have it; because it will exhaust you, break your heart, and drive you mad; and because, even if you could gratify this impossible desire to absorb the whole sum of recorded knowledge and experience in the world, you would gain nothing by it.”
“There I can’t agree with you.”
“Do you really think,” said Starwick wearily, “that if you could achieve this hopeless ambition of reading all the books that were ever printed—of knowing all the people—seeing all the places—that you would be any better off than you now are? Now, day after day, you go prowling up and down along the book-stalls on the Seine, pawing through tons of junk and rubbish until your very heart is sick with weariness and confusion. When you are not with us, you sit alone in a café with a dictionary beside you trying to decipher the meaning of some useless and meaningless book. You no longer enjoy what you read, because you are tortured by a consciousness of the vast number of books you have not read; you go to the museums—to the Louvre—and you no longer enjoy the pictures, because you torture your brain and exhaust your energy in a foolish effort to see and remember all of them. You no longer enjoy the crowd, you go out on the streets of Paris, you sit here in this crowded café—and instead of taking pleasure in all this gaiety and life about you, you are tortured by the thought that you know none of these people, that you know nothing about their lives, that there are four million people here in Paris and you do not know a dozen of them…. Eugene, Eugene,” he said sadly, “this thing in you is growing worse all the time; if you do not master it, it is a disease that will some day drive you mad and destroy you.”
“And yet, Frank, many people on this earth have had the same disease. Because of it, in order to get knowledge, Doctor Faust sold his soul to the devil.”
“Alas,” said Starwick, “where is the devil?” In a moment he continued quietly, as before: “Do you think that you will really gain in wisdom if you read a million books? Do you think you will find out more about life if you know a million people rather than yourself? Do you think you will get more pleasure from a thousand women than from two or three—see more if you go to a hundred countries instead of six? And finally, do you think you’ll get more happiness from life by’getting your work done’than by doing nothing? My God! Eugene—” his voice was weary with the resigned fatality of despair that had now corrupted him—“you still feel that it is important that you’do your work,’as you call
