Until I read "Nana" it never occurred to me to question that vice was in itself agreeable, since I had never heard aught to the contrary; but that champagne poured into the piano washed away the conviction forever. It seemed so squalid, so unimaginative, so dull; and all the vice I have observed since has shared its lack of charm. I found that the broad road had no patent on flowers and sunshine, that dishonesty nine times out of ten failed of returns at all commensurate with the energy devoted to it; that loose behaviour was nearly always noisome and fatiguing; that the prodigal, instead of being a beautiful young person in velvet, generally had a red nose and a waist, and borrowed from his acquaintances, and that the enchantresses had not nearly as good figures as the painters credited them with, and as a rule had no real feeling for soap and water. The truth is that all forms of vice are for the most part not only repulsive but intolerably unamusing, and Zola was the first of the moralists who had the courage to be original and speak disrespectfully of it.
September 10.
The Pleasures of Pessimism.
A man who took me in to dinner Wednesday night said, pityingly,
"You seem to be a pessimist. Why is that? Are you unhappy?"
That sort of remark is a shot between wind and water, and leaves one speechless. I crossly denied being an ——ist of any sort, and changed the subject.
Possibly he was led to his banal personality by some remark I had made, of the sort that is commonly called cynical because it is true.
The optimists have a theory that those who don't take the same view of life as themselves must therefore be unhappy. It's an amazing conclusion. They seem to have no idea how the pessimists enjoy their own sense of superiority. It is as if the blind should say to the man with eyes: "How unhappy you must be to see things just as they are. Now I can imagine them to be anything I please!"
The man with eyes could, of course, only smile; it being obviously impossible to discuss such a proposition.
The believers in personal immortality labour under the same curious illusion apparently. They are so sorry for those who don't believe in it, and imagine them frightened at the thought of death. To their minds the universe is inconceivable without their presence, seemingly forgetful of the fact that it got on quite well before they came. It is rather an imposing bit of egotism, after all. It rises to the level of grandeur.