Instead of answering me, he shrugged his shoulders, and pointing to the sky with his finger, he cried: The star! the star! When Nature made Leo, Vinci, Pergolese, Duni, she smiled. She put on a grave and imposing air in shaping my dear uncle Rameau, who for half a score years they will have called the great Rameau, and of whom very soon nobody will say a word. When she tricked up his nephew, she made a grimace, and a grimace, and again a grimace. [And as he said this, he put on all sorts of odd expressions: contempt, disdain, irony; and he seemed to be kneading between his fingers a piece of paste, and to be smiling at the ridiculous shapes that he gave it; that done, he flung the incongruous pagod[225] away from him, and said:] It was thus she made me, and flung me by the side of the other pagods, some with huge wrinkled paunches, and short necks, and great eyes projecting out of their heads, stamped with apoplexy; others with wry necks; some again with wizened faces, keen eyes, hooked noses. All were ready to split with laughing when they espied me, and I put my hands to my sides and split with laughter when I espied them, for fools and madmen tickle one another; they seek and attract one another. If when I got among them, I had not found ready-made the proverb about _the money of fools being the patrimony of people with wits_, they would have been indebted to me for it. I felt that nature had put my lawful inheritance into the purses of the pagods, and I devised a thousand means of recovering my rights. [225] These little china images of gods, with nodding heads, were then a fashionable toy in Paris. _I._--Yes, I know all about your thousand means; you have told me of them, and I have admired them vastly. But with so many resources, why not have tried that of a fine work?... _He._--When I am alone I take up my pen and intend to write; I bite my nails and rub my brow; your humble servant, good-bye, the god is absent. I had convinced myself that I had genius; at the end of the time I discover that I am a fool, a fool, and nothing but a fool. But how is one to feel, to think, to rise to heights, to paint in strong colours, while haunting with such creatures as those whom one must see if one is to live; in the midst of such talk as one has to make and to hear, and such idle gossip: "How charming the boulevard was to-day!" "Have you heard the little Marmotte? Her playing is ravishing." "Mr. So-and-so had the handsomest pair of grays in his carriage that you can possibly imagine." "The beautiful Mrs. So-and-so is beginning to fade; who at the age of five-and-forty would wear a headdress like that?" "Young Such-and-such is covered with diamonds, and she gets them cheap." "You mean she gets them dear." "No, I do not."