Obscure or famous, rich or poor, an artist must be an artisan and practise these fruitful virtues--patient application, conscientious technicality, absorption in work.

When he seated himself at his table Dorsenne was heart and soul in his business.

He closed his door, he opened no letters nor telegrams, and he spent ten hours without taking anything but two eggs and some black coffee, as he did on this particular day, when looking over the essays of his twenty-fifth year with the talent of his thirty-fifth, retouching here a word, rewriting an entire page, dissatisfied here, smiling there at his thought.

The pen flew, carrying with it all the sensibility of the intellectual man who had completely forgotten Madame Steno, Gorka, Maitland, and the calumniated Contessina, until he should awake from his lucid intoxication at nightfall.

As he counted, in arranging the slips, the number of articles prepared, he found there were twelve.
"Like Gorka's letters," said he aloud, with a laugh.