poets whose muse has always red eyes and ill-combed locks, and all the
mediocrities of impotence who, doomed to non-publication, call the muse
a harsh stepmother, and art an executioner.

All truly powerful minds have their word to say, and, indeed, utter it
sooner or later. Genius or talent are not unforeseen accidents in
humanity; they have a cause of existence, and for that reason cannot
always remain in obscurity, for, if the crowd does not come to seek
them, they know how to reach it. Genius is the sun, everyone sees it.
Talent is the diamond that may for a long time remain hidden in
obscurity, but which is always perceived by some one. It is, therefore,
wrong to be moved to pity over the lamentations and stock phrases of
that class of intruders and inutilities entered upon an artistic career
in which idleness, debauchery, and parasitism form the foundations of
manners.

Axiom, "Unknown Bohemianism is not a path, it is a blind alley."

Indeed, this life is something that does not lead to anything. It is a
stultified wretchedness, amidst which intelligence dies out like a lamp
in a place without air, in which the heart grows petrified in a fierce
misanthropy, and in which the best natures become the worst. If one has
the misfortune to remain too long and to advance too far in this blind
alley one can no longer get out, or one emerges by dangerous breaches
and only to fall into an adjacent Bohemia, the manners of which belong
to another jurisdiction than that of literary physiology.

We will also cite a singular variety of Bohemians who might be called
amateurs. They are not the least curious. They find in Bohemian life an
existence full of seductions, not to dine every day, to sleep in the