"Ah!" he vaguely thought, terrified, but his own self again, "this is reality. The illusions are reaped, the hay is brought in, the field is bare. This had to happen. The images which one voluntarily evokes come to acquire mischievous habits and evoke themselves independently. This one is impatient. So much the worse tor her; I did not invite her." The bed curtains had to be closed and the lights put out. Sixtine spared them by not moving and by disdaining the stratagem of phosphorescence. The candles, when after a while they were lit again, showed Entragues an empty room: Sixtine had departed. But departed also where the desires and all the unacknowledged pleasure of a delightful night of debauchery. He dared not go out, fearing a solitude that might be peopled against his will. To fatigue the body is to fatigue the intelligence: he had enfeebled himself as a person stupefies himself with laudanum. CHAPTER XVI THE IDEAL BEES "Afin de réduire le Ternaire, par le moyen du Quaternaire, à la simplicité de l'unité." Le R. P. Esprit Sabathier, _l'Ombre_ _idéale de la sagesse universelle._ "Ah! yes," mused Hubert, as he replaced the book in the corner restricted to philosophers, "the pages of Ribot's positive and disenchanting psychology make good reading at a moment, not of spleen, but of stark boredom. This penetrating dialectician clearly proves to me that my personality is a fragile chord which a single false note in the keyboard can destroy. It is all the same to me: a madness caused by a fixed idea must greatly assist in supporting life. Thus, collectors are to be envied, those who gather and classify old copper buttons, or old secret locks, or all that has been written against women, or the figurines of Sèvres porcelain, or the articles of M. Lemaître, or the slippers of historic balls. One need not be fastidious in choosing a mania: to be good it has only to be inexhaustible. As for the more distinguished follies, many excellent ones can be noted and, in general, none of those which are termed mild manias should be scorned: the people once knew this well, for they respected, in the persons of fools, the state of mind never attained by men of sense: happiness."