To this madness was added a moral idolatry: by a further play of my imagination, the Phryne that clasped me in her arms also represented glory to me and, above all, honour; virtue performing its noblest sacrifices, genius conceiving the rarest thoughts would scarcely give an idea of this other kind of happiness. I found at one and the same time in my marvelous creation all the blandishments of the senses and all the joys of the soul. Overwhelmed and as it were submerged beneath these dual delights, I no longer knew which was my true existence: I was a man and was not a man; I became cloud, wind, sound; I was a pure spirit, a creature of the air, singing the sovereign felicity. I divested myself of my nature to become one with the maiden of my desires, to be transmuted into her, to touch beauty more closely, to be at once passion given and received, love and the object of love. Suddenly, struck with my madness, I flung myself upon my couch; I rolled myself in my grief; I watered my pillow with scalding tears which none saw, piteous tears which flowed for a nonexistent thing. * Soon, no longer able to remain in my tower, I climbed down through the darkness, furtively opened the door leading to the steps, like a murderer, and went to wander in the great wood. After walking at random, waving my hands, embracing the winds which escaped me like the shadow, the object of my pursuit, I leant against the trunk of a beech-tree; I watched the crows which I made fly from one tree to settle on another, or the moon lingering over the unclothed summits of the forest: I would have liked to inhabit this dead world, which reflected the pallor of the tomb. I felt neither the cold nor the dampness of the night; not even the icy breath of dawn would have drawn me from the depth of my thoughts, if at that hour the village bell had not made itself heard. In most of the villages of Brittany, it is the custom at daybreak to toll the bell for the dead. The peal consists of three repeated notes, which give a monotonous, melancholy, rustic little tune. Nothing suited my sick and wounded soul better than to be recalled to the tribulations of existence by the bell which announced its end. I pictured to myself the herdsman expiring in his unknown hut, and laid in a graveyard no less unknown. What had he come to do in the world? And I, what was I doing in this world? Since I should have to go at last, was it not better to depart in the cool of morning, to arrive early, than to complete the journey beneath the weight and in the heat of day? The blush of longing mantled on my face; the idea of ceasing to exist took possession of my heart in the manner of a sudden joy. At the period of the errors of my youth, I often hoped not to outlive happiness: there lay in the first success a measure of felicity that led me to aspire to destruction.