The Fall

by Albert Camus

Why! I appeared hard, yet I have never been able to resist the offer of a drink or a woman! I was considered active and energetic, yet my kingdom was the bed. I proclaimed my loyalty, yet I think that there is not a single person that I loved whom I did not also eventually betray. Of course, my betrayals did not get in the way of my fidelity, I did achieve a considerable amount of work by means of sheer idleness and I never ceased to help my fellow creatures, because of the pleasure that this gave me. But, however much I repeated these evident truths, I got only little consolation from them. Some mornings, I would conduct my trial to the very end and reach the conclusion that what I excelled in above all was contempt. The very people that I most often helped were those I most despised. With courtesy and a deeply felt sense of solidarity, I daily spat in the faces of the blind.