or
I have to copy and sign them."

Edouard hastened away to his task, while the novelist went and ordered
a second article in the rue de Navarin.

The first article appeared two days later in the _Siecle_, and was
signed, strangely enough, neither by the little man nor by the great
man, but by a third person known in Bohemia for his tom-cat and
opera-comique amours (Gerard de Nerval). The second friend was big,
idle, and lymphatic. Moreover, he had no ideas; he knew only how to
thread words together like pearls; and, as it takes longer to heap up
three long columns of words than to make a volume of ideas, his article
appeared only several days later in the _Presse_.

The twelve-hundred-francs debt was paid. Each one was perfectly
satisfied, except the editor, who was not quite. And this was how a
man of genius discharged his liabilities.

Balzac's individuality is one of those that inevitably raise the
question as to how far genius and creative imagination are made up of
will-power, how far what is produced by great talent is sub-conscious
inspiration virtually independent of effort. Although Shelley confines
his assertions on the subject to poetry, he nevertheless seems to
imply that creation of any kind has little to do with the will. "The
mind in creation," he says, "is as a fading coal, which some invisible
influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness;
this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades
and changes as it is developed, and the ocnsciuso portions of our
natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could
this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is
impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but, when
composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline." The case
of Balzac suggests that the sort of genius Shelley had in his thought
is the exception rather than the rule. The author of the _Comedy_
himself asserts that great talents do not exist without great will.
"You have ideas in your brain?" he says. "Just so. I also. . . . What
is the use of that which one has in one's soul if no use is made of
it?" . . . "To conceive is to enjoy; it is to smoke enchanted
cigarettes; but, without the execution, everything goes away in dream
and smoke." . . . "Constant work is the law of art as it is that of
life; for art is creation idealized. Consequently, great artists and
poets do not wait for orders or custome