at work. Yes, it appears to me that there are some who find production
an easy pleasure, to be set aside or taken up without the least
excitement. They are delighted, they admire themselves, they
cannot write a couple of lines but they find those lines of a rare,
distinguished, matchless quality. Well, as for myself, I bring forth
in anguish, and my offspring seems a horror to me. How can a man
be sufficiently wanting in self-doubt as to believe in himself? It
absolutely amazes me to see men, who furiously deny talent to everybody
else, lose all critical acumen, all common-sense, when it becomes a
question of their own bastard creations. Why, a book is always very
ugly. To like it one mustn't have had a hand in the cooking of it. I say
nothing of the jugsful of insults that are showered upon one. Instead of
annoying, they rather encourage me. I see men who are upset by attacks,
who feel a humiliating craving to win sympathy. It is a simple question
of temperament; some women would die if they failed to please. But, to
my thinking, insult is a very good medicine to take; unpopularity is a
very manly school to be brought up in. Nothing keeps one in such good
health and strength as the hooting of a crowd of imbeciles. It suffices
that a man can say that he has given his life's blood to his work; that
he expects neither immediate justice nor serious attention; that he
works without hope of any kind, and simply because the love of work
beats beneath his skin like his heart, irrespective of any will of his
own. If he can do all this, he may die in the effort with the consoling
illusion that he will be appreciated one day or other. Ah! if the others
only knew how jauntily I bear the weight of their anger. Only there
is my own choler, which overwhelms me; I fret that I cannot live for a
moment happy. What hours of misery I spend, great heavens! from the
very day I begin a novel. During the first chapters there isn't so much
trouble. I have plenty of room before me in which to display genius. But
afterwards I become distracted, and am never satisfied with the daily
task; I condemn the book before it is finished, judging it inferior
to its elders; and I torture myself about certain pages, about certain
sentences, certain words, so that at last the very commas assume an
ugly look, from which I suffer. And when it is finished--ah! when it is
finished, what a relief! Not the enjoyment of the gentleman who exalts
himself in the worshi