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somnolence, a dreamy rapture of mystical ideas. But
only a simple soul, on which life's wear and tear had left no mark, was
capable of savouring the delights of such a self-abandon, and his own
soul was battered and torn with earthly conflict. He must admit that the
momentary desire to believe, to take refuge in the timeless, proceeded
from a multitude of ignoble motives: from lassitude with the petty and
repeated annoyances of existence, quarrels with the laundress, with the
waiter, with the landlord; the sordid scramble for money; in a word,
from the general spiritual failure of a man approaching forty. He
thought of escaping into a monastery somewhat as street girls think of
going into a house where they will be free from the dangers of the
chase, from worry about food and lodging, and where they will not
have to do their own washing and ironing.
Unmarried, without settled income, the voice of carnality now
practically stilled in him, he sometimes cursed the existence he had
shaped for himself. At times, weary of attempting to coerce words to do
his bidding, he threw down his pen and looked into the future. He could
see nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and,
seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could
heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common
sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that
he threw up his hands and begged off.
Yet he was always playing with the thought, indeed he could not
escape it. For though religion was without foundation it was also

without limit and promised a complete escape from earth into dizzy,
unexplored altitudes. Then, too, Durtal was attracted to the Church by
its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant
naïveté of the histories of its saints.
He did not believe, and yet he admitted the supernatural. Right here on
earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in
our homes, in the street,--everywhere when we came to think of it? It
was really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations
and account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than
inexplicable. Did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of
a man? What was love, what the other incomprehensible shaping
influences? And, knottiest enigma of all, what was money?
There one found oneself confronted by primordial organic law,
atrocious edicts promulgated at the very beginning of the world and
applied ever since.
The rules were precise and invariable. Money attracted money,
accumulating always in the same places, going by preference to the
scoundrelly and the mediocre. When, by an inscrutable exception, it
heaped up in the coffers of a rich man who was not a miser nor a
murderer, it stood idle, incapable of resolving itself into a force for
good, however charitable the hands which fain would administer it.
One would say it was angry at having got into the wrong box and
avenged itself by going into voluntary paralysis when possessed by one
who was neither a sharper nor an ass.
It acted still more strangely when by some extraordinary chance it
strayed into the home of a poor man. Immediately it defiled the clean,
debauched the chaste, and, acting simultaneously on the body and the
soul, it insinuated into its possessor a base selfishness, an ignoble pride;
it suggested that he spend for himself alone; it made the humble man a
boor, the generous man a skinflint. In one second it changed every
habit, revolutionized every idea, metamorphosed the most deeply
rooted passions.
It was the instigator and vigilant accomplice of all the important sins. If

it permitted one of its detainers to forget himself and bestow a boon it
awakened hatred in the recipient, it replaced avarice with ingratitude
and re-established equilibrium so that the account might balance and
not one sin of commission be wanting.
But it reached its real height of monstrosity when, concealing its
identity under an assumed name, it entitled itself capital. Then its
action was not limited to individual incitation to theft and murder but
extended to the entire human race. With one word capital decided
monopolies, erected banks, cornered necessities, and, if it wished,
caused thousands of human beings to starve to death.
And it grew and begot itself while slumbering in a safe, and the Two
Worlds adored it on bended knee, dying of desire before it as before a
God.
Well! money was the devil, otherwise its mastery of souls was
inexplicable. And how many other mysteries, equally unintelligible,
how many other phenomena were there to make a reflective man
shudder!
"But," thought Durtal, "seeing that there are