That was my
evening prayer.
Strange to say, I took pride in passing for what I was not, I boasted of
being worse than I really was, and experienced a sort of melancholy
pleasure in doing so. When I had actually done what I claimed, I felt
nothing but ennui, but when I invented an account of some folly, some
story of debauchery or recital of an orgy with which I had nothing to do,
it seemed to me that my heart was better satisfied, although I know not
why.
Whenever I joined a party of pleasure-seekers and we visited some spot
made sacred by tender associations I became stupid, went off by myself,
looked gloomily at the trees and bushes as though I would like to crush
them under my feet. Upon my return I would remain silent for hours.
The baleful idea that truth is nudity beset me on every occasion.
"The world," I said to myself, "is accustomed to call his disguise
virtue, his chaplet religion, his flowing mantle convenience. Honor and
Morality are his chamber-maids; he drinks in his wine the tears of the
poor in spirit who believe in him; while the sun is high in the heavens
he walks about with downcast eye; he goes to church, to the ball, to the
assembly, and when evening has come he removes his mantle and there
appears a naked bacchante with hoofs of a goat."
But such thoughts aroused a feeling of horror, for I felt that if the
body was under the clothing, the skeleton was under the body.
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