"The world," I said to myself, "is accustomed to call his disguise virtue, his chaplet religion, his flowing mantle convenience. Honor and Morality are his chamber-maids; he drinks in his wine the tears of the poor in spirit who believe in him; while the sun is high in the heavens he walks about with downcast eye; he goes to church, to the ball, to the assembly, and when evening has come he removes his mantle and there appears a naked bacchante with hoofs of a goat." But such thoughts aroused a feeling of horror, for I felt that if the body was under the clothing, the skeleton was under the body. "Is it possible that that is all?" I asked in spite of myself. Then I returned to the city, I saw a little girl take her mother's arm and I became like a child. Although I had followed my friends into all manner of dissipation, I had no desire to resume my place in the world of society. The sight of women caused me intolerable pain; I could not touch a woman's hand without trembling. I had decided never to love again. Nevertheless I returned from the ball one evening so sick at heart that I feared that it was love. I happened to have beside me at supper the most charming and the most distinguished woman whom it had ever been my good fortune to meet. When I closed my eyes to sleep I saw her image before me. I thought I was lost, and I at once resolved that I would avoid meeting her again. A sort of fever seized me and I lay on my bed for fifteen days, repeating over and over the lightest words I had exchanged with her. As there is no spot on earth where one is so well known by his neighbors as at Paris, it was not long before people of my acquaintance who had seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a great libertine. In that I admired the discernment of the world: in proportion as I had passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of my rupture with my mistress, I was now considered insensible and hardened. Some one had just told me that it was clear I had never loved that woman, that I had doubtless merely played at love, thereby paying me a compliment which I really did not deserve; but the most of it was that I was so swollen with vanity that I was charmed with that view. My desire was to pass for blase, even while I was filled with desires and my exalted imagination was carrying me beyond all limits. I began to say that I could not make any headway with the women; my head was filled with chimeras which I preferred to realities. In short, my unique pleasure consisted in altering the nature of facts. If a thought were but extraordinary, if it shocked common sense, I became its ardent champion at the risk of advocating the most dangerous sentiments.