'Do you think,' he said, 'that René will not be all the stronger for this trial--more able to exercise and to develop that talent in which you at least believe, Monsieur l'Abbé? If we writers could evolve our ideas as easily as a mathematician solves his problems on the black-board, and enunciate them, coolly and calmly, in well-chosen and precise terms--why, every one would set up as an author instead of turning engineer or lawyer. They would only require patience, method, and leisure. But writing is a different thing altogether.' He was getting more excited as he went on. 'To begin with, one must live, and, to know life, in every one of its peculiar phases, become acquainted with every possible sensation. We must experiment upon ourselves. What Claude Bernard used to do with his dogs, what Pasteur does with his rabbits, we must do with our heart, inoculating it with every form of virus that attacks humanity. We must have felt, if only for an hour, each of the thousand emotions of which our fellow-man is capable, and all in order that some obscure reader in ten, a hundred, or two hundred years' time may stop at some phrase in one of our books and, recognising the disease from which he is suffering, say, 'This is true.' It is indeed a terrible game, and we run a terrible risk in playing it. Greater even than that incurred by doctors, for they run no risk of cutting themselves with the dissecting knife nor of being struck down when visiting a cholera hospital. It was nearly all over with poor René, but when he next writes of love, jealousy, or woman's treachery, his words will be tinged with blood--the red blood that has coursed through his veins--and not with ink borrowed from another's pen. And it will make a fine page, too, one that will swell the literary treasures of that France you accuse us of forgetting. We serve our country in our own fashion. That fashion may not be yours, but it has its greatness. Do you know what a martyrdom of suffering has to be endured before an _Adolphe_ or a _Manon_ can be dragged from the soul?'