constitution.
However, his disorder was not merely a personal affair, he was
the victim of our period. Yes, our generation has been soaked in
romanticism, and we have remained impregnated with it. It is in
vain that we wash ourselves and take baths of reality, the stain is
obstinate, and all the scrubbing in the world won't take it away.'

Bongrand smiled. 'Oh! as for romanticism,' said he, 'I'm up to my ears
in it. It has fed my art, and, indeed, I'm impenitent. If it be true
that my final impotence is due to that, well, after all, what does it
matter? I can't deny the religion of my artistic life. However, your
remark is quite correct; you other fellows, you are rebellious sons.
Claude, for instance, with his big nude woman amid the quays, that
extravagant symbol--'

'Ah, that woman!' interrupted Sandoz, 'it was she who throttled him! If
you knew how he worshipped her! I was never able to cast her out of
him. And how can one possibly have clear perception, a solid,
properly-balanced brain when such phantasmagoria sprouts forth from your
skull? Though coming after yours, our generation is too imaginative to
leave healthy work behind it. Another generation, perhaps two, will be
required before people will be able to paint and write logically, with
the high, pure simplicity of truth. Truth, nature alone, is the right
basis, the necessary guide, outside of which madness begins; and the
toiler needn't be afraid of flattening his work, his temperament is
there, which will always carry him sufficiently away. Does any one
dream of denying personality, the involuntary thumb-stroke which deforms
whatever we touch and constitutes our poor creativeness?'

However, he turned his head, and involuntarily added:

'Hallo! what's burning? Are they lighting bonfires here?'

The procession had turned on reaching the Rond Point, where the ossuary
was situated--the common vault gradually filled with all the remnants
removed from the graves, and the stone slab of which, in the centre of
a circular lawn, disappeared under a heap of wreaths, deposited there
by the pious relatives of those who no longer had an individual
resting-place. And, as the hearse rolled slowly to the left in
transversal Avenue No. 2, there had come a sound of crackling, and thick
smoke had risen above the little plane trees bordering the path. Some
distance ahead, as the party approached, they could see a large pile of
earthy things beginning to burn, and they en