"The fact is, you have much to learn; but you are young, you will learn." "Tell me what needs to be done in fiction?" "Everything, just as in the drama." "But I thought we had some excellent novels." "What have you read in the way of novels?" "Those of Lesage, Madame Cottin and Pigault-Lebrun." "What effect did they have on you?" "Lesage's novels amused me; Madame Cottin's made me cry; Pigault-Lebrun's made me laugh." "Then you have not read either Goethe, or Walter Scott, or Cooper?" "I have not read either Goethe, or Walter Scott, or Cooper." "Well, read them." "And when I have read them, what shall I do?" "Make Corinthian bronze all the time; only, try to put in a slight ingredient they all lack." "What is that?" "Passion.... Goethe gives us poetry; Walter Scott character studies; Cooper the mysterious grandeur of prairies, forests and oceans; but you will look in vain for passion among them." "So, a man who could be a poet like Goethe, an observer like Walter Scott, clever at description like Cooper, with the addition of a touch of passion ...?" "Ah! such a man would be almost perfect." "Which are the first three works I ought to read of those three masters?" "Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_, Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_ and Cooper's _Spy."_ "I read _Jean Sbogar_ through last night." "Oh, that is another story altogether." "What kind is it?" "It belongs to the _genre_ style of novel. But France is not waiting for that." "What is she waiting for?" "She is waiting for the historical novel." "But the history of France is so dull!" Lassagne raised his head and looked at me. "What!" he exclaimed. "The history of France is so dull!" I repeated. "How do you know that?" I blushed. "People have told me it is." "Poor boy! People have told you!... Read for yourself and then you will have an opinion." "What must I read?" "Why, there is a whole world of it: Joinville, Froissart, Monstrelet, Châtelain, Juvénal des Ursins, Montluc, Saulx-Tavannes, l'Estoile, Cardinal de Retz, Saint-Simon, Villars, Madame de la Fayette, Richelieu ... and so I could go on." "How many volumes do those make?" "Probably between two and three hundred." "And you have read them?" "Certainly." "And I must read them?" "If you wish to write novels, you must not only read them, you must get them off by heart." "Why, you frighten me! I should not be able to write a word for two or three years!" "Oh! longer than that, or you will write ignorantly." "Oh, my God! what a lot of time I have lost!" "You must retrieve it." "You will aid me, will you not?" "What about the office?" "Oh! I will read and study at night; I will work at the office, and we can have a chat from time to time...." "Yes, like to-day's; but we have talked too much." "One word more. You have told me what I ought to study in the drama?" "Yes." "In romance?" "Yes." "In history?" "Yes." "Well, now, in poetry, what ought I to study?" "First, what have you read?"