Nearly two years ago Durtal had ceased to associate with men of letters. They were represented in books and in the book-chat columns of magazines as forming an aristocracy which had a monopoly on intelligence. Their conversation, if one believed what one read, sparkled with effervescent and stimulating wit. Durtal had difficulty accounting to himself for the persistence of this illusion. His sad experience led him to believe that every literary man belonged to one of two classes, the thoroughly commercial or the utterly impossible.

The first consisted of writers spoiled by the public, and drained dry in consequence, but "successful." Ravenous for notice they aped the ways of the world of big business, delighted in gala dinners, gave formal evening parties, spoke of copyrights, sales, and long run plays, and made great display of wealth.

The second consisted of café loafers, "bohemians." Rolling on the benches, gorged with beer they feigned an exaggerated modesty and at the same time cried their wares, aired their genius, and abused their betters.

There was now no place where one could meet a few artists and privately, intimately, discuss ideas at ease. One was at the mercy of the café crowd or the drawing-room company. One's interlocutor was listening avidly to steal one's ideas, and behind one's back one was being vituperated. And the women were always intruding.

In this indiscriminate world there was no illuminating criticism, nothing but small talk, elegant or inelegant.

Then Durtal learned, also by experience, that one cannot associate with thieves without becoming either a thief or a dupe, and finally he broke off relations with his confrères.

He not only had no sympathy but no common topic of conversation with them. Formerly when he accepted naturalism-airtight and unsatisfactory as it was-he had been able to argue esthetics with them, but now!

"The point is," Des Hermies was always telling him, "that there is a basic difference between you and the other realists, and no patched-up alliance could possibly be of long duration. You execrate the age and they worship it. There is the whole matter. You were fated some day to get away from this Americanized art and attempt to create something less vulgar, less miserably commonplace, and infuse a little spirituality into it.