True, there exists no prison (intellectual, that is) from which a vigorous mind cannot escape; and nothing that incites to rebellion is definitively dangerous--although rebellion may in certain cases distort a character--driving it in upon itself, turning it to contradiction and stubbornness, and impiously prompting it to deceit; moreover the child who resists the influence of his family, wears out the first freshness of his energy in the attempt to free himself. But also the education which thwarts a child strengthens him by the very fact of hampering. The most lamentable victims of all are the victims of adulation. What force of character is needed to detest the things that flatter us! How many parents I have seen (the mother in especial) who delight in encouraging their children’s silliest repugnances, their most unjust prejudices, their failures to understand, their unreasonable antipathies.... At table: “You’d better leave that; can’t you see, it’s a bit of fat? Don’t eat that skin. That’s not cooked enough....” Out of doors, at night: “Oh, a bat!... Cover your head quickly; it’ll get into your hair.” Etc., etc.... According to them, beetles bite, grasshoppers sting, earthworms give spots ... and such-like absurdities in every domain, intellectual, moral, etc. In the suburban train the day before yesterday, as I was coming back from Auteuil, I heard a young mother whispering to a little girl of ten, whom she was petting: “You and me, darling, me and you--the others may go hang!” (Oh, yes! I knew they were working people, but the people too have a right to our indignation. The husband was sitting in the corner of the carriage reading the paper--quiet, resigned, not even a cuckold, I dare say.) Is it possible to conceive a more insidious poison? It is to bastards that the future belongs. How full of meaning is the expression “a natural child”! The bastard alone has the right to be natural. Family egoism ... hardly less hideous than personal egoism. _Nov. 6th._--I have never been able to invent anything. But I set myself in front of reality like a painter, who should say to his model: “Take up such and such an attitude; put on such and such an expression.” I can make the models which society furnishes me act as I please, if I am acquainted with their springs; or at any rate I can put such and such problems before them to solve in their own way, so that I learn my lesson from their reactions. It is my novelist’s instinct that is constantly pricking me on to intervene--to influence the course of their destiny. If I had more imagination, I should be able to spin invention intrigues; as it is, I provoke them, observe the actors, and then work at their dictation.