accept all that was said:  the ideas and feelings of others ran into him like water into a bottle whose neck is suddenly stooped below the surface of the stream.  He was an ideal pupil.  It was Marshall here, it was Marshall there, and soon the studio was little but an agitation in praise of him, and his work, and anxious speculation arose as to the medals he would obtain.  I continued the struggle for nine months.  I was in the studio at eight in the morning; I measured my drawing; I plumbed it throughout; I sketched in, having regard to la jambe qui porte; I modelled par les masses.  During breakfast I considered how I should work during the afternoon; at night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to attain a better result.  But my efforts availed me nothing; it was like one who, falling, stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air.  How terrible are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching void they leave in the heart!  And all this I suffered until the burden of unachieved desire grew intolerable.

I laid down my charcoal and said, “I will never draw or paint again.”  That vow I have kept.

Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end.  I looked upon a blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea.  “What shall I do?” I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless.  Literature? my heart did not answer the question at once.  I was too broken and overcome by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no equivocation.  I strove to read:  but it was impossible to sit at home almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat still ringing their knells in my heart.  Marshall’s success clamoured loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of the medals which he would carry off; of what Lefevre thought of his drawing this week, of Boulanger’s opinion of his talent.  I do not wish to excuse my conduct, but I cannot help saying that Marshall showed me neither consideration nor pity; he did not even seem to understand that I was suffering, that my nerves had been terribly shaken, and he flaunted his superiority relentlessly in my face—­his good looks, his talents, his popularity.  I did not know then how little these studio successes really meant.

Vanity? no, it was not his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over.  This was intolerable.  I broke up my establishment.  By so doing I involved my friend in grave and cruel difficulties; by this action I imperilled his future prospects.  It was a dastardly action; but his presence had grown unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being lifted from me.