"That is a detail. An artist must suffer. And what does a little
suffering matter?"

Of course, they were men of the world, quite well off, who professed
these Stoic theories. As the millionaire once said to the simple person
who came and asked him to help a poverty-stricken artist:

"But, sir, Mozart died of poverty."

They would have thought it very bad taste on Olivier's part if he had
told them that Mozart would have asked nothing better than to go on
living, and that Christophe was determined to do so.

* * * * *

Christophe was getting heartily sick of the vulgar tittle-tattle. He
began to wonder if it were going on forever.--But it was all over in a
fortnight. The newspapers gave up talking about him. However, he had
become known. When his name was mentioned, people said, not:

"The author of _David_ or _Gargantua_," but:

"Oh yes! The _Grand Journal_ man!..."

He was famous.

Olivier knew it by the number of letters that came for Christophe, and
even for himself, in his reflected glory: offers from librettists,
proposals from concert-agents, declarations of friendship from men who