"O enchantment of the senses when the surcharge of thought comes not to mar physical intoxication! O enchantment of prostitutes, seen thus as dispensers of pleasure free from disquiet of heart! No asking whether or how one loves or is loved, no measuring of sensation with an ideal type of feeling that is perceived, and striven after, and that never can be felt! I write these lines, and see! already my enjoyment has evaporated. I write these lines and yet would that on a solitary terrace fronting a landscape of trees and waters a woman might appear having the eyes of which I long have dreamed—eyes which I know without having ever met them—and might swear to me that this life has been nothing but an evil dream! And she should tell me all, and by that all be made the dearer to me;—and then I should love!"
"PARIS, June 1879.
"Luncheons and dinners; dinners and luncheons. Assignations and evening parties. Ah! how empty my life is! I do nothing that I like; nothing; for I like nothing.
"In presence of the living creature, nothing at heart but pity for him who suffers, if he does suffer—who will suffer since he endures the evil of existence.
"If death, inevitable death, were neither physically painful in the passage thither from life, nor terrible in its sequel to our imagining, ah! how I would seek that which has prompted thoughts to mar my life!
"We live on—and why? We think—and why? Why between two glasses of delicate wine and amid naked shoulders does there come to me ceaselessly at table the image of the grave, and the insoluble question concerning the meaning of this deadly farce of nature, and the world, and life?
"I muse on the sweets of mutual love, an absurd dream that civilisation grafts upon the simple need of coupling. Ah! for a simple passion that might apply my entire sensibility to another being, like wet paper against a window-pane.
"And all this declamatory philosophy due to the fact that yesterday I saw Madame de Rugle again at the Théâtre Français, and that the sight did not move me one whit. What does logic say? That a man should not force himself to tenderness when his lack of feeling is self-admitted, but turn on his heel, whistling that polonaise of Chopin's which she used to play to me sometimes in the evening with so much intention and sentimentality. And of that passion this is all that is left."
"PARIS, January 1881.
"I am aware that I have become horribly, fiercely egoistic, and the external manifestations of this egoism are now offensive to me, whereas formerly I used to surrender myself to it without scruple, at a time, however, when I was of more worth than I am now by reason of the dream that I cherished concerning myself.