One single consolation remained for him--literary work.

He threw himself into it blindly, deadening his sorrow with the fruitful and wonderful opiate of poetry and dreams.

However, he had now begun to make headway, feeling that he had some thing new to say.

He had long ago thrown into the fire his first poems, awkward imitations of favorite authors, also his drama after the style of 1830, where the two lovers sang a duet at the foot of the scaffold.

He returned to truth and simplicity by the longest way, the schoolboy's road.