"
Then I returned to the city; I lost myself in its obscure streets; I
looked up at the lights in all its windows, all those mysterious family
nests; I watched the passing carriages; I saw man jostling against man.
Oh! what solitude! How sad the smoke on those roofs! What sorrow in those
tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and
sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a cloaca
where there is only society of bodies, while souls are solitary and
alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prostitutes! "Become
corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of
all cities to man; it is written with charcoal on city walls, on its
streets with mud, on its faces with extravasated blood.
And at times, when seated in the corner of some salon I watched the women
as they danced, some rosy, some blue, and others white, their arms bare
and hair clustered gracefully about their shapely heads, looking like
cherubim drunk with light, floating in their spheres of harmony and
beauty, I would think: "Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to
breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to
him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of
the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss
that you are walking in your flower-strewn gauze; it is on this hideous
truth you run like gazelles on the tips of your little toes!"
"But why take things so seriously?" said Desgenais.
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