FAREWELL TO THE LIFE OF THE WORLD
Two days later, of a Monday evening, having dined for the last time at the Cafe Anglais, and seen the two first pieces at the Varietes, he went, at ten o'clock, to sleep for the first time in the rue Chanoinesse, where Manon conducted him to his room.
Solitude has charms comparable only to those of savage life, which no European has ever really abandoned after once tasting them.This may seem strange at an epoch when every one lives so much to be seen of others that all the world concern themselves in their neighbors'
affairs, and when private life will soon be a thing of the past, so bold and so intrusive are the eyes of the press,--that modern Argus.
Nevertheless, it is a truth which rests on the authority of the first six Christian centuries, during which no recluse ever returned to social life.Few are the moral wounds that solitude will not heal.
So, at first, Godefroid was soothed by the deep peace and absolute stillness of his new abode, as a weary traveller is relaxed by a bath.
The very day after his arrival at Madame de la Chanterie's he was forced to examine himself, under the sense that he was separated from all, even from Paris, though he still lived in the shadow of its cathedral.Stripped of his social vanities, he was about to have no other witnesses of his acts than his own conscience and the inmates of that house.He had quitted the great high-road of the world to enter an unknown path.Where was that path to lead him to? to what occupation should he now be drawn?
He had been for two hours absorbed in such reflections when Manon, the only servant of the house, knocked at his door to tell him that the second breakfast was served and the family were waiting for him.
Twelve o'clock was striking.The new lodger went down at once, stirred by a wish to see and judge the five persons among whom his life was in future to be spent.
When he entered the room he found all the inmates of the house standing; they were dressed precisely as they were on the day when he came to make his first inquiries.