UNCERTAINTY

A kind of stagnant inertia, tempered with bitter joy, is characteristic of debauchery.  It is the sequence of a life of caprice, where nothing is regulated according to the needs of the body, but everything according to the fantasy of the mind, and one must be always ready to obey the behests of the other.  Youth and will can resist excess; but nature silently avenges herself, and the day when she decides to repair her forces, the will struggles to retard her work and abuses her anew.

Finding about him then all the objects that were able to tempt him the evening before, the man who is incapable of enjoying them looks down at them with a smile of disgust.  At the same time the objects which excite his desire are never attained with sang-froid; all that the debauches loves, he seizes; his life is a fever; his organs, in order to search the depths of joy, are forced to avail themselves of the stimulant of fermented liquors and sleepless nights; in the days of ennui and of idleness he feels more keenly than other men the disparity between his impotence and his temptations, and, in order to resist the latter, pride must come to his aid and make him believe that he disdains them.  It is thus he spits on all the feasts and pleasures of his life, and so, between an ardent thirst and a profound satiety, a feeling of tranquil vanity leads him to his death.

Although I was no longer a debauches, it came to pass that my body suddenly remembered that it had been.  It is easy to understand why I had not felt the effects of it sooner.  While mourning my father’s death every other thought was crowded from my mind.  Then a passionate love succeeded; while I was alone, ennui had nothing to struggle for.  Sad or gay, fair or foul, what matters it to him who is alone?

As zinc, rarely found unmixed, drawn from the vein where it lies sleeping, attracts to itself a ray of light when placed near green leather, thus Brigitte’s kisses gradually awakened in my heart what had been buried there.  At her side I perceived what I really was.

There were days when I felt such a strange sensation in the mornings that it is impossible for me to define it.  I awakened without a motive, feeling like a man who has spent the night in eating and drinking to the point of exhaustion.  All external sensations caused me insupportable fatigue, all well-known objects of daily life repelled and annoyed me; if I spoke it was in ridicule of what others thought or of what I thought myself.  Then, extended on the bed, as if incapable of any motion, I dismissed any thought of undertaking whatever had been agreed upon the evening before; I recalled all the tender and loving things I had said to my mistress during my better moments, and was not satisfied until I had spoiled and poisoned those memories of happy days.  “Can you not forget all that?” Brigitte would sadly inquire, “if there are two different men in you, can you not, when the bad rouses himself, forget the good?”