Wandering through Montmartre, Charlie suddenly realises the extent of his wastefulness in what is perhaps the most superb passage in this tale: “All the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale, and he suddenly realised the meaning of the word 'dissipate’ – to dissipate into thin air; to make nothing out of something. In the little hours of the night every move from place to place was an enormous human jump, an increase of paying for the privilege of slower and slower motion. He remembered thousand-franc notes given to an orchestra for playing a single number, hundred-franc notes tossed to a doorman for calling a cab. But it hadn’t been given for nothing. It had been given, even the most wildly squandered sum, as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things that now he would always remember – his child taken from his control, his wife escaped to a grave in Vermont.”