Without meaning it, I made some friends, either through
quarrels or owing to the easy confidence established among those who
are going to the bad together; nothing, possibly, makes us cling to
one another so tightly as our evil propensities.
"I made several ventures in literature, which were flatteringly
received. Great men who followed the profession of letters, having
nothing to fear from me, belauded me, not so much on account of my
merits as to cast a slur on those of their rivals.
"I became a 'free-liver,' to make use of the picturesque expression
appropriated by the language of excess. I made it a point of honor not
to be long about dying, and that my zeal and prowess should eclipse
those displayed by all others in the jolliest company. I was always
spruce and carefully dressed. I had some reputation for cleverness.
There was no sign about me of the fearful way of living which makes a
man into a mere disgusting apparatus, a funnel, a pampered beast.
"Very soon Debauch rose before me in all the majesty of its horror,
and I grasped all that it meant. Those prudent, steady-going
characters who are laying down wine in bottles for their heirs, can
barely conceive, it is true, of so wide a theory of life, nor
appreciate its normal condition; but when will you instill poetry into
the provincial intellect? Opium and tea, with all their delights, are
merely drugs to folk of that calibre.
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