to work! . . . Oh, well, I know you won't get anywhere. . . . You are too lazy!"
Ere long we began going out every day and every evening. I did not resist any longer, almost happy to escape from the deadly aversion and despondent thoughts with which our apartment inspired me, escape from the symbolic vision of the old man, from myself. . . . Ah, above all from myself. In a crowd, in the tumult, in this feverish haste of a pleasure-hunting life I hoped to find forgetfulness, to be able to dull my feeling, to subdue my rebellious spirit, to suppress the voice of my past which I heard grumbling within me. And since I could not raise Juliette to my level I lowered myself down to her own.
Ah, those serene heights where the sun was reigning and toward which I had been climbing slowly with such terrific effort!. . . . I must descend into the pit at one dash, in a single, instantaneous, inevitable downfall, even if I crushed my head against the rocks or disappeared in the bottomless mire. With me it was no longer a question of escape. If occasionally the idea did pierce the haze of my mind, if, in the errings of my will-power, I sometimes did perceive a distant way out where duty seemed to call me, I, in order to break away from the idea, in order not to rush hastily toward that end, clung tenaciously to the false pretenses of honor. . . . Could I leave Juliette! I who insisted that she leave Malterre! . . . What will become of her when I am gone? . . . Why no, no! I was lying to myself. . . . I did not want to leave her because I loved her, because I pitied her, because. . . . But was it not myself that I loved, myself that I pitied? . . . Ah, I no longer knew! I no longer knew!
And then again you should not think that the abyss into which I had fallen was a sudden revelation to
