"Have you read it?" Lirat shouted, "have you read it, eh, tell me?... What idiots these critics are!... If they keep on talking about me, they will finally force me to paint in a cave, understand?... What do they take me for anyway--a vulgarizer?... And then what business is it of this fellow here--whether I make paintings, boots or slippers?... That's my private affair!" Nevertheless he had put it away in a drawer as a thing of great value, and several times I surprised him reading it. It was very well for him to say with supreme detachment, when we were inveighing against the stupidity of the public: "Well, what would you want them to do?... Do you expect the people to start a revolution because I paint my canvases plainly?" But in reality this contempt for notoriety, this apparent resignation concealed deep but secret sentiment. Deep in his very sensitive and very generous soul there accumulated profound aversions, which were vented with terrible and malignant fervor on the whole world. If, on the one hand, his talent had gained in strength and ruggedness on account of this, his character, on the other hand, had lost something of its inherent nobility, and his critical spirit had been deprived of some of its penetrating quality and brilliance. He ended by giving himself over entirely to decrying everybody and everything, the excess of which threatened to render him odious; at times it bore evidence of nothing but a childishness which made him ridiculous. Great souls nearly always have petty weaknesses--that is a mysterious law of nature, and Lirat did not escape the effects of this law. Above everything else, he held fast to his well-established reputation of an ill-natured man. He bore very well with the opinion which denied him talent, but what he could not tolerate was that they called in question the propriety of his insulting humanity with his sarcastic jibes. To avenge the scouring words with which he characterized them, some of the enemies of Lirat attributed to him unnatural vices; others simply called him an epileptic, and these coarse and cowardly calumnies, strengthened every day by ingenious comments, based on "certain" stories which made the rounds of the studios--these calumnies found ready listeners willing, some owing to his actual malice, others prompted solely by the intemperance of the painter's tongue, to receive and spread them. "You know Lirat?... He had another attack yesterday, this time on the street." And names of important personages were mentioned who had assisted in the scene and who had seen him rolling in the mud, lying, with foam at his mouth.