This pose of a sentimental Narcissus gazing incessantly upon himself and his love was well in keeping with that deep-rooted vanity which he possessed in common with nearly all writers. Suzanne had not sufficiently reflected upon the anomalous nature of a man of letters to have taken vanity into account. It pleased her to read René's words when he was not there simply as a burning reminder of the kisses they had exchanged. When the poet had paid his morning devotions to his divinity in this fashion it was time for lunch. Immediately after that he would go to the Bibliothèque in the Rue de Richelieu and work unremittingly at the notes for his 'Savonarola,' which he had again taken up, during the whole of the afternoon, and sometimes right on into the evening. He worked now without ever having, as in writing the 'Sigisbée,' those flashes of talent which pass from the brain to the pen, charging the memory with a flow of words and drawing the images with such precision and life-like resemblance that the effort of production becomes a strong but delightful intoxication that ends in a state of agreeable exhaustion. To build up the scenes of the drama he was now writing, René had to keep his mind in a painful state of tension, and at a worse tension still to turn his prose sketches into verse. His brain no longer served him in making happy finds. For this there were several important and distinct reasons. The first--a physical one--was the waste of vital energy inseparable from all reciprocated passions; the second--a moral one--the constant hold that Suzanne had upon his mind and the inability to entirely forget her; the last--an intellectual and secret one, though most powerful--was the deadening influence which success exercises upon the greatest genius.