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Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he lay [141]without moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.

“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.

“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.

But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’s [142]land in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in the [143]end to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.

During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at home [144]on his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.

He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1 and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-woman [145]and the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...

Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.

But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delight [146]of purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he could not compromise and bring into harmony the elements w............