But this harmful and commonplace pessimism was of little account compared with another and much more dangerous habit of mind which I began to form. To it I attribute my unhappiness. The spectacle of society had infected me with the craze for scheming and success. I considered nothing comparable to the momentary triumphs achieved by a costume, a clever word or conversation. In things like these I saw the quintessence of glory. Should not a man seize his share of it? In my world it blazed in kohl-widened eyes, in rouged cheeks, in cunningly suggestive words and bared flesh. Like the trees of the forest, this mass of men and women flung themselves up to the light that glittered on them, and trampled down the weakest. Did not the desire to please, to prove themselves superior to each other, induce them to surpass themselves and put forth their greatest powers of seduction? And had I not recognized that I belonged to _the trees of light_? What did I care for closet scholars, for those creative minds whom their own thought satisfies, for lovers imprisoned by their love, for all humanity at labor? The obvious triumphs of society furnished me with sufficient excitement. Thus I began a course of frittering away a life which excessive prosperity and a lack of discipline had already marred, but which, thanks to a new emotion, I was on the point of being able to redeem, when of my own accord I threw away the opportunity. In this way two years rolled by. They were two years of intoxication and poison. Pierre Ducal, one of those false friends whom public opinion rather than our own taste thrusts upon us, handed me the poison. His reputation he had built with a smile upon devastation and ruin, as well as upon frivolity, in which he quite understood his power, and he took pains equally with his liaisons and with his waistcoats. His assurance in the most delicate situations, that social dexterity which is often the possession of those who live only for the moment, I regarded as the refinement of intellect. He played with passions which he did not really feel. I too indulged in this dangerous game which wears away and withers the heart, and my emotions became mere vanities. By a miracle, it is true, I was going to recover my health, but in the moral as in the physical world one cannot inhale with impunity deadly germs. Their evil effects endure. * * * Mlle. Mairieux had taken advantage of these two years to blossom forth like a flower on a long stem. Her slender figure did not indicate weakness so much as a life in the open air. If she blushed or turned pale too rapidly it was due to a sensitiveness too exquisite, like that of the shadow trees, not to the fluctuations of an irregular circulation.