Chapter 31: The Infamy of Being Happy

“I now see distinctly,” he said, “what
manner of people these maskers are.”
Poe: Hop-Frog

Solange’s pessimism was practical: he perseveringly endeavored to make his life wretched by all sorts of very simple, yet ingenious combinations.

First of all, principles: Men lie and women deceive. There are but two motives to human acts—lucre and lust. All women with pleasant faces conceal objectionable defects. Men who are not wicked are stupid.

Other principles: All food is tainted or adulterated; it is useless to seek anything better than the bad. All streets are hideous, full of vile women, rubbish, drains and filth. All apartments lack air and light. And so on.

Consequently, and as he could not take pleasure in principles, Gaetan Solange had taken lodgings in a foul quarter, at the end of a damp court, in two or three little dark rooms. They were the most agreeable rooms he could find after years of patient search.

When he returned to his rooms, in the evening, it was amid the repugnant attacks of an army of wretched women; and sometimes a drunken vagrant barred his way through the narrow alley with insults and threats. Solange was satisfied, for this proved that the police were lax, that nobody could return to his dwelling after ten o’clock without risking his life.

A spongy cutlet, a woody cigar, bitter beer, a spotted table-cloth gave his visible satisfaction. It was thus: “What would you? If you wish to live, you must accept the inconveniences of life.”

He liked to be plagued by a woman who, penniless, became refractory to all caresses—as in Un Dilemme—and the friends who had abused his confidence, wittingly ill-placed, were dear to him as the orthographic faults of a literary master: this proved once more the absolute rules of his grammar.