Explore "Adventures of the Comte de la Muette during the Reign of Terror" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was my unhappiness in the black spring-time of the "Terror" to see my old light acquaintance, the Abbé Michau, jogging on his way to the Place de la Bastille. I pitied him greatly. He had pursued Pleasure so fruitlessly all his days; and into this fatal quagmire had the elusive flame at length conducted him. He sat on the rail of the tumbril -- a depressed, puzzled look on his face -- between innocence and depravity. Both were going the same road as himself -- the harmless white girl and the besotted priest, who shrunk in terror from giving her the absolution she asked; -- and poor Charles divided them.
He was not ever of Fortune's favourites. He would make too fine an art of Epicurism, and he sinned so by rule as to be almost virtuous. I remember him with a half-dozen little axioms of his own concocting, that were after all only morality misapplied: "To know how to forget oneself is to be graduate in the school of pleasure. " "Self-consciousness is always a wasp in the peach. " "The art of enjoyment is the art of selection. " On such as these he founded his creed of conduct; and that procured him nothing but a barren series of disappointments. He was never successful but in extricating himself from mishaps. The _ravissantes_ he sighed after played with and insulted him -- though they could never debase his spirit. The dishes he designed lacked the last little secret of perfection. He abhorred untidiness, yet it was a condition of his existence; and he could not carry off any situation without looking like a thief.