I had the company of monsieur Gibert. Such people see clearly, but they have the teacher's eye. As the train was taking us past Alexis' place a staggering subject for a picture came into view towards the east: St-Victoire. I said 'What a splendid subject'; he replied, 'The lines are too symmetrical'. Referring to 'L'Assommoir' [a novel of Emile Zola] about which, incidentally, he was the first person to speak to me, he said some very sound things, and praised it, but always from the point of view of technique.

In: a letter to his friend Émile Zola, Aix-en-Provence, 14 April 1878, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock"', Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 178-179