It was well I could copy without taking in what I was doing; for Lassagne's conversation, as may be imagined, gave me much to think about. Every day showed me my deplorable ignorance more and more, and, like a traveller lost in a marshy, unstable bog, I did not know whereon to place my feet in order to find that solid ground which would lead me to the end I was trying to reach.
How was it Adolphe had never spoken to me of all these matters? So far reaching were the vistas that opened before me every moment, that I was bewildered. Did Adolphe think all this of little use in connection with the art and practice of literature? Or was it that the kind of literature he wanted me to produce could dispense with all such knowledge? I had often noticed his father shrug his shoulders at our theatrical schemes; was it not perchance that his father, who knew so many things, laughed in his sleeve at me for being so ignorant? And M. Deviolaine, who instinctively (for, except as a valuer and in questions of forestry, he hardly knew more than I did) called my attempts filth and my efforts at poetry mere rubbish, could he by chance be right?
Of course, one could read, work and study, but how was it possible to keep all the things I had heard about since the previous evening in my mind without revealing them? I resolved to have an open talk about it all with Adolphe.
At half-past five I reached M. de Leuven's house, but Adolphe had not yet returned: he was reading at the Gymnase a play he had written in collaboration with Frédéric Soulié. He put in an appearance at a quarter to six, looking more melancholy and more thoughtful than Hippolytus on the road to Mycenæ.
"Well, my poor friend," said I, "refused again?"
"No," he replied; "but only accepted subject to correction."
"Then all hope is not lost?"
"True. Dormeuil made us go into his office, after the reading, and as he thought there were tedious passages in the piece, he said to us,'My dear fellows, my dear fellows, it must be cut down to the quick.' At these words Soulié snatched the play out of his hands, crying, 'Monsieur Dormeuil, not a hand must be laid on it.' So, you will understand, Dormeuil is furious."
"Who is Dormeuil?"