In winter, as she enjoyed society,
we attended numerous balls and masquerades, and because I thought of no
one but her I fondly imagined her equally true to me.
To give you an idea of my state of mind I can not do better than compare
it to one of those rooms such as we see in these days where are collected
and confounded all the furniture of all times and all countries. Our age
has no form of its own. We have impressed the seal of our time on neither
our houses nor our gardens nor anything that is ours. On the street may
be seen men who have their beards cut as in the time of Henry III, others
who are clean shaven, others who have their hair arranged as in the time
of Raphael, others as in the time of Christ. So the homes of the rich are
cabinets of curiosities: the antique, the Gothic, the taste of the
Renaissance, that of Louis XIII, all pell-mell. In short, we have every
century except our own--a thing which has never been seen at any other
epoch: eclecticism is our taste; we take everything we find, this for
beauty, that for utility, this other for antiquity, such another for its
ugliness even, so that we live surrounded by debris as though the end of
the world were at hand.
Such was the state of my mind; I had read much; moreover I had learned to
paint. I knew by heart a great many things, but nothing in order, so that
my head was like a sponge, swollen but empty.
Pages:
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46