L'incitation à la pénétration

Watson to Holmes:
"You reasoned it out beautifully", I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."
"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas, I already feel it closing upon me! My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me do so."
"And you are a benefactor to the race," said I.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," he remarked. "'l'homme c'est rien -- l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand."