"Philosophising truthfully about oneself is as great a relief as the vomiting of bile. I look for the history of my temperament from the days of my childhood. I see that my imagination has been excessive, destroying my sensibility by raising a fore-fashioned idea between myself and reality. I expected to feel in a certain way—and then, I never did so. This same imagination, darkened by my uncle's harsh treatment, has turned also to mistrust. I have always dreaded every creature. The loss of my father and mother prevented the correction of this early fault. College life and modern literature stained my thought before I had lived. The same literature separated me from religion at fifteen. Impiety, to my shame, acted like refinement to seduce me! The massacres of the Commune showed me the true nature of man, and the intrigues of the ensuing years the true nature of politics. I longed to link myself to some great idea—but to which? When quite young I had measured the wretchedness of an artist's existence. There must be genius or far better leave it alone. To rank as fiftieth among writers or musicians—thank you, no. My fortune exempted me from the necessity of a profession. Enter a Council of State for foreign affairs, or a public office—and why? There are only too many officials already. Get married? The thought of chaining down my life never tempted me. I should have done the same as B—— who, on the day of his wedding, took train to return no more.
"Then what? Nothing. I have not even grown old of heart; I am abortive. My sentimental adventures, which have been pursued in spite of everything, for women are even yet what is least indifferent to me, have, alas, convinced me that there are no kisses that do not resemble those already given and received. It is all so short, and superficial, and vain. How desperate I should be rendered by the thoughts of myself—of that self which I shall never be able completely to renounce—did I often indulge in them! What else but the damnation of the mystics is non-love?"
Such were a few of the pages among many others, and the abominable monograph of a secret disease of soul was continued in hundreds of similar confidences. Often simply the date was written, together with two or three facts: Rode, paid visits, went to the club, the theatre in the evening, or a party, or ball, and then came a single word like a refrain—Spleen. At the beginning of the last of these note-books, Armand, when he had closed it, could read a list of all the years of his life since 1860, and after each date he had scrawled—Torture, and at the end, these words:
"I did not ask for life. If I have committed faults, frightful ones, too, I have also known sufferings such as, set over against the others, might say to the inconceivable Power that has created and that sustains me, if such a Power possess a heart: 'Have pity upon me!'"
The young man thrust away with his hand the heap of papers wherein he encountered so faithful an image of his present moral aridity. Slowly he began to walk about the room. Everywhere in it he recognised the same tokens of his inward nihilism. The low bookcase contained but those few books which he still liked: novels of withering analysis—"Dangerous Liaisons," "Adolphus," "Affinities"—moralists of keen and self-centred misanthropy, and memoirs. The photographs scattered over the walls reminded him of his travels—those useless travels during which he had failed to beguile his weariness. On the chimney-piece, between the likenesses of two dead friends, he kept an enigmatic portrait, representing two women, with the head of the one resting upon the shoulder of the other. It was the present, life-like remembrance of a terrible story—the story of the bitterest faithlessness he had ever endured. He had been cynical or artificial enough to laugh over it formerly with the two heroines, but he had laughed with death in his heart.
At the sight of all these objects witnessing to the manner of his life, he was so completely sensible of his emotional wretchedness that he wrung his hands, saying quite aloud: "What a life! Good God! what a life!" It was owing to experiences such as these that his lips and eyes preserved that expression of silent melancholy to which he had perhaps owed Helen's love. It is their pity that leads to the capture of the noblest women. But these crises did not last long with Armand. In his case muscles were stronger than nerves. He took up his journals, and threw them, rather than put them, away in the box.
"That's a rational sort of occupation," he thought to himself, "for the night before an assignation."
Immediately, his thoughts turned again to Helen. The charming air of distinction that she possessed returned to his recollection, and suddenly softened him to an extraordinary degree.
"Why have I entered into her life," he said, "since I do not love her? For eleven little months she did not know me, and she was at peace. There would still be time enough to act the part of an honest man."
He was seized by the temptation to do what he had done once already—to renounce, before any irrevocable step had been taken, an intrigue in which he ran the risk of taking another's heart without giving his own in return.