curiosity of the crowd."

"That is," said Des Hermies, "a veritable prostitution. To advertise a
thing for sale is to accept the degrading familiarities of the first
comer."

"But our impenitent pride--and also our need of the miserable sous--make
it impossible for us to keep our manuscripts sheltered from the asses.
Art ought to be--like one's beloved--out of reach, out of the world. Art
and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul. So when one of
my books appears, I let go of it with horror. I get as far as possible
from the environment in which it may be supposed to circulate. I care
very little about a book of mine until years afterward, when it has
disappeared from all the shop windows and is out of print. Briefly, I am
in no hurry to finish the history of Gilles de Rais, which,
unfortunately, is getting finished in spite of me. I don't give a damn
how it is received."

"Are you doing anything this evening?"

"No. Why?"

"Shall we dine together?"

"Certainly."

And while Durtal was putting on his shoes, Des Hermies remarked, "To me
the striking thing about the so-called literary world of this epoch is
its cheap hypocrisy. What a lot of laziness, for instance, that word
dilettante has served to cover."

"Yes, it's a great old alibi. But it is confounding to see that the
critic who today decrees himself the title of dilettante accepts it as a
term of praise and does not even suspect that he is slapping himself.
The whole thing can be resolved into syllogism:

"The dilettante has no personal temperament, since he objects to nothing
and likes everything.

"Whoever has no personal temperament has no talent."

"Then," rejoined Des Hermies, putting on his hat, "an author who boasts
of being a dilettante, confesses by that very thing that he is no
author?"

"Exactly."

CHAPTER XVII

Toward the end of the afternoon Durtal quit work and went up to the
towers of Saint Sulpice.

He found Carhaix in bed in a chamber connecting with the one in which
they were in the habit of dining. These rooms were very similar, with
their walls or unpapered stone, and with their vaulted ceilings, only,
the bedroom was darker. The window opened its half-wheel not on the
place Saint Sulpice but on the rear of the church, whose roof prevented
any light from getting in. This cell was furnished with an iron bed,
whose springs shrieked, with two cane chairs, and with a table that had
a shabby covering of gre