I devoured them with a bitterness and a sadness born of despair.

"Yes, you are right," I said to myself, "you alone possess the secret of life, you alone dare to say that nothing is true and real but debauchery, hypocrisy, and corruption.

Be my friends, throw on the wound in my soul your corrosive poisons, teach me to believe in you." While buried in these shadows, I allowed my favorite poets and text-books to accumulate dust.

I even ground them under my feet in excess of wrath.

"You wretched dreamers!" I said to them; "you who teach me only suffering, miserable shufflers of words, charlatans, if you know the truth, fools, if you speak in good faith, liars in either case, who make fairy-tales of the woes of the human heart.