"Ah! you are wrong, Thérèse," rejoined Laurent earnestly. "The opposite of what you say is true: it is the man who suffers in the artist and stifles him. I do not know what to do with myself, you see. Ennui is killing me. Ennui because of what? you will ask. Because of everything! I cannot, like you, be tranquil and attentive during six hours of work, take a turn in the garden and toss bread to the sparrows, then go back to work again for four hours, and in the evening smile on two or three tiresome creatures, like myself for example, until it is time to go to sleep. My sleep is broken, my work is feverish, my walks are agitated. Invention bewilders me and makes me tremble; execution, always too slow to suit me, makes my heart beat violently, and I weep and have to exert myself not to shriek when I give birth to an idea which intoxicates me, but which I am mortally ashamed of and disgusted with the next morning. If I change it, it is worse, for it leaves me; it is much better to forget it and wait for another; but that arrives in such confusion and of such enormous proportions, that my poor frame cannot hold it. It weighs upon me and tortures me until it has assumed measurable proportions and the other pain returns, the pain of childbirth, a real physical suffering which I cannot describe. And that is how my life goes when I allow myself to be vanquished by this giant of an artist who is within me, and from whom the poor devil who is speaking to you removes one by one, by the forceps of his will, meagre, half-dead mice! So it is much better, Thérèse, that I should live as I have chosen to live, that I should commit excesses of all sorts, and kill this gnawing worm which my fellows modestly call their inspiration, but which I call my infirmity, pure and simple." "It is decided then," said Thérèse, smiling; "the die is cast, and you are trying to drive your intelligence to suicide? Well, I do not believe a word of it. If some one should propose to you to-morrow to change places with Prince D---- or Comte de S----, with the millions of the first and the fine horses of the other, you would say, referring to your poor despised palette: _Give me back my love_!"