“Your grandfather was a notary, so was your father, your uncles, your cousins, in fact your whole family. … You owe it to yourself, my dear child, not to desert your post. You shall be Mayor of Saint-Michel, you may even hope to replace your poor father at the general council, in a few years. … Why man alive, that’s something! And then—take my word for it—times are going to be pretty hard for decent people who love the good Lord. … You see that rascal Lebecq, he is municipal counsellor. All he thinks of is how to rob and kill people, that brigand there. … We need at the head of our country a right-minded man to uphold religion and defend the principles of righteousness. … Paris, Paris! … Oh! these silly heads, those youngsters! … But will you please tell me what good you have accomplished at Paris? … Why, the very air there is infected! Look at big Mange, he comes from a good family, but that did not prevent him from coming back from Paris with a red cap on. Isn’t that a pretty affair?”
And he would continue in this vein for hours, taking his snuff, evoking the vision of the red cap of big Mange which appeared to him more abominable than the horns of the devil.
What was there to do at Saint-Michel? There was no one to whom I could communicate my thoughts, my dreams; there was no outlet for the ardor of life where I could expend that intellectual energy, that passion for knowledge and for creative work which the war, in developing my muscles, in strengthening my body, had awakened in me, and which omnivorous reading overstimulated in me more and more every day. I realized that Paris alone, which formerly had frightened me so much, that Paris alone could furnish nourishment for ambitions, as yet indefinite, which spurred me on, and with the estate settled, and the library sold I left suddenly, leaving the Priory to the care of Felix and Marie. … And here I am back in Paris! …
What have I accomplished during these five years, to use the words of the curé? … Carried away by vague ardors, by confused enthusiasm which blended together some sort of a chimeric ideal with a kind of impracticable apostleship, how far did I get? … I am no longer the timid child whom the footmen, in the vestibule flooded with light, used to put to flight. If I have not acquired much self-assurance, I at least know how to behave in society without appearing too ridiculous. I pass pretty much unnoticed, a condition which is the best that could be wished for a man of my calibre who possesses none of the graces and qualities which are necessary to shine there.
Very often I ask myself: what am I doing here in this society to which I do not belong, where they respect only success however fraudulently obtained, only money, no matter from what filthy place it comes; where every spoken word acts as a wound inflicted on everything I love best and everything I admire most? … Besides, is not man with all his differences of education which are betrayed only in his gestures, in his manner of greeting, in his more or less graceful bearing, pretty much the same no matter where he is? … What! were these the high-spirited artists, the much admired writers whose glory is sung, whose genius is acclaimed … these petty, vulgar, frightfully pedantic beings, slavishly aping the manners of the society they rail at, ludicrously vain, fiercely jealous, lying prostrate before wealth, and kneeling in the dust, worshipping publicity—that old blackguard, which they carry about on velvet cushions. … Oh, how much better I love the herdsmen and their oxen, the pig drivers and their pigs, yes the pigs, round and pink, digging the earth with their snouts and whose fat smooth backs reflect the clouds that float above!
I read excessively, without discrimination, without system, and from this faulty reading there was left in my mind nothing but a chaos of disjointed facts and incomplete ideas, from the tangle of which I did not know how to extricate myself. … I tried to acquire knowledge in every way, but I realized that I was just as ignorant today as I had been in the past. … I had had mistresses whom I loved for a week, sentimental and romantic blondes, fierce brunettes, impatient to be caressed, and love showed me only the frightful emptiness of the human heart, the deceptiveness of affection, the lie of the ideal, the nothingness of pleasure. …
Believing myself converted to the formulae of descriptive art by means of which I was going to harness my ambition and fix my shifting and thrilling dreams upon the pinion of words, I had published a book
