He returned home, uneasy with himself. When he had gone to bed he felt that sleep would never come, for a fever ran through his veins, and the spirit of reverie was fermenting in his heart. Fearing that enervating insomnia induced by the soul’s agitation, he thought he would try a book. How many times the briefest reading had served him as a narcotic! He got up and stepped into the library to choose a profitable and soporific book, but his mind, aroused in spite of itself, eager for any emotion whatever, sought on the shelves an author’s name that would respond to his state of exaltation and expectancy. Balzac, whom he adored, said nothing to him; he disdained Hugo, scorned Lamartine who invariably left him moved, and pounced upon Musset, the poet of youth. He took a volume and carried it to bed, to read a few pages at random.

When he returned to bed he began to drink, with a drunkard’s thirst, those flowing verses of an inspired poet who, like a bird, sang the dawn of existence, and with breath only for the morning, was silent at the glaring light of day—verses of a poet who was, above all, a man intoxicated with life, breathing rapture in glowing and simple ecstasies of love, the echo of all young hearts bewildered with desire.