Adolphe took me to Frédéric Soulié's house that evening. Frédéric Soulié had a gathering of friends to celebrate his refusal at the Gymnase; for he looked upon the acceptance on condition of alteration as a refusal.
I shall often return to, and speak much of Soulié: he was one of the most powerful literary influences of the day, and his personality was one of the most marked I have known. He died young. He died, not only in the full tide of his talent, but even before he had produced the perfect and finished work he would certainly have created, some day or other, had not death hastened its footsteps. Soulié's brain was a little confused and obscure; his thoughts were only lighted up on one side, after the fashion of this planet; the reverse side to the one illuminated by the sun was pitifully dark. Soulié did not know how to begin either a novel or a drama. The opening explanation of his work was done hap-hazard: sometimes in the first act, sometimes in the last, if it were a play; if it were a novel, sometimes in the first, sometimes in the last volume. His introduction, timidly begun, nearly always was laboriously unravelled.
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