But he abruptly burst my revery asunder by taking up my own words: "Yes, you are right: there is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he expected."
I looked into the whites of his eyes, and I was frightened to see that his eyes shone with an undeniable candor. I then saw clearly that he wished to combine charity and a good stroke of business; to gain forty sous and the heart of God; to sweep into Paradise economically; in short, to entrap gratis the brevet of charitable man.
I would almost have pardoned in him the desire of the criminal joy of which I had just now thought him capable! I would have thought it curious, singular, that he found it amusing to compromise the poor; but I shall never pardon the ineptitude of his calculation. One is never to be forgiven for being wicked, but there is some merit in being conscious that one is;—the most irreparable of all evils is to do wrong through stupidity.
THE GENEROUS PLAYER
Yesterday, in the crowd of the boulevard, I felt myself grazed by a mysterious Being whom I have always wished to know, and whom I recognized at once, though I had never seen him. He doubtless had a similar wish to make my acquaintance, for he gave me a significant wink in passing which I hastened to obey. I followed him attentively, and soon I descended behind him into a resplendent subterranean abode, where sparkled a luxury that none of the better homes in Paris can nearly approach. It seemed odd to me that I could have passed by this enchanting den so often without divining the entrance. There reigned an exquisite, though heady atmosphere, which made one forget almost at once all the fastidious horrors of life; there one breathed a somber blessedness, similar to that which the lotus-eaters experienced when, disembarking on an enchanted isle, bright with the glimmerings of eternal afternoon, they felt growing within them, to the drowsy sound of melodious cascades, the desire never to see again their hearthstones, their wives, their children, and never to remount the high surges of the sea.
Strange visages of men and women were there, marked with a fatal beauty, which it seemed to me I had already seen in epochs and in lands I could not precisely recall, and which inspired me rather with a fraternal sympathy than with that fear which is usually born at sight of the unknown. If I wished to try to define in any way the singular expression of these visages, I should say that I had never seen eyes burning more feverishly with dread of ennui and with the immortal desire of feeling themselves alive.
My host and I were already, when we sat down, old and perfect friends. We ate, we drank beyond measure of all sorts of extraordinary wines, and—what was no less extraordinary—it seemed to me, after several hours, that I was no more drunken than he. Play, that superhuman pleasure, had meanwhile irregularly interrupted our frequent libations, and I must say that I staked and lost my soul, at the rubber, with heroic heedlessness and lightness. The soul is so impalpable a thing, so often useless and sometimes so annoying, that I experienced, at its loss, a little less emotion than if, on a walk, I had misplaced my visiting card. For a long time we smoked some cigars the incomparable savor and perfume of which gave the soul nostalgia for unknown lands and joys, and, intoxicated with all these delights, I dared, in an access of familiarity which seemed not to displease him, to cry, while mastering a cup full to the brim: "To your immortal health, old Buck!"
We talked, also, of the universe, of its creation and of its future destruction; of the great idea of the century, namely, progress and perfectibility; and, in general, of all forms of human infatuation. On this subject, His Highness never exhausted his fund of light and irrefutable pleasantries, and he expressed himself with an easy flow of speech and a quietness in his drollery that I have found in none of the most celebrated causeurs of humanity. He explained to me the absurdity of the different philosophies which have hitherto taken possession of the human brain, and deigned even to confide to me certain fundamental principles, the property and the benefits of which it does not suit me to share with the casual comer. He did not in any way be-moan the bad deputation which he enjoys in all parts of the world, assured me that he himself was the person most interested in the destruction of superstition, and confessed that he had never feared for his own power save once, on the day when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than his colleagues, cry from the pulpit: "My dear brethren, never forget, when you hear the progress of wisdom vaunted, that the cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist!"
The memory of this celebrated orator led us naturally to the subject of the academies, and my strange companion stated that he did not disdain, in many cases, to inspire the pen, the word, and the conscience of pedagogs, and that he was almost always present, though invisible, at the academic sessions.