Explore "Claude's Confession" by Émile Zola on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You are irritated by my lack of courage, you accuse me of coveting velvet and bronze, of not accepting the holy poverty of the poet. Alas! I love broad curtains, candelabra, marble upon which the chisel has left the impress of its powerful caresses. I love everything that shines, everything that has beauty, grace and richness. I need princely dwellings, or, rather, the fields with their carpets of fresh and perfumed moss, their draperies of leaves, their wide horizons of light. I prefer the luxury of God to the luxury of men.
Pardon, brothers, for silk is so soft, lace so light; the sun laughs so gayly in gold and crystal!