their predecessors. There is nothing that will not increase out of
all reckoning except the naturalistic novel. A man may write twenty
volumes of poetry, history, and philosophy, but a man will never be
born who will write more than two, at the most three, naturalistic
novels. The naturalistic novel is the essence of a phase of life
that the writer has lived in and assimilated. If you take into
consideration the difficulty of observing twice, of the time an
experience takes to ripen in you, you will easily understand
_à priori_ that the man will never be born who will write three
realistic novels."

Coffee and cigars were ordered, and Harding extolled the charm and
grace of pastels.

Thompson said--"I keep pastels for my hours of idleness--cowardly
hours, when I have no heart to struggle with nature, and may but
smile and kiss my hand to her at a distance. For dreaming I know
nothing like pastel; it is the painter's opium pipe.... Latour was
the greatest pastellist of the eighteenth century, and he never
attempted more than a drawing heightened with colour. But how
suggestive, how elegant, how well-bred!"

Then in reply to some flattery on the personality of his art,
Thompson said, "It is strange, for I assure you no art was ever less
spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and
study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity,
temperament--temperament is the word--I know nothing. When I hear
people talk about temperament, it always seem to me like the strong
man in the fair, who straddles his legs, and asks some one to step
upon the palm of his hand."