Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in
favour of Lefebvre, and hoped that every one there would vote for
Lefebvre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of _Le grand art, le nu_,
and Lefebvre's unswerving fidelity to _le nu_...elegance, refinement, an
echo of ancient Greece: and then,--what do you think? when he had
exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to
Lefebvre, he said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife
and eight children." Is it not monstrous?

But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole
world in conformity with your æstheticisms...a vain dream, and if
realised it would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are
the basis of existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to
such interests as these meet with response...it will be so till the
end of time.

And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began
two years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the _Figaro_ as
much as you thought they should be.

Love--but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and
mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies,
colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about
her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and
her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream,
the _au delà_? But the women one has never seen before, that one will
never see again! The choice! the enervation of burning odours, the
baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark
with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or