I was poor and desperate, life had no pleasures, the future seemed hopeless, yet I was overflowing with vehement desires, every nerve in me was a hunger which cried to be appeased.

I identified myself with the poor and ignorant; I did not make their cause my own, but my own cause theirs.

I raved for freedom because I was myself in the bondage of unsatisfiable longing." "Well," he went on, after regarding his listener with still the same smile, "I have come out of all that, in proportion as my artistic self-consciousness has developed.

For one thing, I am not so miserable as I was then, personally; then again, I have found my vocation.

You know pretty well the phases I have passed through.