The Immoralist/Part 1, 7

And so, in the place of all action and all work, I contented myself with physical exercises, which certainly implied a change in my moral outlook, but which I soon began to regard as mere training, as simply a means to an end, and no longer satisfying in themselves.

I will tell you, however, about one other action of mine, though perhaps you will consider it ridiculous, for its very childishness marks the need that then tormented me of showing by some outward sign the change that had come over my inward self: at Amalfi I had my beard and moustache shaved off. Up till that day I had worn them long and my hair cropped close. It had never occurred to me that I could do anything else. And suddenly, on the day when I first stripped myself on the rock, my beard made me feel uncomfortable; it was like a last piece of clothing I could not get rid of; I felt as if it were ​false; it was carefully cut—not in a point, but square, and it then and there struck me as very ugly and ridiculous. When I got back to my hotel room, I looked at myself in the glass and was displeased with my appearance; I looked like what I had hitherto been—an archaeologist—a bookworm. Immediately after lunch, I went down to Amalfi with my mind made up. The town is very small and I could find nothing better than a vulgar little shop in the piazza. It was market day; the place was full; I had to wait interminably; but nothing—neither the suspicious looking razors, nor the dirty yellow shaving-brush, nor the smell, nor the barber's talk could put me off. When my beard fell beneath his scissors, I felt as though I had taken off a mask. But oh! when I saw myself, the emotion that filled me and which I tried to keep down, was not pleasure, but fear. I do not criticize this feeling—I record it. I thought myself quite good-looking … no, the reason of my fear was a feeling that my mind had been stripped of all disguise, and it suddenly appeared to me redoubtable.

On the other hand, I let my hair grow.

That is all my new and still unoccupied self found to do. I expected it eventually to give birth to actions that would astonish me—but later—later, I said to ​myself, when it is more fully formed. In the meantime, as I was obliged to live, I was reduced, like Descartes, to a provisional mode of action. This was the reason Marceline did not notice anything. The different look in my eyes, no doubt, and the changed expression of my features, especially on the day when I appeared without my beard, might perhaps have aroused her suspicions, but she already loved me too much to see me as I was; and then I did my best to reassure her. The important thing was that she should not interfere with my renascent life, and to keep it from her eyes, I had to dissemble.

For that matter, the man Marceline loved, the man she had married, was not my 'new self.' So I told myself again and again as an excuse for hiding him. In this way I showed her an image of myself, which by the very fact of its remaining constant and faithful to the past, became every day falser and falser.

For the time being, therefore, my relationship with Marceline remained the same, though it was every day getting more intense by reason of my growing love. My dissimulation (if that expression can be applied to the need I felt of protecting my thoughts from her judgment), my very dissimulation increased ​that love. I mean that it kept me incessantly occupied with Marceline. At first, perhaps, this necessity for falsehood cost me a little effort; but I soon came to understand that the things that are reputed worst (lying, to mention only one) are only difficult to do as long as one has never done them; but that they become—and very quickly too—easy, pleasant and agreeable to do over again, and soon even natural. So then, as is always the case when one overcomes an initial disgust, I ended by taking pleasure in my dissimulation itself, by protracting it, as if it afforded opportunity for the play of my undiscovered faculties. And every day my life grew richer and fuller, as I advanced towards a riper, more delicious happiness.