desire for it, are gone.
"Listen, then. It was two years ago; my brother was
in Paris-he is a lawyer-and my parents had told him to
find me and take me out to dinner. We hate each other,
my brother and I, but we preferred not to disobey my
parents. We dined, and at dinner he grew very drunk
upon three bottles of Bordeaux. I took him back to his
hotel, and on the way I bought a bottle of brandy, and
when we had arrived I made my brother drink a
tumberful of it-I told him it was something to make
him sober. He drank it, and immediately he fell down
like somebody in a fit, dead drunk. I lifted him up and
propped his back against the bed; then I went through
his pockets. I found eleven hundred francs, and with
that I hurried down the stairs, jumped into a taxi, and
escaped. My brother did not know my address -I was
safe.
"Where does a man go when he has money? To the
bordels
, naturally. But you do not suppose that I was
going to waste my time on some vulgar debauchery fit
only for navvies? Confound it, one is a civilised man! I
was fastidious, exigeant, you understand, with a
thousand francs in my pocket. It was midnight before I
found what I was looking for. I had fallen in with a very
smart youth of eighteen, dressed en smoking and with his
hair cut
à l'américaine, and we were talking in a quiet
bistro
away from the boulevards.