How many times, as I was well aware even without the Goncourt pages reminding me of it, have I remained incapable of bestowing my attention on things or people that subsequently, once their image had been presented to me in solitude by an artist, I would have traveled miles, risked death, to encounter again! Only then had my imagination started to work, begun to paint. And of something which a year before had made me yawn, I would say to myself anxiously, contemplating it in advance, desiring it: “Will it really be impossible to see it? What I wouldn’t give to be able to!”
