My illness, far from robbing me of my physical vigour, had but increased it.  I was no longer the heavy, sleepy animal, fatigued by digestion and stupefied by weariness.  I felt the vibrations of all my fibres filling my soul with unknown harmonies; and I was astonished to discover within myself faculties of which I had never suspected the use.  My good kinfolk were delighted at this, though apparently not surprised.  They had allowed themselves to augur so well of me from the beginning that it seemed as if they had been accustomed all their lives to the trade of civilizing barbarians.

The nervous system which had just been developed in me, and which made me pay for the pleasures and advantages it brought by keen and constant sufferings during the rest of my life, had rendered me specially sensitive to impressions from without; and this quickness to feel the effect of external things was helped by an organic vigour such as is only found among animals or savages.  I was astounded at the decay of the faculties in other people.  These men in spectacles, these women with their sense of smell deadened by snuff, these premature graybeards, deaf and gouty before their time, were painful to behold.  To me society seemed like a vast hospital; and when with my robust constitution I found myself in the midst of these weaklings, it seemed to me that with a puff of my breath I could have blown them into the air as if they had been so much thistle-down.

This unfortunately led me into the error of yielding to that rather stupid kind of pride which makes a man presume upon his natural gifts.  For a long time it induced me to neglect their real improvement, as if this were a work of supererogation.  The idea that gradually grew up in me of the worthlessness of my fellows prevented me from rising above those whom I henceforth looked upon as my inferiors.  I did not realize that society is made up of so many elements of little value in themselves, but so skilfully and solidly put together that before adding the least extraneous particle a man must be a qualified artificer.  I did not know that in this society there is no resting-place between the role of the great artist and that of the good workman.  Now, I was neither one nor the other, and, if the truth must be told, all my ideas have never succeeded in lifting me out of the ordinary ruck; all my strength has only enabled me with much difficulty to do as others do.

In a few weeks, then, I passed from an excess of admiration to an excess of contempt for society.  As soon as I understood the workings of its springs they seemed to me so miserably regulated by a feeble generation that the hopes of my mentors, unknown to themselves, were doomed to disappointment.  Instead of realizing my own inferiority and endeavouring to efface myself in the crowd, I imagined that I could give proof of my superiority whenever I wished; and I fed on fancies which I blush to recall.  If I did not show myself egregiously ridiculous, it was thanks to the very excess of this vanity which feared to stultify itself before others.