I fell in love with all the
poets one after another; but being of an impressionable nature the last
comer always disgusted me with the rest. I had made of myself a great
warehouse of ruins, so that having no more thirst after drinking of the
novel and the unknown, I became a ruin myself.
Nevertheless, about that ruin there was still something of youth: it was
the hope of my heart which was still childlike.
That hope, which nothing had withered or corrupted and that love had
exalted to excess, had now received a mortal wound. The perfidy of my
mistress had struck deep, and when I thought of it, I felt in my soul a
swooning away, a convulsive flutter as of a wounded bird in agony.
Society which works so much evil is like that serpent of the Indies whose
dwelling is the leaf of a plant which cures its sting; it presents, in
nearly every case, the remedy by the side of the suffering it has caused.
For example, the man whose life is one of routine, who has his business
cares to claim his attention upon rising, visits at such an hour, loves
at another, can lose his mistress and suffer no evil effects. His
occupations and his thoughts are like impassive soldiers ranged in line
of battle; a single shot strikes one down, his neighbors fill up the gap
and the line is intact.
I had not that resource since I was alone: nature, the kind mother,
seemed, on the contrary, more vast and more empty than ever.
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