quick! catch for me in the stream of oblivion a pretty consoler, as fresh and slippery as an eel; you will still have the hook when the fish shall have glided from your hands. Youth must pass away, and if I were you I would carry off the queen of Portugal rather than study anatomy." Such was the advice of Desgenais. I made my way home with swollen heart, my face concealed under my cloak. I kneeled at the side of my bed and my poor heart dissolved in tears. What vows! what prayers! Galileo struck the earth, crying: "Nevertheless it moves!" Thus I struck my heart. CHAPTER IX SUDDENLY, in the midst of greatest despair youth and chance led me to commit an act that decided my fate. I had written my mistress saying that I never wished to see her again; I kept my word, but I passed the nights under her window, seated on a bench before her door. I could see the lights in her room, I could hear the sound of her piano, at times I saw something that looked like a shadow through the partially drawn curtains.