They had just dined together, five old friends, a writer, a doctor and three rich bachelors
without any profession.
They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came over them, that feeling
which precedes and leads to the departure of guests after festive gatherings. One of those
present, who had for the last five minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard
dotted with gas-lamps, with its rattling vehicles, said suddenly:
"When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are long."
"And the nights too," assented the guest who sat next to him. "I sleep very little; pleasures
fatigue me; conversation is monotonous. Never do I come across a new idea, and I feel,
before talking to any one, a violent longing to say nothing and to listen to nothing. I don't
know what to do with my evenings."
The third idler remarked:
"I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just two pleasant hours
every day."
The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned round to them, and
said:
"The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his fellow creatures,
even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a greater service to humanity than the
man who found the means of securing to them eternal salvation and eternal youth."
The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:
"Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely, been seeking for--
and working for the object you refer to since the beginning of the world. The men who
came first reached perfection at once in this way. We are hardly equal to them."
One of the three idlers murmured:
Then, after a minute's pause, he added:
"If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep with that perfect
unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are thoroughly fatigued, sleep without
dreams."
