me how to read nature, to understand her passionate
tongue, to feel the emotions latent in things. You
proved to me the existence of immortal beauty. You
said to me: 'Love, why it is in the earthenware
pitcher, it is in the verminous rags which I paint. To
take a feeling, a joy, a moment of suffering, of palpitation, a vision, a shudder anything, no matter how fugitive an experience of life it may be and recreate it, fix it in colors, in words or sounds, means
to love! Love is a man's yearning to create!'
"And I dreamed of becoming a great artist! Ah! my dreams, my delights in being able to perceive things, my doubts, my sacred agonies, do you remember them? Look what I have done with all that! I wanted to love and I went to a woman who kills love. I started with wings, drunk with the air, with the azure, with light! And now I am nothing but a dirty hog, sunk in its filth, with greedy snout and sides shaking with impure rutting. You can see for yourself, Lirat, that I am lost, lost, lost! . . and that I must kill myself."
Then Lirat approached and put both hands on my shoulders:
"You say you are lost! Let us see now; when one is of your stock, can one say that a man's life is lost? You say you must kill yourself? Does a man who has typhoid fever say: 'I must kill myself?' He says: 'I must cure myself!' You have typhoid fever, my poor child. . . cure yourself. Lost! Why, there is not a crime, do you hear me, there is not a crime, no matter how monstrous and vile, that can not be redeemed by forgiveness. I don't mean God's forgiveness or man's forgiveness, but one's own forgiveness, which is much more difficult and more worth while to obtain. Lost! I was listening to you, my dear Mintie, and do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking that you
