Chapter XXXI

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._