calibre who possesses none of the graces and qualities
which are necessary to shine there.
Very often I ask myself: what am I doing here in this society to which I do not belong, where they respect only success however fraudulently obtained, only money, no matter from what filthy place it comes; where every spoken word acts as a wound inflicted on everything I love best and everything I admire most? . . . Besides, is not man with all his differences of education which are betrayed only in his gestures, in his manner of greeting, in his more or less graceful bearing, pretty much the same no matter where he is? . . . What! were these the high-spirited artists, the much admired writers whose glory is sung, whose genius is acclaimed. . . these petty, vulgar, frightfully pedantic beings, slavishly aping the manners of the society they rail at, ludicrously vain, fiercely jealous, lying prostrate before wealth, and kneeling in the dust, worshipping publicity that old blackguard, which they carry about on velvet cushions. . . . Oh, how much better I love the herdsmen and their oxen, the pig drivers and their pigs, yes the pigs, round and pink, digging the earth with their snouts and whose fat smooth backs reflect the clouds that float above!
I read excessively, without discrimination, without system, and from this faulty reading there was left in my mind nothing but a chaos of disjointed facts and incomplete ideas, from the tangle of which I did not know how to extricate myself. . . . I tried to acquire knowledge in every way, but I realized that I was just as ignorant today as I had been in the past. . . . I had had mistresses whom I loved for a week, sentimental and romantic blondes, fierce brunettes, impatient to be caressed, and love showed me only the frightful emptiness of the human heart, the deceptiveness of
