"My despised palette? You do not understand me, Thérèse! It is an instrument of glory, I know that perfectly well; and what people call glory is the esteem accorded to talent, purer and more delicious than that accorded to titles and wealth. Therefore it is a very great privilege and a very great pleasure for me to say to myself: 'I am only a poor, penniless gentleman, and my equals, who do not derogate from their station, lead the lives of gamekeepers and foregather with gleaners of dead wood, whom they pay in fire-wood. But I have derogated, I have adopted a profession, and the result is that when I, at twenty-four years of age, ride a hired horse among the richest and noblest of Paris, mounted on horses worth ten thousand francs, if there happens to be a man of taste or a woman of intelligence among the idlers seated along the Champs-Elysées, I am stared at and pointed out, and not the others----' You laugh! do you think me very vain?" "No, but very like a child, thank God! You won't kill yourself." "Why, I have not the slightest inclination to kill myself. I love myself as much as other men love themselves; indeed, I love myself with all my heart, I swear! But I say that my palette, the instrument of my glory, is the instrument of my torture, since I cannot work without suffering. Thereupon I seek in dissipation, not death of body or mind, but to fatigue and tranquillize my nerves. This is the whole of it, Thérèse. What is there in that that is not reasonable? I cannot work decently except when I am ready to drop with fatigue." "That is true," said Thérèse, "I have noticed it, and I wonder at it as an anomaly; but I am very much afraid that method of working will kill you; indeed, I cannot imagine how it can be otherwise. Stay, answer one question: did you begin life by hard work and abstinence, and did you feel the necessity of seeking distraction for the sake of rest?" "No; just the opposite. When I left school, I was very fond of painting, but did not expect that I should ever be compelled to paint. I believed that I was rich. My father died leaving only about thirty thousand francs, which I made haste to devour, in order to have at least one year of luxury in my life. When I found that I was stranded, I took to the brush; I have been pulled to pieces, and lauded to the clouds, which, in our day, constitutes the greatest possible success, and now I lead a life of luxury and pleasure from time to time, for a few months or a few weeks, so long as the money lasts. When it is all gone, I have no fault to find, for I am always at the end of my strength and my desires alike. Thereupon I go back to my work, frantically, with mingled sorrow and ecstasy, and when the work is finished, idleness and extravagance begin again." "Have you been leading this life long?" "Nothing can be long at my age! About three years."