Chantelouve or not, he felt appeased, calmed.

At heart he did not know, when he revolved the adventure, whether he preferred his chimera, even diminished, or this Hyacinthe, who at least, in her reality, was not a disenchanting frump, wrinkled with age.

He profited by the respite to get back to work, but he had presumed too much upon his powers.

When he tried to begin his chapter on the crimes of Gilles de Rais he discovered that he was incapable of sewing two sentences together.

He wandered in pursuit of the Marshal and caught up with him, but the prose in which he wished to embody the man remained listless and lifeless, and he could think only patchily.
He threw down his pen and sank into an armchair.