Zola paints me as a visionary, another misguided wretch who thinks he is revolutionizing art, but who doesn’t paint in the conventional manner simply because he hasn’t enough talent to paint at all. He makes me hang myself from the scaffolding of my masterpiece, because in the end I realize that what I mistook for genius was only insane daubing. Up against me he puts another artist from Aix, a sentimental sculptor who turns out the most hackneyed, academic trash, and makes him a great artist.”
