I was not competent to criticize the romantic falsity of all this fine setting, nor to separate the sincere from the literary portion of these poems. The complete profligacy of soul appeared to me through these lines, and it tempted me; it excited in my mind, already eager for new sensations, the faculty of analysis already too much aroused. The other works which I have cited were the pretext for a temptation which was similar but not so strong. In the contemplation of the sores of the human heart which they exposed with so much complaisance, I was like those saints of the middle ages who were hypnotized by contemplation of the wounds of the Saviour. The strength of their piety caused the miraculous stigmata to appear on their hands and the ardor of my imagination, at the age of holy ignorances and immaculate purities, opened in my soul the stigmata of moral ulcers which are draining the life blood of all the great modern invalids. Yes, in the years when I was only the collegian, the friend of little Emile, I assimilated in thought the emotions which the timid teachings of my masters indicated as the most criminal. My mind was tainted with the most dangerous poisons, while, thanks to my power of duplication, I continued to play the part of a very good child, very assiduous at my tasks, very submissive to my mother, and very pious. But no. However strange this must appear to you, I did not play that rôle. I was pious, with a spontaneous contradiction which, perhaps, has directed my thought to the psychological work to which I consecrated my first efforts. When I read in your work on the will those suggestive indications on the theory of the multiplicity of self, I seized upon them immediately, after having passed through such epochs as I am describing to you to-day and in which I have really been several distinct beings. This crisis of imaginative sensibility had continued the attack upon my religious faith by offering the temptation of subtile sin and also that of painful scepticism. The sensuality crisis which resulted from it failed to revive this faith in my heart. I ceased to be pure when I was seventeen years old, and this happened as usual, in very dull and prosaic circumstances. From that time, beside the two persons who already existed in me, between the youth who was still fervent, regular, pious, and the youth romantically imaginative, a third individual was born and grew, a sensual being, tormented by the basest desires. However, the taste for the intellectual life was so strong, so definite, that although suffering from this singular condition, I felt a sensation of superiority in recognizing and studying it. What was more strange, I did not yield to this last disposition more than I did to the others, with a clear and lucid consciousness. I remained a youth through all these troubles, that is to say a being still uncertain and incomplete, a being in whom could be discerned the lineaments of the soul to come.