beyond all hope my ruin. At twenty-two I am utterly
worn out and finished. But what things I have learned,
what abysses of wisdom have I not plumbed! How
great a thing it is to have acquired the true wisdom, to
have become in the highest sense of the word a
civilised man, to have become
raffiné, vicieux, » etc. etc.
"
Messieurs et dames, I perceive that you are sad. Ah,
mais la vie est belle-you must not be sad. Be more gay, I
beseech you!
"
Fill high ze bowl vid Saurian vine, Ve
vill not sink of semes like zese!
« Ah, que la vie est belle
! Listen,
messieurs et dames, out
of the fullness of my experience I will discourse to you
of love. I will explain to you what is the true meaning
of love-what is the true sensibility, the higher, more
refined pleasure which is known to civilised men alone.
I will tell you of the happiest day of my life. Alas, but I
am past the time when I could know such happiness as
that. It is gone for ever-the very possibility, even the
desire for it, are gone.
"Listen, then. It was two years ago; my brother was
in Paris-he is a lawyer-and my parents had told him to
find me and take me out to dinner. We hate each other,
my brother and I, but we preferred not to disobey my
parents. We dined, and at dinner he grew very drunk
upon three bottles of Bordeaux. I took him back to his
hotel, and on the way I bought a bottle of brandy, and
when we had arrived I made my brother drink a
tumberful of it-I told him it was something to make
him sober. He drank it, and immediately he fell down
like somebody in a fit, dead drunk. I lifted him up and
propped his back against the bed; then I went through
his pockets. I found eleven hundred francs, and with
that I hurried down the stairs, jumped into a taxi, and
escaped. My brother did not know my address -I was
safe.
"Where does a man go when he has money? To the
bordels
, naturally. But you do not suppose that I was
going to waste my time on some vulgar debauchery fit
only for navvies? Confound it, one is a civilised man! I
was fastidious, exigeant, you understand, with a
thousand francs in my pocket. It was midnight before I
found what I was looking for. I had fallen in with a very
smart youth of eighteen, dressed en smoking and with his
hair cut
à l'américaine, and we were talking in a quiet
bistro
away from the boulevards. We understood one
another well, that youth and I. We talked of this and
that, and discussed ways of diverting oneself. Presently
we took a taxi together and were driven away.
"The taxi stopped in a narrow, solitary street with a
single gas-lamp flaring at the end. There were dark
puddles among the stones. Down one side ran the high,
blank wall of a convent. My guide led me to a tall,
ruinous house with shuttered windows, and knocked
several times at the door. Presently there was a sound of
footsteps and a shooting of bolts, and the door opened a
little. A hand came round the edge of it; it was a large,
crooked hand, that held itself palm upwards under our
noses, demanding money.
"My guide put his foot between the door and the step.
'How much do you want?' he said.
" 'A thousand francs,' said a woman's voice. 'Pay up
at once or you don't come in.'
"I put a thousand francs into the hand and gave the
remaining hundred to my guide: he said good night and
left me. I could hear the voice inside counting the notes,
and then a thin old crow of a woman in a black dress
put her nose out and regarded me suspiciously before
letting me in. It was very dark inside: I could see
nothing except a flaring gas jet that illuminated a patch
of plaster wall, throwing everything else into
deeper shadow. There was a smell of rats and dust.
Without speaking, the old woman lighted a candle at the
gas jet, then hobbled in front of me down a stone
passage to the top of a flight of stone steps.
" '
Voilà!' she said; 'go down into the cellar there and
do what you like. I shall see nothing, hear nothing, know
nothing. You are free, you understand-perfectly free.'
"Ha,
messieurs, need I describe to you
forcément, you
know it yourselves-that shiver, half of terror and half of
joy, that goes through one at these moments? I crept
down, feeling my way; I could hear my breathing and the
scraping of my shoes on the stones, otherwise all was
silence. At the bottom of the stairs my hand met an
electric switch. I turned it, and a great electrolier of
twelve redglobes flooded the cellarwith a red light. And
behold, I was not in a cellar, but in a bedroom, a great,
rich, garish bedroom, coloured blood red from top to
bottom. Figure it to yourselves,
messieurs et dames! Red
carpet on the floor, red paper on the walls, red plush on
the chairs, even the ceiling red; everywhere red, burning
into the eyes. It was a heavy, stifling red, as though the
light were shining through bowls of blood. At the far end
stood a huge, square bed, with quilts red like the rest,
and on it a girl was lying, dressed in a frock of red velvet.
At the sight of me she shrank away and tried to hide her
knees under the short dress.
"I had halted by the door. 'Come here, my chicken,' I
called to her.
"She gave a whimper of fright. With a bound I was