But a poor young girl and the young man who wants to bring her pleasure are similar to those students who, having read any number of books on a particular painter, and fallen, on account of a reproduction, a glimpsed painting, in love with his art, despair that their means will not permit them to go into the city where his works can be seen. They know, through art books, photographs, how every one of those works was done, are hungry for the slightest details about them and, if they can finally get to see them, those works will give up to them not the fatigue inflicted on the ignorant museum visitors, but the delicious feeling of a long-standing hunger now satisfied.
Deleted manuscript fragment from Cahier 53, La Prisonnière.