The unhappy man had finished his formidable novel. He had written twenty-seven volumes under the wonderful title, "Bonjour, Monsieur!" But at the end of his labor, frightened at having spoken at such length, he did not dare the trial of the reading. Then he set to work to abridge, to cut, to condense. By this means he had, little by little, reduced the book first to ten volumes, then to two, then to one. Finally, he had epitomized everything into a story of one hundred pages. Ferdinand Octave Bruat was then eighty years old. One friend alone remained to him, the confidant of his undying ambition. "Publish your story," said his friend: "I assure you it will make a sensation in the world. It is the paragon of modernity." "No, no," cried Bruat, "I have not yet condensed it sufficiently. You see, I know myself; I know the public. To hold it, to leave something to posterity, to create a lasting work, one must be intense. To be intense--that is everything. A hundred pages! That is too prolix. In my first inspiration I found the true form for my thought--a form short, precise, chiseled, straight, fitting the idea like a cuirass; I mean the sonnet. Oh! if I could recall the marvelous sonnet of my youth! But it has been abandoned too long. To-day I will do better. I will put into it my experience, my life. Could I but live ten years longer, men would see what fourteen lines could express, and posterity would know our modern life, so vast, in this poem so small, as one inhales a subtle essence prisoned in a diamond." He lived those ten years, and the story was abandoned like the novel and the drama; and slowly, letter by letter, word by word, line by line, was written the colossal sonnet which was to contain everything. At ninety-two Ferdinand Octave Bruat lay on his deathbed. His faithful friend was at his side, weeping, sobbing, in despair at seeing so high an intelligence laid so low. "Weep not, my friend," said Bruat, "weep not. I die, but my idea dies not with me. I have destroyed my first sonnet, I have burnt my drama, I have burnt, one by one, the twenty-seven volumes of my novel: the ten, then the five, then the two, then the one and only, then the story. But, at last, I have created my masterpiece." "The sonnet! the immortal sonnet! Give it me! You have not read it to me, but I know that it is a masterpiece. Give it me; I will publish it. If necessary, I will ruin myself that it may be written on gold in letters of diamonds. It merits it, it will dazzle the world. Give it me!" "The sonnet! What sonnet?" stammered Bruat, gasping for breath. "Your great sonnet!" sighed the friend, who saw the delirium of death approaching. "Ah! yes, yes, the sonnet, the great sonnet. Too great, my friend, too long! It must be made more intense." "What! have you burnt your last sonnet also?"