“Yes, yes; I’m beginning to see,” said Sophroniska politely, though Laura’s laugh was very near conquering her. “But you know it’s always dangerous to represent intellectuals in novels. The public is bored by them; one only manages to make them say absurdities and they give an air of abstraction to everything they touch.” “And then I see exactly what will happen,” cried Laura; “in this novelist of yours you won’t be able to help painting yourself.” She had lately adopted in talking to Edouard a jeering tone which astonished herself and upset Edouard all the more that he saw a reflection of it in Bernard’s mocking eyes. Edouard protested: “No, no. I shall take care to make him very disagreeable.” Laura was fairly started. “That’s just it; everybody will recognize you,” she said, bursting into such hearty laughter that the others were caught by its infection. “And is the plan of the book made up?” enquired Sophroniska, trying to regain her seriousness. “Of course not.” “What do you mean? Of course not!” “You ought to understand that it’s essentially out of the question for a book of this kind to have a plan. Everything would be falsified if anything were settled beforehand. I wait for reality to dictate to me.” “But I thought you wanted to abandon reality.” “My novelist wants to abandon it; but I shall continually bring him back to it. In fact that will be the subject; the struggle between the facts presented by reality and the ideal reality.” The illogical nature of his remarks was flagrant--painfully obvious to everyone. It was clear that Edouard housed in his brain two incompatible requirements and that he was wearing himself out in the desire to reconcile them. “Have you got on far with it?” asked Sophroniska politely. “It depends on what you mean by far. To tell the truth, of the actual book not a line has been written. But I have worked at it a great deal. I think of it every day and incessantly. I work at it in a very odd manner, as I’ll tell you. Day by day in a note-book, I note the state of the novel in my mind; yes, it’s a kind of diary that I keep as one might do of a child.... That is to say, that instead of contenting myself with resolving each difficulty as it presents itself (and every work of art is only the sum or the product of the solutions of a quantity of small difficulties), I set forth each of these difficulties and study it. My note-book contains, as it were, a running criticism of my novel--or rather of the novel in general. Just think how interesting such a note-book kept by Dickens or Balzac would be; if we had the diary of the _Education Sentimentale_ or of _The Brothers Karamazof_!--the story of the work--of its gestation! How thrilling it would be ... more interesting than the work itself....” Edouard vaguely hoped that someone would ask him to read these notes. But not one of the three showed the slightest curiosity. Instead: