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where you pay a hundred francs for the privilege of looking on at orgies (in masks—the one amusing feature) and if you want to, participating in them. Dim religious lights, little cubicles, divans, a great deal of what the French call amour promiscuously going on. Odd and grotesque, but terribly dreary and all so very medical. A sort of cross between very stupid clowns and an operating theatre. Tim and Eileen wanted me to stay. I told them I’d rather pay-a visit to the Morgue, and left them there. I hope they amused themselves. But what a bore, what a hopeless unmitigated bore! I always thought Heliogabalus was such a very sophisticated young person. But now I’ve seen what amused him, I realize that he must have had a mind like a baby’s, really infantile. I have the misfortune to be rather grown up about some things. I’ve a notion of going to Madrid next week. It’ll be terrifically hot, of course. gut I love the heat. I blossom in ovens. (Rather a significant intimation of my particular immortality, perhaps?) Why don’t you come with me? Seriously, I mean. You could surely get away. Murder Burlap and come and be a tripper a la Maurice Barre’s. Du sang, de la volupte et de la mort. I feel rather bloodthirsty at the moment. Spain would suit me. Meanwhile, I’ll make enquiries about the bull-fighting season. The ring makes you sick; even my bloodthirstiness won’t run to disembowelled cab-horses. But the spectators are marvellous. Twenty thousand simultaneous sadistic frissons. Really remarkable. You simply must come. my sweet Walter. Say yes. I insist. LUCY.

QUAI VOLTAIRE.

It was too sweet of you, Walter darling, to do the impossible to come to Spain. I wish, for once, you hadn’t taken my momentary envie quite so seriously. Madrid’s off-for the present, at any rate. If it should come on again, I’ll let you know at once. Meanwhile. Paris. Hastily. L.

CHAPTER XXVI

From Philip Quarles’s Notebook

Found Rampion gloomy and exasperated, I don’t know what about, and consequently pessimistic—lyrically and violently so. ‘I give the present dispensation ten years,’ he said, after cataloguing the horrors of the modern world. ‘After that the most appalling and sanguinary bust up that’s ever been.’ And he prophesied class wars, wars between the continents, the final catastrophic crumbling of our already dreadfully unsteady society. ‘Not a pleasant look-out for our children,’ I said. ‘We’ve at least had our thirty years or so. They’ll only grow up to see the Last Judgment.’ ‘We oughtn’t to have brought them into the world,’ he answered. I mentioned those Melanesians that Rivers wrote about, who simply refused to breed any more after the white people had robbed them of their religion and their traditional civilization. ‘The same thing’s been happening in the West,’ I said, ‘but more slowly. No sudden race suicide, but gradual diminution of births. Gradual, because with us the poison of modem civilization has infected men so slowly. The thing has been going on for a long time; but we’re only just beginning to realize that we’re being poisoned. That’s why we’ve only just begun to stop begetting children. The Melanesians had their souls suddenly murdered, so they couldn’t help realizing what was being done to them. That’s why they decided, almost from one day to another, that they wouldn’t bother to keep the race alive any longer.’ ‘The poison isn’t slow any more. It works faster and faster.’ ‘Like arsenic—the effects are cumulative. After a certain moment you begin to gallop towards death.’ ‘Breeding would have slowed down much more completely if people had realized. Well, well; our brats will have to look out for themselves now they’re here.’ ‘And meanwhile,’ I said, ‘one’s got to go on behaving as if our world were going on for ever—teaching them good manners and Latin grammar and all the rest. What do you do about yours?’ ‘If I could have my way, I wouldn’t teach them anything. Just turn them loose in the country, on a farm, and tell them to amuse themselves. And if they couldn’t amuse themselves, I’d give them rat poison.’ ‘Rather