nothing more than an accident, in which the passing cur,
even the stones of the roads, would complete and explain us. In sum, the
grand whole, without low or high, or clean or unclean, such as it indeed
is in reality. It is certainly to science that poets and novelists ought
to address themselves, for it is the only possible source of inspiration
to-day. But what are we to borrow from it? How are we to march in its
company? The moment I begin to think about that sort of thing I feel
that I am floundering. Ah, if I only knew, what a series of books I
would hurl at the heads of the crowd!'

He also became silent. The previous winter he had published his first
book: a series of little sketches, brought from Plassans, among which
only a few rougher notes indicated that the author was a mutineer, a
passionate lover of truth and power. And lately he had been feeling his
way, questioning himself while all sorts of confused ideas throbbed in
his brain. At first, smitten with the thought of undertaking something
herculean, he had planned a genesis of the universe, in three phases or
parts; the creation narrated according to science; mankind supervening
at the appointed hour and playing its part in the chain of beings and
events; then the future--beings constantly following one another, and
finishing the creation of the world by the endless labour of life. But
he had calmed down in presence of the venturesome hypotheses of this
third phase; and he was now looking out for a more restricted, more
human framework, in which, however, his vast ambition might find room.

'Ah, to be able to see and paint everything,' exclaimed Claude, after a
long interval. 'To have miles upon miles of walls to cover, to decorate
the railway stations, the markets, the municipal offices, everything
that will be built, when architects are no longer idiots. Only strong
heads and strong muscles will be wanted, for there will be no lack of
subjects. Life such as it runs about the streets, the life of the
rich and the poor, in the market places, on the race-courses, on the
boulevards, in the populous alleys; and every trade being plied, and
every passion portrayed in full daylight, and the peasants, too, and the
beasts of the fields and the landscapes--ah! you'll see it all, unless I
am a downright brute. My very hands are itching to do it. Yes! the whole
of modern life! Frescoes as high as the Pantheon! A series of canvases
big enough to burst the Louvre!'