an? I never knew any one who thought of conquering
Paris;--no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three
provincials.

* * * * *

You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of breaking
them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for the pleasure
of imagining them as Venuses.

* * * * *

Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in
favour of Lefevre, and hoped that every one there would vote for Lefevre.
Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of _Le grand art, le nu_, and
Lefevre's unswerving fidelity to _le nu_ ... elegance, refinement, an
echo of ancient Greece: and then,--what do you think? when he had exhausted
all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to Lefevre, he
said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife and eight
children." Is it not monstrous?

* * * * *

But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole world
in conformity with your aestheticisms ... a vain dream, and if realised it
would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are the basis of
existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to such interests
as these meet with response ... it will be so till the end of time.

* * * * *

And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began two
years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the _Figaro_ as much
as you thought they should be.

* * * * *

Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot
exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not
quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But
a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was,
what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way.
Where, then, is the dream, the _au dela_? There is none. I say in
marriage an _au dela_ is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble
and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of
women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that
evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The
monosyllable which epitomises the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard
not, thought not there--only the nightingale-