On my thirty-seventh birthday I had, as my custom was, been looking through my papers and reflecting that I was still as little known to fame as I had been in my youth, still as lacking in glorious works, great actions, and grand passions, and my hope was gradually departing. That morning, too, an agency to which I was foolish enough to subscribe, had sent me two newspaper cuttings mentioning my name and making unfriendly comments upon my work. A fresh wave of discouragement swept over me, paralyzing the creative energy of the soul, and clearly demonstrating to me my own shortcomings. My communion with my thoughts on that darkening autumn afternoon frightened me, and I took refuge in a means of distraction which was usually successful, a visit to the School of Arms in the Rue Boissy d’Anglais. There I overcame my nerves by a series of exercises performed with all the vigour of which I was capable. A cold bath and a rub down followed by dinner in congenial company and a rubber used to pass the evening. Towards eleven o’clock I could return home without much risk of insomnia. I had carried out the first part of this programme on the first evening of my thirty-seventh year and should have completed it if I had not, on entering the dining-room of my club, met perhaps the oldest of my Parisian comrades, an old school-fellow too, the celebrated novelist and dramatic author, Jacques Molan. “Will you come and dine?” he asked me. “I have a table, do dine with me.” Under any other circumstances, in spite of our long friendship, I should have excused myself. Few personalities weary me so quickly as Jacques. He has combined with faults I detest the quality most lacking in me: the power to impose himself, the audacity of mind, the productive virility, and the self-confidence without which a man is not a great artist. Do the great virtues of genius of necessity bring with them an abuse of the “I,” of which this writer was an extraordinary example?