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“And how will that, monsieur, come to pass?” said Gazonal, stupefied at hearing a man outside of a lunatic asylum talk in this way.

“Through the extending of production. If men will apply The System, it will not be impossible to act upon the stars.”

“What would become of painting in that case?” asked Gazonal.

“It would be magnified.”

“Would our eyes be magnified too?” said Gazonal, looking at his two friends significantly.

“Man will return to what he was before he became degenerate; our six- feet men will then be dwarfs.”

“Is your picture finished?” asked Leon.

“Entirely finished,” replied Dubourdieu. “I have tried to see Hiclar, and get him to compose a symphony for it; I wish that while viewing my picture the public should hear music a la Beethoven to develop its ideas and bring them within range of the intellect by two arts. Ah! if the government would only lend me one of the galleries of the Louvre!”

“I’ll mention it, if you want me to do so; you should never neglect an opportunity to strike minds.”

“Ah! my friends are preparing articles; but I am afraid they’ll go too far.”

“Pooh!” said Bixiou, “they can’t go as far as the future.”

Dubourdieu looked askance at Bixiou, and continued his way.

“Why, he’s mad,” said Gazonal; “he is following the moon in her courses.”

“His skill is masterly,” said Leon, “and he knows his art, but Fourierism has killed him. You have just seen, cousin, one of the effects of ambition upon artists. Too often, in Paris, from a desire to reach more rapidly than by natural ways the celebrity which to them is fortune, artists borrow the wings of circumstance, they think they make themselves of more importance as men of a specialty, the supporters of some ‘system’; and they fancy they can transform a clique into the public. One is a republican, another Saint-Simonian; this one aristocrat, that one Catholic, others juste-milieu, middle ages, or German, as they choose for their purpose. Now, though opinions do not give talent, they always spoil what talent there is; and the poor fellow whom you have just seen is a proof thereof. An artist’s opinion ought to be: Faith in his art, in his work; and his only way of success is toil when nature has given him the sacred fire.”

“Let us get away,” said Bixiou. “Leon is beginning to moralize.”

“But that man was sincere,” said Gazonal, still stupefied.

“Perfectly sincere,” replied Bixiou; “as sincere as the king of barbers just now.”

“He is mad!” repeated Gazonal.

“And he is not the first man driven man by Fourier’s ideas,” said Bixiou. “You don’t know anything about Paris. Ask it for a hundred thousand francs to realize an idea that will be useful to humanity,– the steam-engine for instance,–and you’ll die, like Salomon de Caux, at Bicetre; but if the money is wanted for some paradoxical absurdity, Parisians will annihilate themselves and their fortune for it. It is the same with systems as it is with material things. Utterly impracticable newspapers have consumed millions within the last fifteen years. What makes your lawsuit so hard to win, is that you have right on your side, and on that of the prefect there are (so you suppose) secret motives.”

“Do you think that a man of intellect having once understood the nature of Paris could live elsewhere?” said Leon to his cousin.

“Suppose we take Gazonal to old Mere Fontaine?” said Bixiou, making a sign to the driver of a citadine to draw up; “it will be a step from the real to the fantastic. Driver, Vieille rue du Temple.”

And all three were presently rolling in the direction of the Marais.

“What are you taking me to see now?” asked Gazonal.

“The proof of what Bixiou told you,” replied Leon; “we shall show you a woman who makes twenty thousand francs a year by working a fantastic idea.”

“A fortune-teller,” said Bixiou, interpreting the look of the Southerner as a question. “Madame Fontaine is thought, by those who seek to pry into the future, to be wiser in her wisdom than Mademoiselle Lenormand.”