“‘As regards what you call pleasure, it is only the result of a combination of circumstances, and may any day change and completely disappear. Good dinners, excellent wines, horses, games—all those things are but instantaneous metamorphoses, where no solid basis ensuring their eternal duration exists. That resembles a beautiful orange which might contain nothing but a spongy and savourless tissue. After the fireworks have died out, night rules again, and the darkness appears only all the darker.
“‘Have you read the story of X——, who played the heavy swell, and threw money out of the window by handfuls. His friends besieged his house without interruption. His servants were prouder than the noblest lords. Night and day the only thought was what pleasure-party should be arranged for the following day. One might have imagined that his house was built over a gold mine, to see the life he led.
“‘But at the end of a certain number of years his resources began to fail. He could not, however, change his way of living.
“‘He first of all resorted to loans from his generous friends, and next went to the pawn-shop. When all their resources had been exhausted he ran away.
“‘Oh! my friend, the number of rich dishes eaten by that man with an air of complete satisfaction. Oh! my friend, the number of beautiful women who were proud to be styled his friends even for a day. His name was known everywhere, in the theatres, in society, and everywhere where fashionable people meet together. Oh! the many fashions that he invented merely in colours and hues of silk. And the jewels that he distributed right and left.
“‘All that was done with the money of other people, since his bills have not yet been paid. Is that pleasure? Come, you will admit that it is not.
“‘Instead of gleaming for a short while and being eternally disgraced thereafter, I prefer during my moments of leisure to light my incense-burner on my little table, and to sit at it chatting with our sages through my books. It is there that solid pleasures are to be found, far preferable to those which are only superficial. All that can be felt and seen has already been described, and costs nothing to read about. Songs, music, beautiful women, I see them and hear them in these admirable pages. Why, then, go running again through the grey dust to those places where your personality is effaced, and money alone reigns in uncontested mastery?’”
THE END.
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh and London