One of these three books, the first (like that of many writers who can only make one real trip into literature), had obtained a very brilliant success.

This work, imprudently placed in the front rank, this really artistic work he was never weary of calling the finest book of the period, the novel of the century.
Raoul complained bitterly of the exigencies of art.

He was one of those who contributed most to bring all created work, pictures, statues, books, building under the single standard of Art.

He had begun his career by committing a volume of verse, which won him a place in the pleiades of living poets; among these verses was a nebulous poem that was greatly admired.

Forced by want of means to keep on producing, he went from the theatre to the press, and from the press to the theatre, dissipating and scattering his talent, but believing always in his vein.
His fame was therefore not unpublished like that of so many great minds in extremity, who sustain themselves only by the thought of work to be done.
Nathan resembled a man of genius; and had he marched to the scaffold, as he sometimes wished he could have done, he might have struck his brow with the famous action of Andre Chenier.