that was the life

As the story begins, Pierre Andre was nearing forty. [...] Like everyone else, [he] had once had ambitions. He was intelligent and hardworking and in his youth, felt capable of anything. His mother, proud of his early successes, had soon seen in him the stuff of greatness. [...] He might have become a writer; he wrote a great deal but published nothing for fear of being mediocre.

[...] The sudden death of his father after a gradual and almost imperceptible decline brought him once again to his mother’s side and back to the lovely hills of the Gouvre. There, his mother’s fond illusions about her son were rudely shattered. She blamed Paris, the government and society in general for being so blind to Pierre’s obvious talents. He could never make her understand that in order to make one’s mark in the world, it was necessary to have patronage, protection or a certain boldness in which he was conspicuously lacking.

[...] Possessing every kind of artistic impulse, he could not make the leap from feeling to action, from inspiration to expression. He would like, for example, to have continued his interest in the theater, but could not afford the expense; he loved painting and was an excellent judge of it but the daily grind of work crushed all else. He had a passionate interest in politics, but no base from which to develop his ideas and too much scepticism to become the mouthpiece of any party or leader.

[...] Sometimes he would go so far as to wonder whether he should not give up everything and become a tramp. What was the point of clean linen and a smart turnout when he could just as easily roam the world in rags, asking alms from time to time from total strangers? He yearned for a bohemian kind of life in which he would be free to wander into the farthest corners of the world, happy if hospitality were offered, equally content to sleep under a starry sky at night. Onward, towards ever changing horizons, that was the life!

During these periods of utter dejection he would consider himself the feeblest of creatures, lacking in will-power, drive and conviction. He was nothing but a provincial hack, he thought, wild-eyed with rapture over the splendors of civilization and of nature yet afraid of his own shadow.

- George Sand, Marianne