Among athletes, the forehead contracts according as the chest enlarges; with men of thought, it is the brain which causes the other organs to suffer, insatiable vampire, exhausting at times the last drop of blood in the body which serves as its victim.

This vampire was my torturer.
"For ten years I had crowded romance upon poetry, vaudeville upon drama, literary criticism upon leader; I proved, through my own self, in a physical way, the phenomena of the absorption of the senses by intelligence.

Many times, after several nights of hard work, the chords of my mind being too violently stretched, they relaxed and gave only indistinct harmony.

Then, if I happened to resist this lassitude of nature demanding repose, I felt the pressure of my will exhausting the sources at the very depths of my being.

It seemed to me that I dug out my ideas from the bottom of a mine, instead of gathering them upon the surface of the brain.