So he accepted the use of Schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at Schuffenecker's attempt to paint. Later on we find him accepting similarly Van Gogh's hospitality, irritating Van Gogh to the pitch of madness, and--after Van Gogh's death--sending to Bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed exhibition of Van Gogh's pictures on the ground that Van Gogh was only a madman. And later still, when Van Gogh's reputation began to rise in public esteem, Gauguin declared that Van Gogh had learned from him and had called him master. Such traits are deplorable, if we consider Gauguin as an ordinary man. But if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. Gauguin sinned in good company, with Michaelangelo who thought Raphael had plotted against him, and with Berlioz who has left on record his opinion of Wagner's music. To understand Gauguin one must share to some extent the opinion of Flaubert--which, incidentally, Browning almost endorses--that the man is nothing, the work is all. It is not easy to read between the lines of Gauguin's self-imposed reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. If we attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was almost without friends. Van Gogh he loved without understanding. Daniel de Monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. The shadowy figure of Tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly moved him. Puvis de Chavannes, an artist to whom Gauguin owed much, similarly held himself aloof from all. So did Degas and Ingres, two other artists of Gauguin's stamp. So in ancient Greece did Sophocles. The truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on the surface of things. One can only sympathize with them, share their imaginings through long and patient study. Gauguin was not altogether strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. But his work increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. Schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in Paris just long enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy Manet's _Olympia_, a picture he greatly admired. Then once more he took the road to Brittany. V Despite the fact that Gauguin had, before leaving Paris, held his first one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation was not improved. He was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined at Martinique, remained bad. He was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. In Gauguin's case the chances were very small. He was crushed by his own impotence to realize the art he had dreamed.