"The sonnet! the immortal sonnet! Give it me! You have not read it to me, but I know that it is a masterpiece. Give it me; I will publish it. If necessary, I will ruin myself that it may be written on gold in letters of diamonds. It merits it, it will dazzle the world. Give it me!"
"The sonnet! What sonnet?" stammered Bruat, gasping for breath.
"Your great sonnet!" sighed the friend, who saw the delirium of death approaching.
"Ah! yes, yes, the sonnet, the great sonnet. Too great, my friend, too long! It must be made more intense."
"What! have you burnt your last sonnet also?"
"I have found something better. I have found everything. Modern life, modernity, I hold it, I have it, I express it. It is not in a sonnet, nor in a quatrain, nor even in a line, it is—"
His voice grew weaker, became hoarse, wheezy, lost.
His friend, with bloodshot eyes, gaping mouth, leaned over the bed to drink in his last word, the word that would give the key to the mystery, the Open Sesame to art in the future.
"Speak, speak!" he cried.
"Everything in one phrase, everything in one phrase!" murmured Bruat.