_The first and greatest of all, is the loss or degradation of one's
talent. This should count, I think, with an artist. For observe that
at this moment, I am not speaking of the ordinary conditions of life. I
grant you, that in general marriage is an excellent thing, and that the
majority of men only begin to be of some account when the family circle
completes them or makes them greater. Often, indeed, it is necessary to
a profession. A bachelor lawyer cannot even be imagined. He would not
have the needful air of weight and gravity. But for all of us, painters,
poets, sculptors, musicians, who live outside of life, wholly occupied
in studying it, in reproducing it, holding ourselves always a little
remote from it, as one steps back from a picture the better to see it, I
say that marriage can only be the exception. To that nervous, exacting,
impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special
type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest
thing to do is not to look for her. Ah! how well our great Delacroix,
whom you admire so much, understood that! What a fine existence was his,
bounded by his studio wall, devoted exclusively to Art! I was looking
the other day at his cottage at Champrosay and the prim little garden
full of roses, where he sauntered alone for twenty years! It has the
calm and the narrowness of celibacy. Well now! think for a moment of
Delacroix married, father of a family, with all the preoccupations of
children to bring up, of money matters, of illnesses; do you believe his
work would have been the same?_