Consequently, and as he could not take pleasure in principles, Gaetan Solange had taken lodgings in a foul quarter, at the end of a damp court, in two or three little dark rooms. They were the most agreeable rooms he could find after years of patient search. When he returned to his rooms, in the evening, it was amid the repugnant attacks of an army of wretched women; and sometimes a drunken vagrant barred his way through the narrow alley with insults and threats. Solange was satisfied, for this proved that the police were lax, that nobody could return to his dwelling after ten o'clock without risking his life. A spongy cutlet, a woody cigar, bitter beer, a spotted table-cloth gave his visible satisfaction. It was thus: "What would you? If you wish to live, you must accept the inconveniences of life." He liked to be plagued by a woman who, penniless, became refractory to all caresses--as in _Un Dilemme_--and the friends who had abused his confidence, wittingly ill-placed, were dear to him as the orthographic faults of a literary master: this proved once more the absolute rules of his grammar. He only read newspapers, and the vilest of them, so that nothing might disturb his belief that no one wrote save to earn money, and that the viler and more lying any literature is, the more it entertains the public--all the public. Entragues paused in his work and reflected: "We are almost in accord, yes, for if I detest to lull myself in joy and in the contentment of my heart, it is not through a desired and coddled impotence. I do not disdain life, I have never disowned its pleasures. It is neither bad nor good, it is indifferent, it is the conditional state of dreams, and that is all. To demand of life a little happiness is to give too much importance to the mechanism of the senses and to make oneself conform with corporeal invitations and with the rules of matter, whereas the will should aim towards emancipation. "But I know the perils of asceticism and its infamies; and were I happy, I would experience astonishment rather than shame. I have never believed that this was written in my destiny. This attitude is proper, for I cannot, like a fool, believe that "this was due me," and despite some gleams of Christian humility, my pride is so superb that I cannot for any length of time admit the frailty of my merits. No person, doubtless, was ever worthy of happiness; but unless I am a Pharisee, I should not deem myself below average humanity: such a posture of kneeling would partake of weakness and cowardice. It is permitted me, without any disturbing in the order of my essential idealism, to moisten my lips from the cup which this charming woman offers me; then I shall make her drink it; then, emboldened, we shall quench our thirsts together, inhaling, like harvesters leaning over the clear spring, the delights of cooling refreshments.