"I leave to Solange his shame; he is a madman whose crippled understanding is blind to this idea: that only those who suffer from the refinements of their sensitiveness are permitted to toy ironically with the cankers that life is soiled with, and not those who delight in breathing, without disgust, the sordid purulence." He continued to muse, without writing: "Solange is a rather good fellow although a little uncultured, with coarse clothes and ugly shoes. At a marriage which he was obliged to attend, he met a young girl who fell in love with him, discreetly and with reserve, but seriously. She watched him, blushing under his glance in quest of defects; she lowered her eyes. When she passed near him she felt a strange fear come over her--the fear of being arrested by his arm and the fear of a banal bow. Naturally the young girl's mother introduced Solange to her; he was asked some favor, a very skillful maternal snare, since he would have to bring the information in a short while. He came, he returned, ever drawn by adroit combinations; finally, he returned for his own pleasure and found himself enmeshed before he had time to reflect. Besides, he thought of nothing, he let himself go, conquered and captive. "They were married. Their moderate fortunes joined together became, in the hands of the intelligent young woman, a source of honest and almost luxurious comfort. Their apartment was large, light and sunny, the food carefully chosen; and instead of looking forward to the ennui of a lonely single bed, he enjoyed the constant presence of a beloved being who tinted with rose and blue the hours formerly gloomy with lonely awakenings. "He no longer had time to scorn men or to relish their low greediness; pleasure of love, enjoyed in full naïveté, evoked no lewd images in his desires, no horror of self or of others; what others? "In fine, he was happy! "Happy! He! He the stubborn pessimist, he whose aversion to every ideal had astonished the most impotent! Happy! what a shame! He plunged to the depths of the abyss in which this adventure had overwhelmed his principles; he brought them back one by one; ah! they were rotting; all was ended and with them all joy of living--for he had just understood how much the wretchedness of a mediocre existence, how much the sentiment of the universal dunghill, was necessary to his happiness!" CHAPTER XXXII INTOXICATION "Ως ἧν έν άεχἥ" _Greek Liturgy_. "Man, meditate on the syllable Om." _The Khandogya Upanishad_. Hubert wrote two notes, and the evening of the second day knocked at Sixtine's door. Absence. A third note and another visit were likewise in vain. "She is sulking," he thought. "So much the better. Her anger will exhaust itself against my shadow and, when she condescends to receive me, her beautiful face will be free of all vexation."