SATIETY

One evening I was seated before the fire with Desgenais.  The window was open; it was one of the early days in March, a harbinger of spring.

It had been raining, and a light odor came from the garden.

“What shall we do this spring?” I asked.  “I do not care to travel.”

“I shall do what I did last year,” replied Desgenais.  “I shall go to the country when the time comes.”

“What!” I replied.  “Do you do the same thing every year?  Are you going to begin life over again this year?”

“What would you expect me to do?”

“What would I expect you to do?” I cried, jumping to my feet.  “That is just like you.  Ah!  Desgenais, how all this wearies me!  Do you never tire of this sort of life?”

“No,” he replied.

I was standing before an engraving of the Magdalen in the desert.  Involuntarily I joined my hands.

“What are you doing?” asked Desgenais.

“If I were an artist,” I replied, “and wished to represent melancholy, I would not paint a dreamy girl with a book in her hands.”

“What is the matter with you this evening?” he asked, smiling.

“No, in truth,” I continued, “that Magdalen in tears has a spark of hope in her bosom; that pale and sickly hand on which she supports her head, is still sweet with the perfume with which she anointed the feet of her Lord.  You do not understand that in that desert there are thinking people who pray.  This is not melancholy.”

“It is a woman who reads,” he replied dryly.

“And a happy woman,” I continued, “with a happy book.”

Desgenais understood me; he saw that a profound sadness had taken possession of me.  He asked if I had some secret cause of sorrow.  I hesitated, but did not reply.

“My dear Octave,” he said, “if you have any trouble, do not hesitate to confide in me.  Speak freely and you will find that I am your friend!”

“I know it,” I replied, “I know I have a friend; that is not my trouble.”

He urged me to explain.

“But what will it avail,” I asked, “since neither of us can help matters?  Do you want the fulness of my heart or merely a word and an excuse?”

“Be frank!” he said.

“Very well,” I replied, “you have seen fit to give me advice in the past and now I ask you to listen to me as I have listened to you.  You ask what is in my heart, and I am about to tell you.

“Take the first comer and say to, him:  ’Here are people who pass their lives drinking, riding, laughing, gambling, enjoying all kinds of pleasures; no barrier restrains them, their law is their pleasure, women are their playthings; they are rich.  They have no cares, not one.  All their days are days of feasting.’  What do you think of it?  Unless that man happened to be a severe bigot, he would probably reply that it was the greatest happiness that could be imagined.