Jean sought balm for his wounded spirit in reading poetry and in
long, dreamy walks. His head was filled with visions--a welter of
sublime imaginings, in which floated such figures as Ophelia and
Cassandra, Gretchen, Delia, Phædra, Manon Lescaut, and Virginia,
and hovering amid these, shadows still nameless, still almost
formless, and yet full of seduction! Holding bowls and daggers
and trailing long veils, they came and went, faded and grew vivid
with colour. And Jean could hear them calling to him; "If ever
we win to life, it will be through you. And what a bliss it will
be for you, Jean Servien, to have created us. How you will love
us!" And Jean Servien would answer them; "Come back, come back,
or rather do not leave me. But I cannot tell how to make you
visible; you vanish away when I gaze at you, and I cannot net
you in the meshes of beautiful verse!"

Again and again he tried to write poems, tragedies, romances;
but his indolence, his lack of ideas, his fastidiousness brought
him to a standstill before half a dozen lines were written, and
he would toss the all but virgin page into the fire. Quickly
discouraged, he turned his attention to politics. The funeral
of Victor Noir, the Belleville risings, the _plébiscite_, filled
his thoughts; he read the papers, joined the groups that gathered
on the boulevards, followed the yelping pack of white blouses,
and was one of the crowd that hooted the Commissary of Police as
he read the Riot Act. Disorder and uproar intoxicated him; his
heart beat as if it would burst his bosom, his enthusiasm rose
to fever pitch, amid these stupid exhibitions of mob violence.
Then to end up, after tramping the streets with other gaping idlers