ing remains--he is almost Jacques Coeur. Did
Robespierre practise? Danton was an idler who waited. But who, moreover
has ever felt envious of the figures of Danton and Robespierre, however
lofty they were? These men of affairs, _par excellence_, attract money
to them, and hoard it in order to ally themselves with aristocratic
families. If the ambition of the working-man is that of the small
tradesman, here, too, are the same passions. The type of this class
might be either an ambitious bourgeois, who, after a life of privation
and continual scheming, passes into the Council of State as an ant
passes through a chink; or some newspaper editor, jaded with intrigue,
whom the king makes a peer of France--perhaps to revenge himself on the
nobility; or some notary become mayor of his parish: all people crushed
with business, who, if they attain their end, are literally _killed_ in
its attainment. In France the usage is to glorify wigs. Napoleon, Louis
XVI., the great rulers, alone have always wished for young men to fulfil
their projects.

Above this sphere the artist world exists. But here, too, the faces
stamped with the seal of originality are worn, nobly indeed, but worn,
fatigued, nervous. Harassed by a need of production, outrun by their
costly fantasies, worn out by devouring genius, hungry for pleasure, the
artists of Paris would all regain by excessive labor what they have lost
by idleness, and vainly seek to reconcile the world and glory, money
and art. To begin with, the artist is ceaselessly panting under his
creditors; his necessities beget his debts, and his debts require of
him his nights. After his labor, his pleasure. The comedian plays till
midnight, studies in the morning, rehearses at noon; the sculptor is
bent before his statue; the journalist is a marching thought, like the
soldier when at war; the painter who is the fashion is crushed with
work, the painter with no occupation, if he feels himself to be a man of
genius, gnaws his entrails. Competition, rivalry, calumny assail talent.
Some, in desperation, plunge into the abyss of vice, others die young
and unknown because they have discounted their future too soon. Few of
these figures, originally sublime, remain beautiful. On the other hand,
the flagrant beauty of their heads is not understood. An artist's face
is always exorbitant, it is always above or below the conventional lines
of what fools call the _beau-ideal_. What power is it that destroys
them