The two other men of letters I knew best, Julien Dorsenne and Claude Larcher, were most certainly not tainted with egotism. They were modest violets, holy and timid violets, small and humble in the grass by the side of Jacques. “His” books, “his” plays, “his” enemies, “his” plans, “his” profits, “his” mistresses, “his” health, existed for himself alone, and he talked of no one but himself. That was the reason Claude said: “How can you ever expect Molan to be sad? Every morning he gazes at himself in the looking-glass and thinks: 'How happy I am to dress as the first author of the day!’” But Claude was slightly envious of Jacques, and that was one of the latter’s superiorities; through his self-conceit he was ignorant of any feeling like envy. He did not prefer himself to others, he ignored them. The explanation of this mystery was: with his almost unhealthy vanity only equalled by his insensibility, this fellow had only to sit down with paper in front of him, and beneath his pen came and went, spoke and acted, enjoyed and suffered passionate and eloquent beings, creatures of flesh and blood full of love and hate—in a word, real men and women. A whole world was produced, so real, so intense, so amusing, or so moving in turn, that even I am filled with admiration every time I read his books. But I know it is only illusion, only magic, only a sleight-of-hand trick; I know that the spiritual father of these heroes and heroines is a perfect literary monster, with a flask of ink in the place of a heart. I am wrong. He still has there the passionate love of success. What marvellous tact, what fingering in the playing upon that surprising organ, public taste! Jacques is the accomplished type of what we call in studio slang a “profiteur,” the artist who excels in appropriating another’s work, and displaying it to the best advantage! For example, at the period of his rise, Naturalism was in the ascendant. Zola’s admirable _Assommoir_ had just appeared, and almost immediately came the extraordinary studies of peasants and girls which revealed to the world of letters the name of the unhappy Maupassant. Jacques realized that no great success was possible in any other form of novel, and at the same time he divined that after these two masters he must not touch trivial and popular environment. The reader was satiated with that. Molan then conceived the idea, which amounted to genius, of applying to high life the results of the bitter observation and brutal realism so popular then. His four first volumes of novels and short stories were thus, the description being bestowed upon them on their first appearance, pomaded with Zola and perfumed with Maupassant. Epigrams are epigrams, and success is success. Molan’s success was very rapid, it may be remembered.