The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings -- woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star.