Soon after, certain indications made him realize that the reader’s taste was changing again, that it was turning in the direction of analysis and psychological study. Then he abruptly changed his methods and we had the three books which have done most for his reputation: _Martyre Intime_, _Cœur Brisé_ and _Anciennes Amours_. In them he preserved the faults usual in imitators: long dissertations, the philosophic treatment of little love adventures, and particularly, the abuse of worldly adornment. He had originated naturalism in high life. He introduced analysis of the poor, humble and middle classes. Afterwards, when virtue suddenly appeared to be the order of the day, we had from his pen the only novel of the period which rivalled in honest success, L’abbé Constantin. It was _Blanche Comme Un Lys_. When social problems became the critic’s copy, Molan once more changed his methods and wrote the novel on a working-class family called _Une Épopée de ce temps_, a work of imagination in two volumes, of which 65,000 copies were sold. See the vanity of æsthetic theories! All these books were conceived with different principles of art. Through them we could follow the history of the variations of fashion. Not one of them is sincere in the real sense of the word, and all of them have in an equal degree that colour of human truth which seems in this wayward writer an unconscious gift. The same gift he displayed, when fearing to weary his readers by an abuse of the novel, he began to write plays. He wrote _Adéle_, a great success at the Français; _La Vaincue_, at the Odéon was another, and the newspapers had informed me of his fresh success at the Vaudeville, with an enigmatically entitled comedy, _La Duchesse Blue_. Now the fact that we were at school together proves that this enormous output: ten volumes of fiction, two of short stories, a collection of verses, and three plays was produced in sixteen years. Jacques, too, lived while he worked like this. He had mistresses, made necessary journeys which allowed him to truthfully write in his prefaces sentences like this: “When I picked anemones in the gardens of the Villa Pamphili!” or like this: “I, too, offered up my prayer on the Acropolis”; or again: “Like the bull I saw kneel down to die in the bull ring at Seville.” I have quoted these phrases from memory. Besides all this, the animal looked after his relatives and his investments, and preserved his gaiety and youthful appetite. I had proof of that the evening I mechanically dined with him; in spite of my secret antipathy dominated by the suggestion of vitality emanating from every one of his gestures. We were no sooner seated than he asked me— “What wine do you prefer, champagne or Burgundy? They are both very good here.” “I think that Eau de Vals will do for me,” I replied.