I send you also some etchings and a "Woman drinking Absinthe," drawn
this winter from life in Paris. It is a girl called Marie Joliet, who
used every evening to come drunk to the Bal Bullier, and who had a look
in her eyes of death galvanised into life. I made her sit to me and
tried to render what I saw. This is my principle in the task I have set
before me. I am determined to make no book-illustration but it shall be
a means of contributing towards an _effect of life_ and nothing more. A
patch of colour and it is sufficient; we must leave these childish
thoughts behind us. Life! we must try to render life, and it is hard
enough.
_Félicien Rops._