James says that he was at the time 'ignorant of what preceded' the instalment he had happened to pick up and 'was not to know till much later what followed'; and even his alert absorption of these isolated chapters proves compatible with his also having been pleasurably distracted by his Parisian surroundings, which he so well remembers that they have become for him a part of the novel's texture: 'present to me still is the act of standing there, before the fire, with my back against the low beplushed and beclocked French chimneypiece and taking in the tale of the current number, taking it in with so surprised an interest, and perhaps, as well, such a stir of faint foreknowledge, that the sunny little salon, the autumn day, the window ajar, and the cheerful clatter, outside, of the Rue Montaigne, are all now for me more or less in the story, and the story more or less in them'.

Whatever you would call suffering in your own life, God has allowed it. Even purposed it. Don't you dare think you can't handle it! First Corinthians 10:13 promises that you can not only handle it, but glorify God in it.

Gaston de Mowbray ground his hair in powder, and tore his teeth out in handfuls; his breath gushed forth with that icy coldness as to crozzle up the table before which he sat into a cinder; he paces the room to such an extent, that the past hung in penny cakes all over the apartment.

An exceptionally popular commercial writer can even become rich from royalties: immediately prior to the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling was reported by The Times to have earnt some £280 million from the sale of an estimated 200 million copies of her books worldwide combined with royalties from the films based on them ….