“Listen to me!” I cried, rising, “I have loved, I have loved like a fool.  I deserve all the ridicule you have subjected me to.  But, by Heaven!  I will show you something that will prove to you that I am not such a fool as you think.”

With these words I pulled aside the curtain and exposed the interior of the closet.  The girl was trying to conceal herself in a corner.

“Go in, if you choose,” I said to Desgenais; “you who call me a fool for loving a woman, see how your teaching has affected me.  Do you think I passed last night under the windows of—?  But that is not all,” I added, “that is not all I have to say.  You give a supper to-night and to-morrow go to the country; I am with you, and shall not leave you from now on.  We will not separate, but will pass the entire day together.  Are you with me?  Agreed!  I have tried to make of my heart the mausoleum of my love, but I will bury my love in another tomb.”

With these words I sat down, marvelling how indignation can solace grief and restore happiness.  Whoever is astonished to learn that, from that day, I completely changed my course of life does not know the heart of man, and does not understand that a young man of twenty may hesitate before taking a step, but does not retreat when he has once taken it.

CHAPTER II

THE CHOSEN WAY

The first steps in debauchery resemble vertigo, for one feels a sort of terror mingled with sensuous delight, as if peering downward from some giddy—­height.  While shameful, secret dissipation ruins the noblest of men, in the frank and open defiance of conventionality there is something that compels respect even in the most depraved.  He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his cloak, to sully his life in secret, and clandestinely to shake off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian who strikes his enemy from behind, not daring to provoke him to open quarrel.  There are assassinations in the dark corners of the city under shelter of the night.  He who goes his way without concealment says:  “Every one does it and conceals it; I do it and do not conceal it.”  Thus speaks pride, and once that cuirass has been buckled on, it glitters with the refulgent light of day.

It is said that Damocles saw a sword suspended over his head.  Thus libertines seem to have something over their heads which says:  “Go on, but remember, I hang not by a thread.”  Those masked carriages that are seen during Carnival are the faithful images of their life.  A dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; some laugh, some sing.  Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance.  They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names.  They float and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is said, a pitying God watches.