4th Part

The wanderer stepped off the mountain like a secular Moses whose law was scratched out and left behind. He could no longer see the hermit's cabin from down in the valley, or smoke from the chimney, or anything else. All that remained of their encounter was far away and invisible.

It was a long way back to the city, and took many days. The young man never got tired. When he arrived, he found an inn to sleep in, took a bath, got a shave, and ate the tastiest food available—white pastries with honey, strong beer, some sausages, and fried potatoes. It wasn't dainty, but he felt full afterward, and it was all good inside his mouth. He spoke to no one.

How does one detail the easy path to shame? It's a short enough tale. The young man experienced no trouble finding what he sought, no shame and no pleasure too base for his wholehearted participation, nothing untasted, nothing unfelt. He dissolved in revelry.

There was no stability to his behavior. He was a river of flesh run rampant in the streets, flooding every place with self-worship and transgression. Those who'd known him before no longer recognized his flat eyes or pale cheeks lost in hair as long and straggled as seaweed washed ashore. Former friends took the far side of the street at his approach. Bums and lowlife students and worse were attracted to his gravitational maelstrom and orbited in admiration of a life without restraint.

In all things the young man was the soul of immoderation, except in this: he was niggardly and miserly with his laughter. If a joke was told, he glared; sex was joyless; he was an angry drunk, and got into brawls as easily as a child gets into the mud. But no one noticed—the onlookers were too afraid, and those nearest this prince of the earth were too abject and too absorbed in their own crippled revelry to notice their leader was without thrill or enjoyment.

One night he went to the opera, and instead of listening to the music he threw dirty jokes at the actresses, and actually hurled empty bottles at the stage. He exposed himself from the balcony, and poured wine onto those sitting below. The footmen ejected him, but not till he'd taken down a curtain rod to use as a staff, breaking it over the head of the first that tried to lay hands on him. They kicked him into the street, and in his drunkenness he tried to ram the door down with his head. Blood smeared his clothes and the doorframe, and he yelled and screamed until he fell exhausted against the wall.

It was a kind of beginning for him, and his exploits became quickly more destructive. People stopped running away from his onsets, and he made enemies. Fighting became less raucous and more in earnest, and more than one blade was drawn against him; twice, pistols were fired in his general direction, and the second one toppled the prostitute hanging on his arm.

A newspaper of dubious credibility interviewed him, and the incident became famous, but not for what was said. The talk soon turned to violence, and the reporter was drawn into what became a riot, ranging across the city in chaos and bloodshed. The army was called in by the mayor, and there was a firefight that ended in the young man's arrest. He went in shackles to the prison, unnatural colors spreading across his skin from the bruises and injuries.

The cell he was thrown in was windowless. He fell asleep at once, and lay without movement till the warden was sure he was dead. He thought of the hermit briefly, then all went black and he slept for a long time.