God is my witness that I did all in my power to cure myself.  Preoccupied from the first with the idea that the society of men was the haunt of vice and hypocrisy, where all were like my mistress, I resolved to separate myself from them and live in complete isolation.  I resumed my neglected studies, and plunged into history, poetry, and anatomy.  There happened to be on the fourth floor of the same house an old and learned German.  I determined to learn his language; the German was poor and friendless, and willingly accepted the task of instructing me.  My perpetual state of distraction worried him.  How many times he waited in patient astonishment while I, seated near him with a smoking lamp between us, sat with my arms crossed on my book, lost in revery, oblivious of his presence and of his pity.

“My dear sir,” said I to him one day, “all this is useless, but you are the best of men.  What a task you have undertaken!  You must leave me to my fate; we can do nothing, neither you nor I.”

I do not know that he understood my meaning, but he grasped my hand and there was no more talk of German.

I soon realized that solitude, instead of curing me, was doing me harm, and so I completely changed my system.  I went into the country, and galloped through the woods with the huntsmen; I would ride until I was out of breath, trying to cure myself with fatigue, and when, after a day of sweat in the fields, I reached my bed in the evening smelling of powder and the stable, I would bury my head in the pillow, roll about under the covers and cry:  “Phantom, phantom! are you not satiated?  Will you not leave me for one single night?”

But why these vain efforts?  Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to love.  Standing in the street of Mental Observation, I saw myself pale and wan, surrounded by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and saw floating before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields, and the pensive harmony of the evening.  “No,” said I, “science can not console me; rather will I plunge into this sea of irresponsive nature and die there myself by drowning.  I will not war against my youth; I will live where there is life, or at least die in the sunlight.”  I began to mingle with the throngs at Sevres and Chaville, and stretch myself on flowery swards in secluded groves.  Alas! all the forests and fields cried to me: 

“What do you seek here?  We are young, poor child!  We wear the colors of hope.”

Then I returned to the city; I lost myself in its obscure streets; I looked up at the lights in its windows, into those mysterious family nests; I watched the passing carriages; I saw man jostling against man.  Oh, what solitude!  How sad the smoke on those roofs!  What sorrow in those tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a sewer where society is of bodies only, while souls are solitary and alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prostitutes!  “Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!” This has been the cry of all cities unto man; it is written with charcoal on the walls, on the streets with mud, on men’s faces with extravasated blood.