ou opinion."

"No doubt; and well-founded it is. Do you know the man?"

"No; he is never seen anywhere."

"Exactly; he is a bear, but a premeditated bear; a reflecting and
determined bear."

"I don't see," said Joseph Bridau, "why this savage inclination for
solitude should be so bad for an artist. What does a sculptor gain by
frequenting salons where gentlemen and ladies have taken to a habit of
wearing clothes?"

"Well, in the first place, a sculptor can amuse himself in a salon;
and that will keep him from taking up a mania, or becoming a visionary;
besides, he sees the world as it is, and learns that 1839 is not the
fifteenth nor the sixteenth century."

"Has Dorlange any such delusions?" asked Emile Blondet.

"He? he will talk to you by the hour of returning to the life of the
great artists of the middle ages with the universality of their studies
and their knowledge, and that frightfully laborious life of theirs;
which may help us to understand the habits and ways of a semi-barbarous
society, but can never exist in ours. He does not see, the innocent
dreamer, that civilization, by strangely complicating all social
conditions, absorbs for business, for interests, for pleasures, thrice
as much time as a less advanced society required for the same purposes.
Look at the savage in his hut; he hasn't anything to do. Whereas we,
with the Bourse, the opera, the newspapers, parliamentary discussions,
salons, elections, railways, the Cafe de Paris and the National
Guard--what time have we, if you please, to go to work?"

"Beautiful theory of a do-nothing!" cried Emile Blondet, laughing.

"No, my dear fellow, I am talking truth. The curfew no longer rings at
nine o'clock. Only last night my concierge Ravenouillet gave a party;
and I think I made a great mistake in not accepting the indirect
invitation he gave me to be present."

"Nevertheless," said Joseph Bridau, "it is certain that if a man doesn't
mingle in the business, the interests, and the pleasures of our
epoch, he can make out of the time he thus saves a pretty capital.
Independently of his orders, Dorlange has, I think, a little competence;
so that nothing hinders him from arranging his life to suit himself."

"But you see he goes to the opera; for it was there he found his duel.
Besides, you are all wrong in representing him as isolated from this
contemporaneous life, for I happen to know that he is just about to
harness himself to it by the most ratt