Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/58

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ORIGINAL PREFACE.

drown the voices and the names of those who arrive through the vestibule to renown by harnessing audacity to their talent.

A life of patience, of courage, in which one cannot fight unless clad in a strong armor of indifference impervious to the attacks of fools and the envious, in which one must not, if one would not stumble on the road, quit for a single moment that pride in oneself which serves as a leaning staff; a charming and a terrible life, which has its conquerors and its martyrs, and on which one should not enter save in resigning oneself in advance to submit to the pitiless law væ victis.

H. M.

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