es. One year, two years went by without the picture reaching
completion. Though sometimes it was almost finished, it was scratched
out the next morning and painted entirely over again.

Ah! what an effort of creation it was, an effort of blood and tears,
filling Claude with agony in his attempt to beget flesh and instil life!
Ever battling with reality, and ever beaten, it was a struggle with the
Angel. He was wearing himself out with this impossible task of making a
canvas hold all nature; he became exhausted at last with the pains
which racked his muscles without ever being able to bring his genius
to fruition. What others were satisfied with, a more or less faithful
rendering, the various necessary bits of trickery, filled him with
remorse, made him as indignant as if in resorting to such practices one
were guilty of ignoble cowardice; and thus he began his work over and
over again, spoiling what was good through his craving to do better.
He would always be dissatisfied with his women--so his friends jokingly
declared--until they flung their arms round his neck. What was lacking
in his power that he could not endow them with life? Very little, no
doubt. Sometimes he went beyond the right point, sometimes he stopped
short of it. One day the words, 'an incomplete genius,' which he
overheard, both flattered and frightened him. Yes, it must be that; he
jumped too far or not far enough; he suffered from a want of nervous
balance; he was afflicted with some hereditary derangement which,
because there were a few grains the more or the less of some substance
in his brain, was making him a lunatic instead of a great man. Whenever
a fit of despair drove him from his studio, whenever he fled from his
work, he now carried about with him that idea of fatal impotence, and
he heard it beating against his skull like the obstinate tolling of a
funeral bell.

His life became wretched. Never had doubt of himself pursued him in that
way before. He disappeared for whole days together; he even stopped out
a whole night, coming back the next morning stupefied, without being
able to say where he had gone. It was thought that he had been tramping
through the outskirts of Paris rather than find himself face to face
with his spoilt work. His sole relief was to flee the moment that work
filled him with shame and hatred, and to remain away until he felt
sufficient courage to face it once more. And not even his wife dared to
question him on his