Little Poems in Prose

hymned by so many poets and served by so many philosophers, who laboured to glorify him without ever suspecting it, said to me, “I should like you to remember me kindly, and to prove to you that I, of whom people say so much evil, am sometimes—to employ one of your vulgar phrases—a devilish good fellow, to compensate you for the irremediable loss of your soul, I will give you the stake which you would have won had you been lucky, namely, the power to sustain and conquer during your whole life the strange malady called boredom, which is the source alike of all your diseases and of your wretched progress. Never shall you form a desire but I will help you to realize it; you shall reign over your vulgar fellows; at your service shall be all flatteries, even all ado- rations; silver and gold and precious stones, and fairy palaces shall come to seek you, shall beg you to accept them without your making a single effort to win them. You shall change country and climate as often as your fancy bids; you shall be drunk with pleasure without weariness, in charming countries where it is always warm, where the women smell as sweet as flowers—and the rest, and the rest—” he added, rising and dismissing me with a friendly smile.