I feared to find myself back in my room, to stretch out on that bed where I was sure not to be able to sleep. And yet I was obliged to return there. Even when I did not return until dawn, having broken my promises to myself (I assure you, Monique, that happened only rarely), I was obliged in the end to climb up to my room, take off once again my clothing as I would perhaps have wished to be able to take off my body, and lie down between the sheets, where, this time, sleep came. Pleasure is too ephemeral; music lifts us up for a moment only to leave us sadder; but sleep is a compensation. Even when it leaves us, we take several seconds to begin suffering again; and each time one falls asleep, one has the sensation of surrendering to a friend. I am well aware that it is a faithless friend, like all the others; when we are too unhappy, it, too, abandons us. But we know that it will come back sooner or later, perhaps under another name, and that in the end we shall take repose in it. It is perfect when it is dreamless; one could say that, every night, it awakens us from life.

I was absolutely alone. Up to now I have kept silent about the human faces in which my desire was incarnated; I have interposed between you and me only anonymous phantoms. Do not think shame constrains me, or that jealousy one feels even with regard to one’s memories. I do not flatter myself that I loved. I have experienced too often how short-lived the strongest emotions are to wish to draw from the coming together of perishable beings, hedged on every side by death, a sentiment that claims to be deathless. What moves us in another person has, after all, only been lent to him by life. I know too well that the soul grows old like the flesh, is, even in the best of us, only the flourishing of a season, an ephemeral miracle like youth itself. What is the point, my dear, of relying on what is transient?

I feared the bonds of habit derived from factitious pity, sensual deception, and lazy familiarity. It seems to me that I could only have loved a perfect being; I would be too mediocre for such a being to accept me even if he could one day be found. That is not all, my dear. Our soul, our mind, and our body have exigencies that are generally contradictory; I think it is difficult to combine such diverse satisfactions without debasing some and discouraging others. Therefore, I have put love aside. I do not wish to dignify my acts with metaphysical explanations when my shyness is a sufficient cause. I have almost always limited myself to trite encounters, through a vague fear of becoming attached and then suffering. It is enough to be the prisoner of an instinct without also being the prisoner of a passion; and I sincerely believe that I have never really been in love.