We used all to meet at dinner, and as a rule we paid visits in the
evening. By observing the world from a corner of a drawing-room, I
learnt more of it in a few days than I should have done in a whole
year from guesses and inquiries. I doubt whether I should ever have
understood society, if I had always been obliged to view it from a
certain distance. My brain refused to form a clear image of the ideas
which occupied the brains of others. But as soon as I found myself in
the midst of this chaos, the confused mass was compelled to fall into
some sort of order and reveal a large part of its elements. This path
which led me into life was not without charms for me, I remember, at its
beginning. Amid all the conflicting interests of the surrounding world I
had nothing to ask for, aim at, or argue about. Fortune had taken me by
the hand. One fine morning she had lifted me out of an abyss and put me
down on a bed of roses and made me a young gentleman. The eagerness of
others was for me but an amusing spectacle. My heart was interested
in the future only on one mysterious point, the love which I felt for
Edmee.

My illness, far from robbing me of my physical vigour, had but increased
it. I was no longer the heavy, sleepy animal, fatigued by digestion and
stupefied by weariness. I felt the vibrations of all my fibres filling
my soul with unknown harmonies; and I was astonished to discover within
myself faculties of which I had never suspected the use. My good kinfolk
were delighted at this, though apparently not surprised. They had
allowed themselves to augur so well of me from the beginning that it
seemed as if they had been accustomed all their lives to the trade of
civilizing barbarians.

The nervous system which had just been developed in me, and which made
me pay for the pleasures and advantages it brought by keen and constant