stinking mire instead of the water which is unceasingly streaming out beneath. In such a position was De Maupassant. He could not believe, it evidently never even entered his head, that the truth he sought had long ago been found, and was so near him. But neither could he believe that man could live in such contradiction as that in which he felt himself encompassed.
Life, according to those theories in which he was educated, which environed him, which were corroborated by all the lusts of his young and physically strong being,—life consists in pleasures of which woman with her love is the chief, and in the double, again reflected, delight of depicting this love and exciting it in others. All this would be well; but, upon examining these delights, amid them appear things quite foreign, hostile to this love and this beauty. Woman, for some reason, is disfigured; she becomes pregnant, and repulsively gives birth to her child; then come the children, undesired children; then deceits, cruelties; then moral sufferings; then mere old age; and then death.
Moreover, is such beauty indeed beauty? And why is all this so? It might be well if one could arrest life, but life advances. And what does this mean? "Life advances" means that the hair drops out, becomes gray; decayed teeth, wrinkles, offensive breath. Even before all ends, everything becomes dreadful, repulsive. Daubed rouge, powder, perspiration, odor, deformity appear. Where, then, is that which I served? Where is beauty? For in that is all. It is gone. There is nothing left. No life.
But not merely is there no life in what seemed to be life; one begins oneself to forsake life, one weakens, loses one's beauty, decomposes; others under one's eyes snatch away those delights in which was all the good of life. Nor is this all. Some sort of possibility of another life begins to glimmer on the mind, something more, some other kind of union with men, with all the world; one that does not admit of all these deceits; a something which cannot by any means be broken; which is true, and always beautiful. … But
