For some day, across your stagnant life, a gust of wind will blow. Those beautiful trees that you water with the stream of oblivion, Providence will destroy; you will be reduced to despair, messieurs the impassive, there will be tears in your eyes. I will not say that your mistresses will deceive you; that would not grieve you so much as the loss of your horse; but I do tell you that you will lose on the Bourse; your moneyed tranquillity, your golden happiness are in the care of a banker who may fail; in short I tell you, all frozen as you are, you are capable of loving something; some fiber of your being will be torn and you will give vent to a cry that will resemble a moan of pain. Some day, wandering about the muddy streets, when daily material joys shall have failed, you will find yourself seated disconsolately on a deserted bench at midnight. O! men of marble, sublime egoists, inimitable reasoners who have never given way to despair or made a mistake in arithmetic, if this ever happens to you, at the hour of your ruin you will remember Abelard when he lost Heloise. For he loved her more than you love your horses, your money or your mistresses; for he lost in losing her more than your prince Satan would lose in falling again from the battlements of Heaven; for he loved her with a certain love of which the gazettes do not speak, the shadow of which your wives and your daughters do not perceive in our theaters and in our books; for he passed half of his life kissing her white forehead, teaching her to sing the psalms of David and the canticles of Saul; for he did not love her on earth alone; and God consoled him. Believe me, when in your distress you think of Abelard you will not look with the same eye upon the sweet blasphemy of Voltaire and the badinage of Courier; you will feel that the human reason can cure illusions but not sorrows; that God has use for Reason but He has not made her the sister of Charity. You will find that when the heart of man said: "I believe in nothing, for I see nothing," it did not speak the last word on the subject. You will look about you for something like hope, you will shake the doors of churches to see if they still swing, but you will find them walled up; you will think of becoming Trappists, and destiny will mock at you and for reply give you a bottle of wine and a courtesan. And if you drink the wine, if you take the courtesan, you will have learned how such things come about. PART II CHAPTER I AWAKENING the next morning I experienced a feeling of such deep disgust with myself, I felt so degraded in my own eyes that a horrible temptation assailed me. I leaped from bed and ordered the creature to leave my room as quickly as possible. Then I sat down and looked gloomily about the room, my eyes resting mechanically on a brace of pistols that decorated the walls.