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Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940

"The Beautiful and Damned"

"
Anthony saluted, quickly paid his taxi-driver, and set off for a run
toward the regiment he had named. When he was out of sight he changed
his course, and with his heart beating wildly, hurried to his company,
feeling that he had made a fatal error of judgment.
Two days later the officer who had been in command of the guard
recognized him in a barber shop down-town. In charge of a military
policeman he was taken back to the camp, where he was reduced to the
ranks without trial, and confined for a month to the limits of his
company street.
With this blow a spell of utter depression overtook him, and within a
week he was again caught down-town, wandering around in a drunken daze,
with a pint of bootleg whiskey in his hip pocket. It was because of a
sort of craziness in his behavior at the trial that his sentence to the
guard-house was for only three weeks.

NIGHTMARE
Early in his confinement the conviction took root in him that he was
going mad. It was as though there were a quantity of dark yet vivid
personalities in his mind, some of them familiar, some of them strange
and terrible, held in check by a little monitor, who sat aloft somewhere
and looked on.


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