“Man must live in truth, think as he lives, and speak as he thinks. This is the law of style. We are here in complete simplicity because we are in complete truth.”

Ernest Hello (1828-1885)
Writer

“One day while wandering with a friend in the cosmopolitan gardens of the World’s Fair, I met a man. Yes, it was a man. His strange and remarkable face crowned by lightly sparsed hair was illuminated by two unforgettable eyes. He was filled with that gentle and terrible flame, that superior light that men call Genius. His forehead was as vast as thought, and his back, lightly curved like Atlas’s, seemed bowed under the weight of some invisible Universe. This man approached me, and with a fateful gesture, gravely uttered this single phrase: “My friend, I’m surprised.” I looked at him with a look that asked the cause of his stupor, for it was certainly stupor that was manifested by the clouded traits of his vibrant visage. He replied, “I just passed the Tuileries, and they are not yet burning!” It was my turn to be stupefied. He saw my mystification and wasn’t at all bothered. He raised his hand like the prophets of old and he pointed to the immense city. Then, as if he had some glimpse of I-don’t-know-which multitude marching along, he added these words slowly and with an indefinable tone I can still hear even now: “The barbarians are late in coming! … What is Attila doing then?” And returning to his silence he left me, and I watched him for a long time making his way through the crowd and continuing his dreaming. This man was Hello. “He’s crazy,” my friend said. And yet, Attila has come, and the Tuileries were devoured by the fires of the earth. The words of a madman were literally prophetic and what he said took place to the letter.”

Henri Lasserre (1828-1900)
Writer