He thinks:

“The difficulty in life is to take the same thing seriously for long at a time. For instance, my mother’s love for the person I used to call my father—I believed in it for fifteen years. I still believed in it yesterday. She wasn’t able to take her love seriously, either. I wonder whether I despise her or esteem her the more for having made her son a bastard.… But in reality, I don’t wonder as much as all that. The feelings one has for one’s progenitors are among the things that it’s better not to go into too deeply. As for Mr. Cuckold, it’s perfectly simple—for as far back as I can remember, I’ve always hated him; I must admit now that I didn’t deserve much credit for it—and that’s the only thing I regret. To think that if I hadn’t broken open that drawer I might have gone on all my life believing that I harboured unnatural feelings in my breast towards a father! What a relief to know!… All the same I didn’t exactly break open the drawer; I never even thought of opening it.… And there were extenuating circumstances: first of all I was horribly bored that day. And that curiosity of mine—that: ‘fatal curiosity’ as Fénelon calls it, it’s certainly the surest thing I’ve inherited from my real father, for the Profitendieus haven’t an ounce of it in their composition. I have never met anyone less curious than the gentleman who is my mother’s husband—unless perhaps it’s the children he has produced. I must think about them later on—after I have dined.… To lift up a marble slab off the top of a table and to see a drawer underneath is really not the same thing as picking a lock. I’m not a burglar. It might happen to anyone to lift the marble slab off a table. Theseus must have been about my age when he lifted the stone. The difficulty in the case of a table is the clock as a rule.… I shouldn’t have dreamt of lifting the marble slab off the table if I hadn’t wanted to mend the clock.… What doesn’t happen to everyone is to find arms underneath—or guilty love-letters. Pooh! The important thing was that I should learn the facts. It isn’t everyone who can indulge in the luxury of a ghost to reveal them, like Hamlet. Hamlet! It’s curious how one’s point of view changes according as one is the off-spring of crime or legitimacy. I’ll think about that later on—after I have dined.… Was it wrong of me to read those letters!… No, I should be feeling remorseful! And if I hadn’t read the letters, I should have had to go on living in ignorance and falsehood and submission. Oh, for a draught of air! Oh, for the open sea! ‘Bernard! Bernard, that green youth of yours …’ as Bossuet says. Seat your youth on that bench, Bernard. What a beautiful morning! There really are days when the sun seems to be kissing the earth. If I could get rid of myself for a little, there’s not a doubt but I should write poetry.”

And as he lay stretched on the bench, he got rid of himself so effectually that he fell asleep.

VII : Lilian and Vincent

The sun, already high in the heavens, caresses Vincent’s bare foot on the wide bed, where he is lying beside Lilian. She sits up and looks at him, not knowing that he is awake, and is astonished to see a look of anxiety on his face.

It is possible that Lady Griffith loved Vincent; but what she loved in him was success. Vincent was tall, handsome, slim, but he did not know how to hold himself, how to sit down or get up. He had an expressive face, but he did his hair badly. Above all she admired the boldness and robustness of his intellect; he was certainly highly educated, but she thought him uncultivated. With the instinct of a mistress and a mother, she hung over this big boy of hers and made it her task to form him. He was her creation—her statue.