IV

FAREWELL TO THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

Two days later, of a Monday evening, having dined for the last time at
the Cafe Anglais, and seen the two first pieces at the Varietes, he
went, at ten o'clock, to sleep for the first time in the rue
Chanoinesse, where Manon conducted him to his room.

Solitude has charms comparable only to those of savage life, which no
European has ever really abandoned after once tasting them. This may
seem strange at an epoch when every one lives so much to be seen of
others that all the world concern themselves in their neighbors'
affairs, and when private life will soon be a thing of the past, so
bold and so intrusive are the eyes of the press,--that modern Argus.
Nevertheless, it is a truth which rests on the authority of the first
six Christian centuries, during which no recluse ever returned to
social life. Few are the moral wounds that solitude will not heal.

So, at first, Godefroid was soothed by the deep peace and absolute
stillness of his new abode, as a weary traveller is relaxed by a bath.

The very day after his arrival at Madame de la Chanterie's he was
forced to examine himself, under the sense that he was separated from
all, even from Paris, though he still lived in the shadow of its
cathedral. Stripped of his social vanities, he was about to have no
other witnesses of his acts than his own conscience and the inmates of
that house. He had quitted the great high-road of the world to enter
an unknown path. Where was that path to lead him to? to what
occupation should he now be drawn?