I could not help making a study of that singular man. He appeared to me the marked type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child. During the fete, in particular, he was in such a state of nervous excitation that he acted like a schoolboy. He persuaded me to go out on foot with him one day, muffled in grotesque costumes, with masks and instruments of music. We promenaded gravely all night, in the midst of a most frightful din of horrible sounds. We found a driver asleep on his box and unhitched his horses; then pretending we had just come from the ball, set up a great cry. The coachman started up, cracked his whip and his horses started off on a trot, leaving him seated on the box. The same evening we passed through the Champs Elysees; Desgenais, seeing another carriage passing, stopped it after the manner of a highwayman; he intimidated the coachman by threats and forced him to climb down and lie flat on his stomach. He then opened the carriage door and found within a young man and lady motionless with fright. Whispering to me to imitate him, we began to enter one door and go out the other, so that in the obscurity the poor young people thought they saw a procession of bandits going through their carriage. As I understand it, the men who say that the world gives experience ought to be astonished if they are believed. The world is merely a number of whirlpools, each one whirling independent of the others; they float about in groups like flocks of birds. There is no resemblance between the different quarters of the same city, and the denizen of the Chausee d'Antin has as much to learn at Marais as at Lisbon. It is true that these whirlpools are traversed, and have been since the beginning of the world, by seven personages who are always the same: the first is called hope; the second, conscience; the third, opinion; the fourth, desire; the fifth, sorrow; the sixth, pride; and the seventh, man. We were, therefore, my companions and I, a flock of birds, and we remained together until springtime, sometimes singing, sometimes flying. "But," the reader objects, "where are the women in all this? I see nothing of debauchery here." O! creatures who bear the name of women and who have passed like dreams through a life that was itself a dream, what shall I say of you? Where there is no shadow of hope can there be memory? Where shall I seek for memory's meed? What is there more dumb in human memory? What is there more completely forgotten than you? If I must speak of women I will mention two; here is one of them: