The devil!" "Being far from your wonderful art, I did not understand you at first, nor your longing, your horror of aimlessness.

But when I entered your cell to-day and noticed you at your ruinous occupation, I said to myself: It is better that he should not create at all than to create in this manner.

Listen to me." I then revealed for the first time to this youth the sacred formula of the iron grate, which, dividing the infinite into squares, thereby subjects it to itself.

K.listened to my words with emotion, looking with the horror of an ignorant man at the figures which must have seemed to him to be cabalistic, but which were nothing else than the ordinary figures used in mathematics.
"I am your slave, old man," he said at last, kissing my hand with his cold lips.
"No, you will be my favourite pupil, my son.

I bless you." And it seemed to me that the artist was saved.