Treat it in an entirely impersonal way; for what is good for one might be quite the reverse for another.  Let us ask ourselves in making an abstract of our tendencies or of our experiences, if the human being can receive and seek its own full physical development without intellectual suffering.  Yes, in an ideal and rational society that would be so.  But, in that in which we live and with which we must be content, do not enjoyment and excess go hand in hand, and can one separate them or limit them, unless one is a sage of the first class?  And if one is a sage, farewell temptation which is the father of real joys.

The question for us artists, is to know if abstinence strengthens us or if it exalts us too much, which state would degenerate into weakness,—­You will say, “There is time for everything and power enough for every dissipation of strength.”  Then you make a distinction and you place limits, there is no way of doing otherwise.  Nature, you think, places them herself and prevents us from abusing her.  Ah! but no, she is not wiser than we who are also nature.

Our excesses of work, as our excesses of pleasure, kill us certainly, and the more we are great natures, the more we pass beyond bounds and extend the limits of our powers.

No, I have no theories.  I spend my life in asking questions and in hearing them answered in one way or another without any victoriously conclusive reply ever being given me.  I await the brilliance of a new state of my intellect and of my organs in a new life; for, in this one, whosoever reflects, embraces up to their last consequences, the limits of pro and con.  It is Monsieur Plato, I think, who asked for and thought he held the bond.  He had it no more than we.  However, this bond exists, since the universe subsists without the pro and con, which constitute it, reciprocally destroying each other.  What shall one call it in material nature?  Equilibrium, that will do, and for spiritual nature?  Moderation, relative chastity, abstinence from excess, whatever you want, but that is translated by equilibrium; am I wrong, my master?

Consider it, for in our novels, what our characters do or do not do, rests only on that.  Will they or will they not possess the object of their ardent desires?  Whether it is love or glory, fortune or pleasure, ever since they existed, they have aspired to one end.  If we have a philosophy in us, they walk right according to us; if we have not, they walk by chance, and are too much dominated by the events which we put in the way of their legs.  Imbued by our own ideas and ruled by fatality, they do not always appear logical.  Should we put much or little of ourselves in them?  Shouldn’t we put what society puts in each one of us?

For my part, I follow my old inclination, I put myself in the skin of my good people.  People scold me for it, that makes no difference.  You, I don’t really know if by method or by instinct, take another course.  What you do, you succeed in; that is why I ask you if we differ on the question of internal struggles, if the hero ought to have any or if he ought not to know them.