But let us run through those two years from memory, and also to prove that I have not much to regret in their employment. First of all, that same evening came my hurried flight to Marseilles, then the following day I sailed for Tuscany by one of the boats which call at Bastia eighteen hours later and then at Leghorn. I have always preferred this way of entering dear Italy without halts by the way, besides which this journey did away with the possibility of telegrams or letters for at least half a week, from Sunday to Thursday. Would Camille Favier leave Tournade and resume her position as Jacques’ mistress or not? Would the latter follow up his absurd project of a duel with his new rival? Would he not extend the folly of his humiliated self-conceit to the length of having an affair with Pierre de Bonnivet as well? So weary was I that I no longer wished to set myself these problems. O God, how weary I was! In parenthesis, I was very wrong in setting myself these problems, for to talk like my friend Claude, who used to quote with such delight a phrase from Beyle upon the execution of one of his heroes: “Everything went off simply and decently.” I found out that detail afterwards, but much later. At the time I remained in an uncertainty which I had the wisdom to prolong. But four months later, opening by chance a French paper in a hotel in Perugia, I saw that Mademoiselle Camille Favier was to replace Mademoiselle Berthe Vigneau in the chief part of a comedy by Dorsenné; that Molan was publishing a collection of his own plays; that a horse of M. Tournade’s, Butterfly, had won some big race; that at a very select gathering at M. de Senneterre’s Madam X——, Madam Y——, Madam Z——, and Madam de Bonnivet were noticed. All this news was packed into this one issue of the paper like raisins in a pudding. It sufficed to prove to me that this corner of the world, like all corners of the world, was still itself, and that there was a reassuring lack of important events. But on my part, was I not imitating myself by copying first a part of the fresco of Spinello Aretino on Saint Ephése, then the Salomé of Fra Filippo Lippo at Prato, and going on with a study after the Piero della Francesca by Arezzo? Then I was preparing to go to Ancona; afterwards to Brindisi; to visit Athens and Olympia, to feast with new visions the most sterile and insatiable of dilettantisms. When I think of that furious work of vain culture, I repeat to myself another phrase which Dorsenné was always quoting, the exclamation of the dying Bolivar so poignant with lassitude: “Those who have served the Revolution have ploughed the sea!” Have those who have served art as I have served it accomplished more useful work? Then what is it?