Naturally, through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had made.

Once he missed a lecture; the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little, he gave up work altogether.

He got into the habit of going to the public-house, and had a passion for dominoes.

To shut himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which raised him in his own esteem.

It was beginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual.