And so I availed myself of all the opportunities that presented themselves of disguising my inaction by movement, and soon the days began to hurry on, and press one upon the other, amid those innumerable amusements of which the idle rich make a code of duties to be performed. What with the morning ride in the Bois, afternoon calls, dinner parties, parties to the theater and after midnight, play at the club, or the pursuit of pleasure elsewhere--how was I to find leisure for the carrying out of a project? I had horses, intrigues, an absurd duel in which I acquitted myself well, because, as I believe, the tragic ideas that were always at the bottom of my life favored me. A woman of forty persuaded me that I was her first love; then I persuaded myself that I was in love with a Russian great lady, who was living in Paris. The latter was--indeed she still is--one of those incomparable actresses in society, who, in order to surround themselves with a sort of court, composed of admirers who are more or less rewarded, employ all the allurements of luxury, wit, and beauty, but who have not a particle of either imagination or heart, although they fascinate by a display of the most refined fancies and the most vivid emotions. I led the life of a slave to the caprices of this soulless coquette for nearly six months, and learned that women of the fashionable world and women of "the half- world" are very much alike in point of worth. The former are intolerable on account of their lies, their assumption, and their vanity; the others are equally odious by reason of their vulgarity, their stupidity, and their sordid love of lucre. I forgot all my absurd relations with women of both orders in the excitement of play, and yet I was well aware of the meanness of that diversion, which only ceases to be insipid when it becomes odious, because it is a clever calculation upon money to be gained without working for it. There was in me something at once wildly dissipated and yet disgusted, which drove me to excess, and at the same time inspired me with bitter self-contempt. In the innermost recesses of my being the memory of my father dwelt, and poisoned my thoughts at their source. An impression of dark fatalism invaded my sick mind; it was so strange that I should live as I was living, nevertheless, I did live thus, and the visible "I" had but little likeness to the real. Upon me, then, poor creature that I was, as upon the whole universe, a fate rested. "Let it drive me," I said, and yielded myself up to it. I went to sleep, pondering upon ideas of the most somber philosophy, and I awoke to resume an existence without worth or dignity, in which I was losing not only my power of carrying out my design of reparation towards the phantom which haunted my dreams but all self-esteem, and all conscience.