“Some day you will fall into the monster’s power. Then you will have, as I had, a frenzied awakening, with impotence sitting by your pillow. Are you an old soldier? Phthisis attacks you. A diplomatist? An aneurism hangs death in your heart by a thread. It will perhaps be consumption that will cry out to me, ‘Let us be going!’ as to Raphael of Urbino, in old time, killed by an excess of love.
“In this way I have existed. I was launched into the world too early or too late. My energy would have been dangerous there, no doubt, if I had not have squandered it in such ways as these. Was not the world rid of an Alexander, by the cup of Hercules, at the close of a drinking bout?
“There are some, the sport of Destiny, who must either have heaven or hell, the hospice of St. Bernard or riotous excess. Only just now I lacked the heart to moralize about those two,” and he pointed to Euphrasia and Aquilina. “They are types of my own personal history, images of my life! I could scarcely reproach them; they stood before me like judges.
“In the midst of this drama that I was enacting, and while my distracting disorder was at its height, two crises supervened; each brought me keen and abundant pangs. The first came a few days after I had flung myself, like Sardanapalus, on my pyre. I met Foedora under the peristyle of the Bouffons. We both were waiting for our carriages.
“‘Ah! so you are living yet?’
“That was the meaning of her smile, and probably of the spiteful words she murmured in the ear of her cicisbeo, telling him my history no doubt, rating mine as a common love affair. She was deceived, yet she was applauding her perspicacity. Oh, that I should be dying for her, must still adore her, always see her through my potations, see her still when I was overcome with wine, or in the arms of courtesans; and know that I was a target for her scornful jests! Oh, that I should be unable to tear the love of her out of my breast and to fling it at her feet!
“Well, I quickly exhausted my funds, but owing to those three years of discipline, I enjoyed the most robust health, and on the day that I found myself without a penny I felt remarkably well. In order to carry on the process of dying, I signed bills at short dates, and the day came when they must be met. Painful excitements! but how they quicken the pulses of youth! I was not prematurely aged; I was young yet, and full of vigor and life.
“At my first debt all my virtues came to life; slowly and despairingly they seemed to pace towards me; but I could compound with them—they were like aged aunts that begin with a scolding and end by bestowing tears and money upon you.
“Imagination was less yielding; I saw my name bandied about through every city in Europe. ‘One’s name is oneself’ says Eusebe Salverte. After these excursions I returned to the room I had never quitted, like a doppelganger in a German tale, and came to myself with a start.
“I used to see with indifference a banker’s messenger going on his errands through the streets of Paris, like a commercial Nemesis, wearing his master’s livery—a gray coat and a silver badge; but now I hated the species in advance. One of them came one morning to ask me to meet some eleven bills that I had scrawled my name upon. My signature was worth three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth that amount. Sheriff’s deputies rose up before me, turning their callous faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he says, ‘It has just struck half-past three.’ I was in the power of their clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could not other men call me to account for my way of living? Why had I eaten puddings a la chipolata? Why had I iced my wine? Why had I slept, or walked, or thought, or amused myself when I had not paid them?