Mercy of God, what has broken my life, what but romance--romance, first with one and then with another! More feeling than thinking, Maitre Fille--you say that?
Why the Barbilles have ever in the past built up life on a basis of thought and action, and I have added philosophy--the science of thought and act.

Jean Jacques Barbille has been the man of design and the man of action also.

Don Quixote was a fool, a dreamer, but Jean Jacques is no Don Quixote.

He is a man who has done things, but also he is a man who has been broken on the wheel of life.

He is a man whose heart-strings have been torn--" He had worked himself up into a fit of eloquence and revolt.