the word "bête." Cézanne was silly certainly, but he was not stupid: he
was limited and absurd, but not dull; his opinions for the most part
were conventional, but his intelligence was not common; and his
character was as obviously that of a man of genius as the most ardent
hero-worshipper could desire.

Cézanne was a great character. It is a mistake to suppose that great
characters are always agreeable ones. Few people, I imagine, found
Cézanne agreeable; yet painters, one would suppose, were eager to meet
him that they might hear what he had to say about painting. Cézanne's
ideas on painting are not like ideas at all: they are like sensations;
they have the force of sensations. They seem to give the sense of what
was in his mind by a method more direct than the ordinary intellectual
one. His meaning reaches us, not in a series of pellets, but in a block.
These sayings of his remind one oddly of his art; and some of his
comments on life are hardly less forcible and to the point. This, for
instance, provoked by Zola's "L'Oeuvre," is something more than a
professional opinion:

On ne peut pas exiger d'un homme qui ne sait pas, qu'il dise des
choses raisonnables sur l'art de peindre; mais, N. de D---- et
Cézanne se mit à taper comme un sourd sur sa table--comment peut-il
oser dire qu'un peintre se tue parce qu'il a fait un mauvais
tableau? Quand un tableau n'est pas réalisé, on le f... au feu, et
on en recommence un autre!

_Réalisé_--Cézanne's incessant complaint that "he was unable to realize"
has been taken by many stupid people to imply that Cézanne was conscious
in himself of some peculiar and slightly humiliating inhibition from
which his fellows were free; and even M. Vollard has thought it