The resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. Gauguin returned to Paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. An auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. On his return from Tahiti, Gauguin had met August Strindberg, then living in Paris. Strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a time the two men had lived together. Gauguin now applied to him for a preface to the sale catalog. The following letter was Strindberg's response and in its words we read intellectual Europe's complaint against Gauguin: "You insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which I wrote in remembrance of the winter 1894-5, when we were living here, behind the Institute, not far from the Pantheon, more important still, close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse! I would have willingly given you this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of Oceania, where you wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a breathing space, but I feel myself in an equivocal position from the outset, and I respond immediately to your request by an 'I cannot' or, more brutally, by an 'I will not.' ... "I cannot grasp your art and I cannot love it--I know that this avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. Perhaps with reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate a super-annuated style of painting. ... "It was of Puvis de Chavannes that I thought last night, when to the southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, I saw on the walls of your studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. I saw trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by Cuvier and men which only you can create. "A sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no God can live--Sir, said I in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, but I am not delighted in the midst of your creation. It is too sunny for me; I prefer more chiaroscuro. And in your paradise there lives an Eve who is not my ideal, because truly I, too, have a feminine ideal or two! "This morning, I went to the Luxembourg gallery to look at Chavannes, who always comes back to my mind. I contemplated with a profound sympathy his picture of the Poor Fisherman, so attentively occupied in watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, and slumbering child. That is beautiful. But it seemed to me this Fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. For I hate Christ and all crowns of thorns. You understand that I hate them. I do not desire this pitiful God who accepts blows. My God is rather Vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men.