Samuel was, more than all the others, the man of failed works of beauty; - a fantastical and sickly creature, whose poetry shines forth much more in his person than in his works, and who, around one o'clock in the morning, between the dazzling of a coal fire and the clock's tick-tock, always seemed to be the god of impotence, - a modern and hermaphrodite god, - so colossal an impotence, so enormous, reaching epic proportions!