you improved the shining hours of solitude and inspiration!
Ernest. Solitude, yes; inspiration, no. It shuns me though I call on it never so humbly and fondly.
D. Julian. It has failed at the rendezvous?
Ernest. And not for the first time, either. But if I have done nothing else, at least I have made a happy discovery.
D. Julian. What?
Ernest. That I am a poor devil.
D. Julian. The deuce! That's a famous discovery.
Ernest. Nothing less.
D. Julian. But why are you so out of sorts with yourself? Is the play you talked of the other day not going on?
Ernest. How can it? The going on is done by me going out of my wits.
D. Julian. How is this? Both the drama and inspiration are faithless to my poor friend.
Ernest. This is how I stand. When I first conceived the idea, I imagined it full of promise, but when I attempt to give it form, and vest it in an appropriate stage garb, the result shows something extraordinary, difficult, undramatic and impossible.
D. Julian. How is it impossible? Come, tell me. You've excited my curiosity. [Sits down on the sofa.]
Ernest. Imagine the principal personage, one who creates the drama and develops it, who gives it life and provokes the catastrophe, who, broadly, fills and possesses it, and yet who cannot make his way to the stage.
D. Julian. Is he so ugly, then? So repugnant or bad?
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