Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/385

“That is what we always say and yet—,” said Rodolphe, falling anew into a reverie.

“And yet we are continually going back to it,” resumed Marcel. “That is because instead of frankly seeking to forget we make the most trivial things a pretext to recall remembrances, which is due above all to the fact that we persist in living amidst the same surroundings in which the beings who have so long been our torment lived. We are less the slaves of passion than of habit. It is this captivity that must be escaped from, or we shall wear ourselves out in a ridiculous and shameful slavery. Well, the past is past, we must break the ties that still bind us to it. The hour has come to go forward without looking backward; we have had our share of youth, carelessness, and paradox. All these are very fine—a very pretty novel could be written on them; but this comedy of amorous follies, this loss of time, of days wasted with the prodigality of people who believe they have an eternity to spend all this must have an end. It is no longer possible for us to continue to live much longer on the outskirts of society—on the outskirts of life almost—under penalty of justifying the contempt felt for us, and of despising ourselves. For, after all, is it a life we lead? and are not the independence, the freedom of manners, of which we boast so loudly, very mediocre advantages? True liberty consists in being able to dispense with the aid of others, and to exist by oneself, and have we got to that? No, the first scoundrel, whose name we would not bear for five minutes, avenges himself for our jests, and becomes our lord and master the day on which we borrow of him five francs, which he lends us after having made us dispense the worth of a hundred and fifty in ruses or in humiliations. For my part, I have had enough of it. Poetry does not alone exist in disorderly living, touch-and-go happiness, loves that