I was therefore free, not through indolence but by choice; loving,
moreover, all that God had made and very little that man had made.
Of life I knew nothing but love, of the world only my mistress, and I did
not care to know anything more. So, falling in love upon leaving
college, I sincerely believed that it was for life, and every other
thought disappeared.

My life was indolent. I was accustomed to pass the day with my mistress;
my greatest pleasure was to take her through the fields on beautiful
summer days, the sight of nature in her splendor having ever been for me
the most powerful incentive to love. In winter, as she enjoyed society,
we attended numerous balls and masquerades, and because I thought of no
one but her I fondly imagined her equally true to me.

To give you an idea of my state of mind I can not do better than compare
it to one of those rooms we see nowadays in which are collected and
mingled the furniture of all times and countries. Our age has no impress
of its own. We have impressed the seal of our time neither on our houses
nor our gardens, nor on anything that is ours. On the street may be seen
men who have their beards trimmed as in the time of Henry III, others who
are clean-shaven, others who have their hair arranged as in the time of
Raphael, others as in the time of Christ. So the homes of the rich are
cabinets of curiosities: the antique, the gothic, the style of the
Renaissance, that of Louis XIII, all pell-mell. In short, we have every
century except our own--a thing which has never been seen at any other
epoch: eclecticism is our taste; we take everything we find, this for
beauty, that for utility, another for antiquity, still another for its
ugliness even, so that we live surrounded by debris, as if the end of the
world were at hand.