Unless a man is brutalized by debauchery, eager curiosity is one of his
marked traits. I have already remarked that I felt it on the occasion of
my first visit to Desgenais. I will explain my meaning.
The truth, that skeleton of appearances, ordains that every man,
whatsoever he be, shall come, in his day and hour, to touch the bones
that lie forever at the bottom of some chance experience. It is called
knowing the world, and experience is purchased at that price. It happens
that some recoil in terror before that test, others, feeble and
affrighted, vacillate like shadows. Some, the best perhaps, die at once.
The large number forget, and thus, all float on to death.
But there are some men, who, at the fell stroke of misfortune, neither
die nor forget; when it comes their turn to touch misfortune, otherwise
called truth, they approach it with a firm step and outstretched hand,
and horrible to say! they mistake love for the livid corpse they have
found at the bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in
their arms; behold them, drunk with the desire to know; they no longer
look with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing
except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's
spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and they give birth to a
monster.
The debauchees, more than all others, are exposed to that fury, and the
reason is very simple: ordinary life is the limpid surface; the
debauchees, the rapid current turning over and over, and, at times,
touching the bottom.
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