That illustrious member of the Academy of Sciences put about a dozen
brief questions to the blind woman as he examined her eyes in the
strong light from a window. Modeste was amazed at the value which a
man so celebrated attached to time, when she saw the
travelling-carriage piled with books which the great surgeon proposed
to read during the journey; for he had left Paris the evening before,
and had spent the night in sleeping and travelling. The rapidity and
clearness of Desplein's judgment on each answer made by Madame Mignon,
his succinct tone, his decisive manner, gave Modeste her first real
idea of a man of genius. She perceived the enormous difference between
a second-rate man, like Canalis, and Desplein, who was even more than
a superior man. A man of genius finds in the consciousness of his
talent and in the solidity of his fame an arena of his own, where his
legitimate pride can expand and exercise itself without interfering
with others. Moreover, his perpetual struggle with men and things
leave them no time for the coxcombry of fashionable genius, which
makes haste to gather in the harvests of a fugitive season, and whose
vanity and self-love are as petty and exacting as a custom-house which
levies tithes on all that comes in its way.
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