"Nothing. I have had enough, that is all…. Yes, laugh, laugh at me: everybody knows I am mad. Prudent people act in accordance with the laws of logic and reason and sanity. I am not like that: I am a man who acts only on his own impulse. When a certain quantity of electricity is accumulated in me it has to expend itself, at all costs: and so much the worse for the others if it touches them! And so much the worse for them! I am not made for living in society. Henceforth I shall belong only to myself."
"You think you can do without everybody else?" said Mannheim. "You cannot play your music all by yourself. You need singers, an orchestra, a conductor, an audience, a claque…."
Christophe shouted.
"No! no! no!"
But the last word made him jump.
"A claque! Are you not ashamed?"
"I am not talking of a paid claque—(although, indeed, it is the only means yet discovered of revealing the merit of a composition to the audience).—But you must have a claque: the author's coterie is a claque, properly drilled by him: every author has his claque: that is what friends are for."
"I don't want any friends!"
"Then you will be hissed."
"I want to be hissed!"