eyes of her
mother, without the latter suspecting a jot of it; yes, and even of
making her an accomplice. I had hardly begun my career before I
disdained all the vulgar fashions of slipping a _billet-doux_; I
have ten ways of having them taken from me, and out of the number I
venture to flatter myself there are some that are new. I possess in
an especial degree the gift of encouraging a timid young man; I
have secured success for some who had neither wit nor good looks.
If all that was written down, I fancy people would concede me some
genius.

_I._--And would do you singular honour.

_He._--I don't doubt it.

_I._--In your place, I would put those famous methods on paper. It
would be a pity for them to be lost.

_He._--It is true; but you could never suppose how little I think
of method and precepts. He who needs a protocol will never go far.
Your genius reads little, experiments much, and teaches himself.
Look at Caesar, Turenne, Vauban, the Marquise de Tencin, her brother
the cardinal, and the cardinal's secretary, the Abbe Trublet, and
Bouret! Who is it that has given lessons to Bouret? Nobody; 'tis
nature that forms these rare men.

_I._--Well, but you might do this in your lost hours, when the
anguish of your empty stomach, or the weariness of your stomach
overloaded, banishes slumber.

_He._--I'll think of it. It is better to write great things than to
execute small ones. Then the soul rises on wings, the imagination
is kindled; whereas it shrivels in amazement at the applause which
the absurd public lavishes so perversely on that mincing creature
of a Dangeville, who plays so flatly, who walks the stage nearly
bent double, who stares affectedly and incessantly into the eyes of
every one she talks to, and who takes her grimaces for finesse, and
her little strut for grace; or on that emphatic Clairon, who
becomes more studied, more pretentious, more elaborately heavy,
than I can tell you. That imbecile of a pit claps hands to the
echo, and never sees that we are a mere worsted ball of
daintinesses ('Tis true the ball grows a trifle big, but what does
it matter?), that we have the finest skin, the finest eyes, the
prettiest bill; little feeling inside, in truth; a step that is not
exactly light, but which for all that is