own in the Avenue Montaigne, close to the round-point in the Champs Élysées, a yearly income of 50,000 francs, the entrée to all the salons frequented by my mother, and the entrée, too, to all the places at which one may amuse one's self. How could I have resisted the influences of such a position? Yes, I had dreamed of being an avenger, a justiciary, and I allowed myself to be caught up almost instantly into the whirlwind of that life of pleasure whose destructive power those who see it only from the outside cannot measure. It is a futile and exacting existence which fritters away your hours as it fritters away your mind, ravelling out the stuff of time thread by thread with irreparable loss, and also the more precious stuff of mental and moral strength. With respect to that task of mine, my task as an avenger, I was incapable of immediate action--what and whom was I to attack? 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 made a code of duties to be performed. What with the morning ride in the Bois, afternoon calls, dinner parties, parties to the theatre 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 favoured me. A woman of forty persuaded me that I was her first love, and I became her lover; 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 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 if 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.