g.'

While waiting for the train to arrive, they went on chatting. Sandoz
explained his ideas on marriage, which, in middle-class fashion, he
considered an indispensable condition for good work, substantial orderly
labour, among great modern producers. The theory of woman being a
destructive creature--one who killed an artist, pounded his heart, and
fed upon his brain--was a romantic idea against which facts protested.
Besides, as for himself, he needed an affection that would prove the
guardian of his tranquillity, a loving home, where he might shut himself
up, so as to devote his whole life to the huge work which he ever dreamt
of. And he added that everything depended upon a man's choice--that
he believed he had found what he had been looking for, an orphan,
the daughter of petty tradespeople, without a penny, but handsome and
intelligent. For the last six months, after resigning his clerkship, he
had embraced journalism, by which he gained a larger income. He had just
moved his mother to a small house at Batignolles, where the three would
live together--two women to love him, and he strong enough to provide
for the household.

'Get married, old man,' said Claude. 'One should act according to one's
feelings. And good-bye, for here's your train. Don't forget your promise
to come and see us again.'

Sandoz returned very often. He dropped in at odd times whenever his
newspaper work allowed him, for he was still free, as he was not to
be married till the autumn. Those were happy days, whole afternoons
of mutual confidences when all their old determination to secure fame
revived.

One day, while Sandoz was alone with Claude on an island of the Seine,
both of them lying there with their eyes fixed on the sky, he told the
painter of his vast ambition, confessed himself aloud.

'Journalism, let me tell you, is only a battle-ground. A man must live,
and he has to fight to do so. Then, again, that wanton, the Press,
despite the unpleasant phases of the profession, is after all a
tremendous power, a resistless weapon in the hands of a fellow with
convictions. But if I am obliged to avail myself of journalism, I don't
mean to grow grey in it! Oh, dear no! And, besides, I've found what I
wanted, a machine that'll crush one with work, something I'm going to
plunge into, perhaps never to come out of it.'

Silence reigned amid the foliage, motionless in the dense heat. He
resumed speaking more slowly and in jerky phrases: