The Journal of a Disappointed Man

February 16. We took possession of our country cottage to-day: very charming and overlooking a beautiful Park. Have just discovered the Journal of the De Goncourts and been reading it greedily. Life has really been a commodity. I am boiling over with vitality, chattering amiably to everyone about nothing--argumentative, sanguine, serious, ridiculous. I called old R---- a Rapscallion, a Curmudgeon, and a Scaramouche, and E---- a trull, a drab, a trollop, a callet. "You certainly are a unique husband," said that sweet little lady, and I.... With me, one of the symptoms of delirium is always a melodramatic truculence! I shake my fist in R----'s face and make him explode with laughing.... The sun to-day, and the great, whopping white clouds all bellied out, made me feel inside quite a bright young dog wriggling its body in ecstatic delight let loose upon the green sward. "You must come down for a week end," I said to R---- at lunch. "Come down as soon as you can. You will find every comfort. It is an enormous house--I have not succeeded in finding my way about it and--it's dangerous to lose yourself--makes you late for dinner. When you arrive our gilded janitor will say: 'I believe Mr. Barbellion is in the library.'" "Black eunuchs wait on you at dinner, I suppose," R---- rejoined. "Oh! yes and golden chandeliers and a marble stair-case--all in barbaric splendour." "Yes, I shall certainly be glad to come down," said R----, phlegmatically.