He finally renounced self-respect as a game not worth the candle.
Moreover, the clarity of mind necessary to sustained work embraced
ever the image of Madeleine; what he had lost and what he had never
possessed. And, again, he tormented himself with imaginings of her
own suffering and despair; alternated with visions of Madeleine
enthroned, secure, impeccable, admired, envied--and with other men in
love with her! Some depth of insight convinced him that she loved him
immortally, but he knew her need for mental companionship, and the
thought that she might find it, however briefly and barrenly, with
another man, sent him plunging once more.
His friends and admirers on the newspaper staffs had been loyal, but
not only was he irritated by their manifest attempts to reclaim him,
but he grew to hate them as so many accusing reminders of the great
gifts he was striving to blast out by the roots; and, finding it
difficult to avoid them, he had, as soon as he was put in possession
of his small income, deliberately transferred himself to the Five
Points, where they would hardly be likely to trace him, certainly not
to seek his society.
And, on the whole, this experience in a degraded and perilous quarter,
famous the world over as a degree or two worse than any pest-hole
of its kind, was the most enjoyable of his prolonged debauch.
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