"Ah! yes, neither occupation nor study have been able to cure you, my friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You finger the leaves of dead books; you are too young for ruins. Look about you, the pale herd of men surrounds you. The eyes of the sphinx glitter in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life! Courage, scholar, launch out on the Styx, the invulnerable flood, and let the waves of sorrow waft you to death or to God." CHAPTER IV "ALL there was of good in that, supposing there was some good in it, was that false pleasures were the seeds of sorrow and of bitterness which fatigued me to the point of exhaustion." Such are the simple words spoken with reference to his youth by that man who was the most a man of any who have lived, Saint Augustine. Of those who have done as I, few would say those words, all have them in their hearts; I have found no others in mine. Returning to Paris in the month of December I passed the winter attending pleasure parties, masquerades, suppers, rarely leaving Desgenais, who was delighted with me; I was not with him. The more I went about, the more unhappy I became. It seemed to me after a short enough time, that the world, which had at first appeared so strange, would tie me up, so to speak, at every step; where I had expected to see a specter, I discovered, upon closer inspection, a shadow. Desgenais asked what was the matter with me. "And you?" I asked. "What is the matter with you? You have lost some relative? Or do you suffer from some wound?" At times he seemed to understand me and did not question me. We sat down before a table and drank until we lost our heads; in the middle of the night we took horses and rode ten or twelve leagues into the country; returning we went to the bath, then to table, then to gambling, then to bed; and when I reached mine, I fell on my knees and wept. That was my evening prayer. Strange to say, I took pride in passing for what I was not, I boasted of being worse than I really was, and experienced a sort of melancholy pleasure in doing so. When I had actually done what I claimed, I felt nothing but ennui, but when I invented an account of some folly, some story of debauchery or recital of an orgy with which I had nothing to do, it seemed to me that my heart was better satisfied, although I know not why. Whenever I joined a party of pleasure-seekers and we visited some spot made sacred by tender associations I became stupid, went off by myself, looked gloomily at the trees and bushes as though I would like to crush them under my feet. Upon my return I would remain silent for hours. The baleful idea that truth is nudity beset me on every occasion.