other. The greatest fool, I think, is he who would have gone through life
entirely without folly. What then mattered religion to me? Or what
mattered the rivalry of parties, except as they might serve my own
personal ambitions and desires? Youth was ebullient in me. The longing to
penetrate the unknown made inaction intolerable to me. I must rush into
the whirlpool; I must be in the very midst of things; I longed for
gaiety, for mystery, for contest; I must sing, drink, fight, make love.
It is true that there would have been some outlet for my energies in camp
life, but no gratification for my finer tastes, no luxury, no such
pleasures as Paris afforded,--little diversity, no elating sense of being
at the core of events, no opportunities for love-making. In Paris were
the pretty women. The last circumstance alone would have decided me.

I had reached twenty-one without having been deeply in love. I had, of
course, had transient periods of inclination towards more than one of the
demoiselles in the neighborhood of La Tournoire; but these demoiselles
had rapidly become insipid to me. As I grew older, I found it less easy
to be attracted by young ladies whom I had known from childhood up. I had
none the less the desire to be in love; but the woman whom I should love
must be new to me, a mystery, something to fathom and yet unfathomable.
She must be a world, inexhaustible, always retaining the charm of the
partly unknown. I had high aspirations. No pretty maid, however low in
station, was unworthy a kiss and some flattery; but the real _affaire
d'amour_ of my life must have no elements but magnificent ones. She must
be some great lady of the court, and our passion must be attended by
circumstances of mystery, danger, everything to complicate it and raise
it to an epic height. Such was the amour I had determined to find in
Paris. Remember, you who read this, that I am disclosing the inmost
dreams of a man of twenty-one. Such dreams are appropriate to that age;
it is only when they are associated with middle age that they become