His Masterpiece: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

ONE morning, as Claude, who had taken 'The Dead Child' to the Palais
de l'Industrie the previous day, was roaming round about the Parc
Monceau, he suddenly came upon Fagerolles.

'What!' said the latter, cordially, 'is it you, old fellow? What's
becoming of you? What are you doing? We see so little of each other
now.'

Then, Claude having mentioned what he had sent to the Salon--that
little canvas which his mind was full of--Fagerolles added:

'Ah! you've sent something; then I'll get it "hung" for you. You know
that I'm a candidate for the hanging committee this year.'

Indeed, amid the tumult and everlasting discontent of the artists,
after attempts at reform, repeated a score of times and then
abandoned, the authorities had just invested the exhibitors with the
privilege of electing the members of the hanging committee; and this
had quite upset the world of painters and sculptors, a perfect
electoral fever had set in, with all sorts of ambitious cabals and
intrigues--all the low jobbery, indeed, by which politics are
dishonoured.

'I'm going to take you with me,' continued Fagerolles; you must come
and see how I'm settled in my little house, in which you haven't yet
set foot, in spite of all your promises. It's there, hard by, at the
corner of the Avenue de Villiers.'

Claude, whose arm he had gaily taken, was obliged to follow him. He
was seized with a fit of cowardice; the idea that his old chum might
get his picture 'hung' for him filled him with mingled shame and
desire. On reaching the avenue, he stopped in front of the house to
look at its frontage, a bit of coquettish, _precioso_ architectural
tracery--the exact copy of a Renaissance house at Bourges, with
lattice windows, a staircase tower, and a roof decked with leaden
ornaments. It looked like the abode of a harlot; and Claude was struck
with surprise when, on turning round, he recognised Irma Becot's regal
mansion just over the way. Huge, substantial, almost severe of aspect,
it had all the importance of a palace compared to its neighbour, the
dwelling of the artist, who was obliged to limit himself to a fanciful
nick-nack.

'Ah! that Irma, eh?' said Fagerolles with just a shade of respect in
his tone. 'She has got a cathedral and no mistake! But come in.'

The interior of Fagerolles' house was strangely and magnificently
luxurious. Old tapestry, old weapons, a heap of old furniture, Chinese
and Japanese curios were displayed even in the very hall. On the left
there was a dining-room, panelled with lacquer work and having its
ceiling draped with a design of a red dragon. Then there was a
staircase of carved wood above which banners drooped, whilst tropical
plants rose up like plumes. Overhead, the studio was a marvel, though
rather small and without a picture visible. The walls, indeed, were
entirely covered with Oriental hangings, while at one end rose up a
huge chimney-piece with chimerical monsters supporting the tablet, and
at the other extremity appeared a vast couch under a tent--the latter
quite a monument, with lances upholding the sumptuous drapery, above a
collection of carpets, furs and cushions heaped together almost on a
level with the flooring.

Claude looked at it all, and there came to his lips a question which
he held back--Was all this paid for? Fagerolles, who had been
decorated with the Legion of Honour the previous year, now asked, it
was said, ten thousand francs for painting a mere portrait. Naudet,
who, after launching him, duly turned his success to profit in a
methodical fashion, never let one of his pictures go for less than
twenty, thirty, forty thousand francs. Orders would have fallen on the
painter's shoulders as thick as hail, if he had not affected the
disdain, the weariness of the man whose slightest sketches are fought
for. And yet all this display of luxury smacked of indebtedness, there
was only so much paid on account to the upholsterers; all the money
--the money won by lucky strokes as on 'Change--slipped through the
artist's fingers, and was spent without trace of it remaining.
Moreover, Fagerolles, still in the full flush of his sudden good
fortune, did not calculate or worry, being confident that he would
always sell his works at higher and higher prices, and feeling
glorious at the high position he was acquiring in contemporary art.

Eventually, Claude espied a little canvas on an ebony easel, draped
with red plush. Excepting a rosewood tube case and box of crayons,
forgotten on an article of furniture, nothing reminding one of the
artistic profession could be seen lying about.

'Very finely treated,' said Claude, wishing to be amiable, as he stood
in front of the little canvas. 'And is your picture for the Salon
sent?'

'Ah! yes, thank heavens! What a number of people I had here! A perfect
procession which kept me on my legs from morning till evening during a
week. I didn't want to exhibit it, as it lowers one to do so, and
Naudet also opposed it. But what would you have done? I was so begged
and prayed; all the young fellows want to set me on the committee, so
that I may defend them. Oh! my picture is simple enough--I call it "A
Picnic." There are a couple of gentlemen and three ladies under some
trees--guests at some chateau, who have brought a collation with them
and are eating it in a glade. You'll see, it's rather original.'

He spoke in a hesitating manner, and when his eyes met those of
Claude, who was looking at him fixedly, he lost countenance
altogether, and joked about the little canvas on the easel.

'That's a daub Naudet asked me for. Oh! I'm not ignorant of what I
lack--a little of what you have too much of, old man. You know that
I'm still your friend; why, I defended you only yesterday with some
painters.'

He tapped Claude on the shoulders, for he had divined his old master's
secret contempt, and wished to win him back by his old-time caresses
--all the wheedling practices of a hussy. Very sincerely and with a
sort of anxious deference he again promised Claude that he would do
everything in his power to further the hanging of his picture, 'The
Dead Child.'

However, some people arrived; more than fifteen persons came in and
went off in less than an hour--fathers bringing young pupils,
exhibitors anxious to say a good word on their own behalf, friends who
wanted to barter influence, even women who placed their talents under
the protection of their charms. And one should have seen the painter
play his part as a candidate, shaking hands most lavishly, saying to
one visitor: 'Your picture this year is so pretty, it pleases me so
much!' then feigning astonishment with another: 'What! you haven't had
a medal yet?' and repeating to all of them: 'Ah! If I belonged to the
committee, I'd make them walk straight.' He sent every one away
delighted, closed the door behind each visitor with an air of extreme
amiability, through which, however, there pierced the secret sneer of
an ex-lounger on the pavement.

'You see, eh?' he said to Claude, at a moment when they happened to be
left alone. 'What a lot of time I lose with those idiots!'

Then he approached the large window, and abruptly opened one of the
casements; and on one of the balconies of the house over the way a
woman clad in a lace dressing-gown could be distinguished waving her
handkerchief. Fagerolles on his side waved his hand three times in
succession. Then both windows were closed again.

Claude had recognised Irma; and amid the silence which fell Fagerolles
quietly explained matters:

'It's convenient, you see, one can correspond. We have a complete
system of telegraphy. She wants to speak to me, so I must go--'

Since he and Irma had resided in the avenue, they met, it was said,
on their old footing. It was even asserted that he, so 'cute,' so
well-acquainted with Parisian humbug, let himself be fleeced by her,
bled at every moment of some good round sum, which she sent her maid
to ask for--now to pay a tradesman, now to satisfy a whim, often for
nothing at all, or rather for the sole pleasure of emptying his
pockets; and this partly explained his embarrassed circumstances, his
indebtedness, which ever increased despite the continuous rise in the
quotations of his canvases.

Claude had put on his hat again. Fagerolles was shuffling about
impatiently, looking nervously at the house over the way.

'I don't send you off, but you see she's waiting for me,' he said,
'Well, it's understood, your affair's settled--that is, unless I'm
not elected. Come to the Palais de l'Industrie on the evening the
voting-papers are counted. Oh! there will be a regular crush, quite a
rumpus! Still, you will always learn if you can rely on me.'

At first, Claude inwardly swore that he would not trouble about it.
Fagerolles' protection weighed heavily upon him; and yet, in his heart
of hearts, he really had but one fear, that the shifty fellow would
not keep his promise, but would ultimately be taken with a fit of
cowardice at the idea of protecting a defeated man. However, on the
day of the vote Claude could not keep still, but went and roamed about
the Champs Elysees under the pretence of taking a long walk. He might
as well go there as elsewhere, for while waiting for the Salon he had
altogether ceased work. He himself could not vote, as to do so it was
necessary to have been 'hung' on at least one occasion. However, he
repeatedly passed before the Palais de l'Industrie,* the foot pavement
in front of which interested him with its bustling aspect, its
procession of artist electors, whom men in dirty blouses caught hold
of, shouting to them the titles of their lists of candidates--lists
some thirty in number emanating from every possible coterie, and
representing every possible opinion. There was the list of the studios
of the School of Arts, the liberal list, the list of the
uncompromising radical painters, the conciliatory list, the young
painters' list, even the ladies' list, and so forth. The scene
suggested all the turmoil at the door of an electoral polling booth on
the morrow of a riot.

* This palace, for many years the home of the 'Salon,' was built
for the first Paris International Exhibition, that of 1855,
and demolished in connection with that of 1900.--ED.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, when the voting was over, Claude
could not resist a fit of curiosity to go and have a look. The
staircase was now free, and whoever chose could enter. Upstairs, he
came upon the huge gallery, overlooking the Champs Elysees, which was
set aside for the hanging committee. A table, forty feet long, filled
the centre of this gallery, and entire trees were burning in the
monumental fireplace at one end of it. Some four or five hundred
electors, who had remained to see the votes counted, stood there,
mingled with friends and inquisitive strangers, talking, laughing, and
setting quite a storm loose under the lofty ceiling. Around the table,
parties of people who had volunteered to count the votes were already
settled and at work; there were some fifteen of these parties in all,
each comprising a chairman and two scrutineers. Three or four more
remained to be organised, and nobody else offered assistance; in fact,
every one turned away in fear of the crushing labour which would rivet
the more zealous people to the spot far into the night.

It precisely happened that Fagerolles, who had been in the thick of it
since the morning, was gesticulating and shouting, trying to make
himself heard above the hubbub.

'Come, gentlemen, we need one more man here! Come, some willing
person, over here!'

And at that moment, perceiving Claude, he darted forward and forcibly
dragged him off.

'Ah! as for you, you will just oblige me by sitting down there and
helping us! It's for the good cause, dash it all!'

Claude abruptly found himself chairman of one of the counting
committees, and began to perform his functions with all the gravity of
a timid man, secretly experiencing a good deal of emotion, as if the
hanging of his canvas would depend upon the conscientiousness he
showed in his work. He called out the names inscribed upon the
voting-papers, which were passed to him in little packets, while the
scrutineers, on sheets of paper prepared for the purpose, noted each
successive vote that each candidate obtained. And all this went on
amidst a most frightful uproar, twenty and thirty names being called
out at the same time by different voices, above the continuous
rumbling of the crowd. As Claude could never do anything without
throwing passion into it, he waxed excited, became despondent whenever
a voting-paper did not bear Fagerolles' name, and grew happy as soon
as he had to shout out that name once more. Moreover, he often tasted
that delight, for his friend had made himself popular, showing himself
everywhere, frequenting the cafes where influential groups of artists
assembled, even venturing to expound his opinions there, and binding
himself to young artists, without neglecting to bow very low to the
members of the Institute. Thus there was a general current of sympathy
in his favour. Fagerolles was, so to say, everybody's spoilt child.

Night came on at about six o'clock that rainy March day. The
assistants brought lamps; and some mistrustful artists, who, gloomy
and silent, were watching the counting askance, drew nearer. Others
began to play jokes, imitated the cries of animals, or attempted a
_tyrolienne_. But it was only at eight o'clock, when a collation of
cold meat and wine was served, that the gaiety reached its climax. The
bottles were hastily emptied, the men stuffed themselves with whatever
they were lucky enough to get hold of, and there was a free-and-easy
kind of Kermesse in that huge hall which the logs in the fireplace lit
up with a forge-like glow. Then they all smoked, and the smoke set a
kind of mist around the yellow light from the lamps, whilst on the
floor trailed all the spoilt voting-papers thrown away during the
polling; indeed, quite a layer of dirty paper, together with corks,
breadcrumbs, and a few broken plates. The heels of those seated at the
table disappeared amidst this litter. Reserve was cast aside; a little
sculptor with a pale face climbed upon a chair to harangue the
assembly, and a painter, with stiff moustaches under a hook nose,
bestrode a chair and galloped, bowing, round the table, in mimicry of
the Emperor.

Little by little, however, a good many grew tired and went off. At
eleven o'clock there were not more than a couple of hundred persons
present. Past midnight, however, some more people arrived, loungers in
dress-coats and white ties, who had come from some theatre or soiree
and wished to learn the result of the voting before all Paris knew it.
Reporters also appeared; and they could be seen darting one by one out
of the room as soon as a partial result was communicated to them.

Claude, hoarse by now, still went on calling names. The smoke and the
heat became intolerable, a smell like that of a cow-house rose from
the muddy litter on the floor. One o'clock, two o'clock in the
morning struck, and he was still unfolding voting-papers, the
conscientiousness which he displayed delaying him to such a point that
the other parties had long since finished their work, while his was
still a maze of figures. At last all the additions were centralised
and the definite result proclaimed. Fagerolles was elected, coming
fifteenth among forty, or five places ahead of Bongrand, who had been
a candidate on the same list, but whose name must have been frequently
struck out. And daylight was breaking when Claude reached home in the
Rue Tourlaque, feeling both worn out and delighted.

Then, for a couple of weeks he lived in a state of anxiety. A dozen
times he had the idea of going to Fagerolles' for information, but a
feeling of shame restrained him. Besides, as the committee proceeded
in alphabetical order, nothing perhaps was yet decided. However, one
evening, on the Boulevard de Clichy, he felt his heart thump as he saw
two broad shoulders, with whose lolloping motion he was well
acquainted, coming towards him.

They were the shoulders of Bongrand, who seemed embarrassed. He was
the first to speak, and said:

'You know matters aren't progressing very well over yonder with those
brutes. But everything isn't lost. Fagerolles and I are on the watch.
Still, you must rely on Fagerolles; as for me, my dear fellow, I am
awfully afraid of compromising your chances.'

To tell the truth, there was constant hostility between Bongrand and
the President of the hanging committee, Mazel, a famous master of the
School of Arts, and the last rampart of the elegant, buttery,
conventional style of art. Although they called each other 'dear
colleague' and made a great show of shaking hands, their hostility had
burst forth the very first day; one of them could never ask for the
admission of a picture without the other one voting for its rejection.
Fagerolles, who had been elected secretary, had, on the contrary, made
himself Mazel's amuser, his vice, and Mazel forgave his old pupil's
defection, so skilfully did the renegade flatter him. Moreover, the
young master, a regular turncoat, as his comrades said, showed even
more severity than the members of the Institute towards audacious
beginners. He only became lenient and sociable when he wanted to get a
picture accepted, on those occasions showing himself extremely fertile
in devices, intriguing and carrying the vote with all the supple
deftness of a conjurer.

The committee work was really a hard task, and even Bongrand's strong
legs grew tired of it. It was cut out every day by the assistants. An
endless row of large pictures rested on the ground against the
handrails, all along the first-floor galleries, right round the
Palace; and every afternoon, at one o'clock precisely, the forty
committee-men, headed by their president, who was equipped with a
bell, started off on a promenade, until all the letters in the
alphabet, serving as exhibitors' initials, had been exhausted. They
gave their decisions standing, and the work was got through as fast as
possible, the worst canvases being rejected without going to the vote.
At times, however, discussions delayed the party, there came a ten
minutes' quarrel, and some picture which caused a dispute was reserved
for the evening revision. Two men, holding a cord some thirty feet
long, kept it stretched at a distance of four paces from the line of
pictures, so as to restrain the committee-men, who kept on pushing
each other in the heat of their dispute, and whose stomachs, despite
everything, were ever pressing against the cord. Behind the committee
marched seventy museum-keepers in white blouses, executing evolutions
under the orders of a brigadier. At each decision communicated to them
by the secretaries, they sorted the pictures, the accepted paintings
being separated from the rejected ones, which were carried off like
corpses after a battle. And the round lasted during two long hours,
without a moment's respite, and without there being a single chair to
sit upon. The committee-men had to remain on their legs, tramping on
in a tired way amid icy draughts, which compelled even the least
chilly among them to bury their noses in the depths of their fur-lined
overcoats.

Then the three o'clock snack proved very welcome: there was half an
hour's rest at a buffet, where claret, chocolate, and sandwiches could
be obtained. It was there that the market of mutual concessions was
held, that the bartering of influence and votes was carried on. In
order that nobody might be forgotten amid the hailstorm of
applications which fell upon the committee-men, most of them carried
little note-books, which they consulted; and they promised to vote for
certain exhibitors whom a colleague protected on condition that this
colleague voted for the ones in whom they were interested. Others,
however, taking no part in these intrigues, either from austerity or
indifference, finished the interval in smoking a cigarette and gazing
vacantly about them.

Then the work began again, but more agreeably, in a gallery where
there were chairs, and even tables with pens and paper and ink. All
the pictures whose height did not reach four feet ten inches were
judged there--'passed on the easel,' as the expression goes--being
ranged, ten or twelve together, on a kind of trestle covered with
green baize. A good many committee-men then grew absent-minded,
several wrote their letters, and the president had to get angry to
obtain presentable majorities. Sometimes a gust of passion swept by;
they all jostled each other; the votes, usually given by raising the
hand, took place amid such feverish excitement that hats and
walking-sticks were waved in the air above the tumultuous surging
of heads.

And it was there, 'on the easel,' that 'The Dead Child' at last made
its appearance. During the previous week Fagerolles, whose pocket-book
was full of memoranda, had resorted to all kinds of complicated
bartering in order to obtain votes in Claude's favour; but it was a
difficult business, it did not tally with his other engagements, and
he only met with refusals as soon as he mentioned his friend's name.
He complained, moreover, that he could get no help from Bongrand, who
did not carry a pocket-book, and who was so clumsy, too, that he
spoilt the best causes by his outbursts of unseasonable frankness. A
score of times already would Fagerolles have forsaken Claude, had it
not been for his obstinate desire to try his power over his colleagues
by asking for the admittance of a work by Lantier, which was a reputed
impossibility. However, people should see if he wasn't yet strong
enough to force the committee into compliance with his wishes.
Moreover, perhaps from the depths of his conscience there came a cry
for justice, an unconfessed feeling of respect for the man whose ideas
he had stolen.

As it happened, Mazel was in a frightfully bad humour that day. At the
outset of the sitting the brigadier had come to him, saying: 'There
was a mistake yesterday, Monsieur Mazel. A _hors-concours_* picture
was rejected. You know, No. 2520, a nude woman under a tree.'

* A painting by one of those artists who, from the fact that they
had obtained medals at previous Salons, had the right to go on
exhibiting at long as they lived, the committee being debarred
from rejecting their work however bad it might be.--ED.

In fact, on the day before, this painting had been consigned to the
grave amid unanimous contempt, nobody having noticed that it was the
work of an old classical painter highly respected by the Institute;
and the brigadier's fright, and the amusing circumstance of a picture
having thus been condemned by mistake, enlivened the younger members
of the committee and made them sneer in a provoking manner.

Mazel, who detested such mishaps, which he rightly felt were
disastrous for the authority of the School of Arts, made an angry
gesture, and drily said:

'Well, fish it out again, and put it among the admitted pictures. It
isn't so surprising, there was an intolerable noise yesterday. How can
one judge anything like that at a gallop, when one can't even obtain
silence?'

He rang his bell furiously, and added:

'Come, gentlemen, everything is ready--a little good will, if you
please.'

Unluckily, a fresh misfortune occurred as soon as the first paintings
were set on the trestle. One canvas among others attracted Mazel's
attention, so bad did he consider it, so sharp in tone as to make
one's very teeth grate. As his sight was failing him, he leant forward
to look at the signature, muttering the while: 'Who's the pig--'

But he quickly drew himself up, quite shocked at having read the name
of one of his friends, an artist who, like himself, was a rampart of
healthy principles. Hoping that he had not been overheard, he
thereupon called out:

'Superb! No. 1, eh, gentlemen?'

No. 1 was granted--the formula of admission which entitled the picture
to be hung on the line. Only, some of the committee-men laughed and
nudged each other, at which Mazel felt very hurt, and became very
fierce.

Moreover, they all made such blunders at times. A great many of them
eased their feelings at the first glance, and then recalled their
words as soon as they had deciphered the signature. This ended by
making them cautious, and so with furtive glances they made sure of
the artist's name before expressing any opinion. Besides, whenever a
colleague's work, some fellow committee-man's suspicious-looking
canvas, was brought forward, they took the precaution to warn each
other by making signs behind the painter's back, as if to say, 'Take
care, no mistake, mind; it's his picture.'

Fagerolles, despite his colleagues' fidgety nerves, carried the day on
a first occasion. It was a question of admitting a frightful portrait
painted by one of his pupils, whose family, a very wealthy one,
received him on a footing of intimacy. To achieve this he had taken
Mazel on one side in order to try to move him with a sentimental story
about an unfortunate father with three daughters, who were starving.
But the president let himself be entreated for a long while, saying
that a man shouldn't waste his time painting when he was dying for
lack of food, and that he ought to have a little more consideration
for his three daughters! However, in the result, Mazel raised his
hand, alone, with Fagerolles. Some of the others then angrily
protested, and even two members of the Institute seemed disgusted,
whereupon Fagerolles whispered to them in a low key:

'It's for Mazel! He begged me to vote. The painter's a relative of
his, I think; at all events, he greatly wants the picture to be
accepted.'

At this the two academicians promptly raised their hands, and a large
majority declared itself in favour of the portrait.

But all at once laughter, witticisms, and indignant cries rang out:
'The Dead Child' had just been placed on the trestle. Were they to
have the Morgue sent to them now? said some. And while the old men
drew back in alarm, the younger ones scoffed at the child's big head,
which was plainly that of a monkey who had died from trying to swallow
a gourd.

Fagerolles at once understood that the game was lost. At first he
tried to spirit the vote away by a joke, in accordance with his
skilful tactics:

'Come, gentlemen, an old combatant--'

But furious exclamations cut him short. Oh, no! not that one. They
knew him, that old combatant! A madman who had been persevering in his
obstinacy for fifteen years past--a proud, stuck-up fellow who posed
for being a genius, and who had talked about demolishing the Salon,
without even sending a picture that it was possible to accept. All
their hatred of independent originality, of the competition of the
'shop over the way,' which frightened them, of that invincible power
which triumphs even when it is seemingly defeated, resounded in their
voices. No, no; away with it!

Then Fagerolles himself made the mistake of getting irritated,
yielding to the anger he felt at finding what little real influence he
possessed.

'You are unjust; at least, be impartial,' he said.

Thereupon the tumult reached a climax. He was surrounded and jostled,
arms waved about him in threatening fashion, and angry words were shot
out at him like bullets.

'You dishonour the committee, monsieur!'

'If you defend that thing, it's simply to get your name in the
newspapers!'

'You aren't competent to speak on the subject!'

Then Fagerolles, beside himself, losing even the pliancy of his
bantering disposition, retorted:

'I'm as competent as you are.'

'Shut up!' resumed a comrade, a very irascible little painter with a
fair complexion. 'You surely don't want to make us swallow such a
turnip as that?'

Yes, yes, a turnip! They all repeated the word in tones of conviction
--that word which they usually cast at the very worst smudges, at the
pale, cold, glairy painting of daubers.

'All right,' at last said Fagerolles, clenching his teeth. 'I demand
the vote.'

Since the discussion had become envenomed, Mazel had been ringing his
bell, extremely flushed at finding his authority ignored.

'Gentlemen--come, gentlemen; it's extraordinary that one can't settle
matters without shouting--I beg of you, gentlemen--'

At last he obtained a little silence. In reality, he was not a
bad-hearted man. Why should not they admit that little picture,
although he himself thought it execrable? They admitted so many
others!

'Come, gentlemen, the vote is asked for.'

He himself was, perhaps, about to raise his hand, when Bongrand, who
had hitherto remained silent, with the blood rising to his cheeks in
the anger he was trying to restrain, abruptly went off like a pop-gun,
most unseasonably giving vent to the protestations of his rebellious
conscience.

'But, curse it all! there are not four among us capable of turning out
such a piece of work!'

Some grunts sped around; but the sledge-hammer blow had come upon them
with such force that nobody answered.

'Gentlemen, the vote is asked for,' curtly repeated Mazel, who had
turned pale.

His tone sufficed to explain everything: it expressed all his latent
hatred of Bongrand, the fierce rivalry that lay hidden under their
seemingly good-natured handshakes.

Things rarely came to such a pass as this. They almost always arranged
matters. But in the depths of their ravaged pride there were wounds
which always bled; they secretly waged duels which tortured them with
agony, despite the smile upon their lips.

Bongrand and Fagerolles alone raised their hands, and 'The Dead
Child,' being rejected, could only perhaps be rescued at the general
revision.

This general revision was the terrible part of the task. Although,
after twenty days' continuous toil, the committee allowed itself
forty-eight hours' rest, so as to enable the keepers to prepare the
final work, it could not help shuddering on the afternoon when it came
upon the assemblage of three thousand rejected paintings, from among
which it had to rescue as many canvases as were necessary for the then
regulation total of two thousand five hundred admitted works to be
complete. Ah! those three thousand pictures, placed one after the
other alongside the walls of all the galleries, including the outer
one, deposited also even on the floors, and lying there like stagnant
pools, between which the attendants devised little paths--they were
like an inundation, a deluge, which rose up, streamed over the whole
Palais de l'Industrie, and submerged it beneath the murky flow of all
the mediocrity and madness to be found in the river of Art. And but a
single afternoon sitting was held, from one till seven o'clock--six
hours of wild galloping through a maze! At first they held out against
fatigue and strove to keep their vision clear; but the forced march
soon made their legs give way, their eyesight was irritated by all the
dancing colours, and yet it was still necessary to march on, to look
and judge, even until they broke down with fatigue. By four o'clock
the march was like a rout--the scattering of a defeated army. Some
committee-men, out of breath, dragged themselves along very far in the
rear; others, isolated, lost amid the frames, followed the narrow
paths, renouncing all prospect of emerging from them, turning round
and round without any hope of ever getting to the end! How could they
be just and impartial, good heavens? What could they select from amid
that heap of horrors? Without clearly distinguishing a landscape from
a portrait, they made up the number they required in pot-luck fashion.
Two hundred, two hundred and forty--another eight, they still wanted
eight more. That one? No, that other. As you like! Seven, eight, it
was over! At last they had got to the end, and they hobbled away,
saved--free!

In one gallery a fresh scene drew them once more round 'The Dead
Child,' lying on the floor among other waifs. But this time they
jested. A joker pretended to stumble and set his foot in the middle of
the canvas, while others trotted along the surrounding little paths,
as if trying to find out which was the picture's top and which its
bottom, and declaring that it looked much better topsy-turvy.

Fagerolles himself also began to joke.

'Come, a little courage, gentlemen; go the round, examine it, you'll
be repaid for your trouble. Really now, gentlemen, be kind, rescue it;
pray do that good action!'

They all grew merry in listening to him, but with cruel laughter they
refused more harshly than ever. "No, no, never!'

'Will you take it for your "charity"?' cried a comrade.

This was a custom; the committee-men had a right to a 'charity'; each
of them could select a canvas among the lot, no matter how execrable
it might be, and it was thereupon admitted without examination. As a
rule, the bounty of this admission was bestowed upon poor artists. The
forty paintings thus rescued at the eleventh hour, were those of the
beggars at the door--those whom one allowed to glide with empty
stomachs to the far end of the table.

'For my "charity,"' repeated Fagerolles, feeling very much
embarrassed; 'the fact is, I meant to take another painting for my
"charity." Yes, some flowers by a lady--'

He was interrupted by loud jeers. Was she pretty? In front of the
women's paintings the gentlemen were particularly prone to sneer,
never displaying the least gallantry. And Fagerolles remained
perplexed, for the 'lady' in question was a person whom Irma took an
interest in. He trembled at the idea of the terrible scene which would
ensue should he fail to keep his promise. An expedient occurred to
him.

'Well, and you, Bongrand? You might very well take this funny little
dead child for your charity.'

Bongrand, wounded to the heart, indignant at all the bartering, waved
his long arms:

'What! _I_? _I_ insult a real painter in that fashion? Let him be
prouder, dash it, and never send anything to the Salon!'

Then, as the others still went on sneering, Fagerolles, desirous that
victory should remain to him, made up his mind, with a proud air, like
a man who is conscious of his strength and does not fear being
compromised.

'All right, I'll take it for my "charity,"' he said.

The others shouted bravo, and gave him a bantering ovation, with a
series of profound bows and numerous handshakes. All honour to the
brave fellow who had the courage of his opinions! And an attendant
carried away in his arms the poor derided, jolted, soiled canvas; and
thus it was that a picture by the painter of 'In the Open Air' was at
last accepted by the hanging committee of the Salon.

On the very next morning a note from Fagerolles apprised Claude, in a
couple of lines, that he had succeeded in getting 'The Dead Child'
admitted, but that it had not been managed without trouble. Claude,
despite the gladness of the tidings, felt a pang at his heart; the
note was so brief, and was written in such a protecting, pitying
style, that all the humiliating features of the business were apparent
to him. For a moment he felt sorry over this victory, so much so that
he would have liked to take his work back and hide it. Then his
delicacy of feeling, his artistic pride again gave way, so much did
protracted waiting for success make his wretched heart bleed. Ah! to
be seen, to make his way despite everything! He had reached the point
when conscience capitulates; he once more began to long for the
opening of the Salon with all the feverish impatience of a beginner,
again living in a state of illusion which showed him a crowd, a press
of moving heads acclaiming his canvas.

By degrees Paris had made it the fashion to patronise 'varnishing
day'--that day formerly set aside for painters only to come and finish
the toilets of their pictures. Now, however, it was like a feast of
early fruit, one of those solemnities which set the city agog and
attract a tremendous crowd. For a week past the newspaper press, the
streets, and the public had belonged to the artists. They held Paris
in their grasp; the only matters talked of were themselves, their
exhibits, their sayings or doings--in fact, everything connected with
them. It was one of those infatuations which at last draw bands of
country folk, common soldiers, and even nursemaids to the galleries on
days of gratuitous admission, in such wise that fifty thousand
visitors are recorded on some fine Sundays, an entire army, all the
rear battalions of the ignorant lower orders, following society, and
marching, with dilated eyes, through that vast picture shop.

That famous 'varnishing day' at first frightened Claude, who was
intimidated by the thought of all the fine people whom the newspapers
spoke about, and he resolved to wait for the more democratic day of
the real inauguration. He even refused to accompany Sandoz. But he was
consumed by such a fever, that after all he started off abruptly at
eight o'clock in the morning, barely taking time to eat a bit of bread
and cheese beforehand. Christine, who lacked the courage to go with
him, kissed him again and again, feeling anxious and moved.

'Mind, my dear, don't worry, whatever happens,' said she.

Claude felt somewhat oppressed as he entered the Gallery of Honour.
His heart was beating fast from the swiftness with which he had
climbed the grand staircase. There was a limpid May sky out of doors,
and through the linen awnings, stretched under the glazed roof, there
filtered a bright white light, while the open doorways, communicating
with the garden gallery, admitted moist gusts of quivering freshness.
For a moment Claude drew breath in that atmosphere which was already
tainted with a vague smell of varnish and the odour of the musk with
which the women present perfumed themselves. At a glance he took stock
of the pictures on the walls: a huge massacre scene in front of him,
streaming with carmine; a colossal, pallid, religious picture on his
left; a Government order, the commonplace delineation of some official
festivity, on the right; and then a variety of portraits, landscapes,
and indoor scenes, all glaring sharply amid the fresh gilding of their
frames. However, the fear which he retained of the folks usually
present at this solemnity led him to direct his glances upon the
gradually increasing crowd. On a circular settee in the centre of the
gallery, from which sprang a sheaf of tropical foliage, there sat
three ladies, three monstrously fat creatures, attired in an
abominable fashion, who had settled there to indulge in a whole day's
backbiting. Behind him he heard somebody crushing harsh syllables in a
hoarse voice. It was an Englishman in a check-pattern jacket,
explaining the massacre scene to a yellow woman buried in the depths
of a travelling ulster. There were some vacant spaces; groups of
people formed, scattered, and formed again further on; all heads were
raised; the men carried walking-sticks and had overcoats on their
arms, the women strolled about slowly, showing distant profiles as
they stopped before the pictures; and Claude's artistic eye was caught
by the flowers in their hats and bonnets, which seemed very loud in
tint amid the dark waves of the men's silk hats. He perceived three
priests, two common soldiers who had found their way there no one knew
whence, some endless processions of gentlemen decorated with the
ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and troops of girls and their mothers,
who constantly impeded the circulation. However, a good many of these
people knew each other; there were smiles and bows from afar, at times
a rapid handshake in passing. And conversation was carried on in a
discreet tone of voice, above which rose the continuous tramping of
feet.

Then Claude began to look for his own picture. He tried to find his
way by means of the initial letters inscribed above the entrances of
the galleries, but made a mistake, and went through those on the left
hand. There was a succession of open entrances, a perspective of old
tapestry door-hangings, with glimpses of the distant pictures. He went
as far as the great western gallery, and came back by the parallel
suite of smaller galleries without finding that allotted to the letter
L. And when he reached the Gallery of Honour again, the crowd had
greatly increased. In fact, it was now scarcely possible for one to
move about there. Being unable to advance, he looked around, and
recognised a number of painters, that nation of painters which was at
home there that day, and was therefore doing the honours of its abode.
Claude particularly remarked an old friend of the Boutin Studio--a
young fellow consumed with the desire to advertise himself, who had
been working for a medal, and who was now pouncing upon all the
visitors possessed of any influence and forcibly taking them to see
his pictures. Then there was a celebrated and wealthy painter who
received his visitors in front of his work with a smile of triumph on
his lips, showing himself compromisingly gallant with the ladies, who
formed quite a court around him. And there were all the others: the
rivals who execrated one another, although they shouted words of
praise in full voices; the savage fellows who covertly watched their
comrades' success from the corner of a doorway; the timid ones whom
one could not for an empire induce to pass through the gallery where
their pictures were hung; the jokers who hid the bitter mortification
of their defeat under an amusing witticism; the sincere ones who were
absorbed in contemplation, trying to understand the various works, and
already in fancy distributing the medals. And the painters' families
were also there. One charming young woman was accompanied by a
coquettishly bedecked child; a sour-looking, skinny matron of
middle-class birth was flanked by two ugly urchins in black; a fat
mother had foundered on a bench amid quite a tribe of dirty brats; and
a lady of mature charms, still very good-looking, stood beside her
grown-up daughter, quietly watching a hussy pass--this hussy being the
father's mistress. And then there were also the models--women who
pulled one another by the sleeve, who showed one another their own
forms in the various pictorial nudities, talking very loudly the while
and dressed without taste, spoiling their superb figures by such
wretched gowns that they seemed to be hump-backed beside the
well-dressed dolls--those Parisiennes who owed their figures entirely
to their dressmakers.

When Claude got free of the crowd, he enfiladed the line of doorways
on the right hand. His letter was on that side; but he searched the
galleries marked with an L without finding anything. Perhaps his
canvas had gone astray and served to fill up a vacancy elsewhere. So
when he had reached the large eastern gallery, he set off along a
number of other little ones, a secluded suite visited by very few
people, where the pictures seemed to frown with boredom. And there
again he found nothing. Bewildered, distracted, he roamed about, went
on to the garden gallery, searching among the superabundant exhibits
which overflowed there, pallid and shivering in the crude light; and
eventually, after other distant excursions, he tumbled into the
Gallery of Honour for the third time.

There was now quite a crush there. All those who in any way create a
stir in Paris were assembled together--the celebrities, the wealthy,
the adored, talent, money and grace, the masters of romance, of the
drama and of journalism, clubmen, racing men and speculators, women of
every category, hussies, actresses and society belles. And Claude,
angered by his vain search, grew amazed at the vulgarity of the faces
thus massed together, at the incongruity of the toilets--but a few of
which were elegant, while so many were common looking--at the lack of
majesty which that vaunted 'society' displayed, to such a point,
indeed, that the fear which had made him tremble was changed into
contempt. Were these the people, then, who were going to jeer at his
picture, provided it were found again? Two little reporters with fair
complexions were completing a list of persons whose names they
intended to mention. A critic pretended to take some notes on the
margin of his catalogue; another was holding forth in professor's
style in the centre of a party of beginners; a third, all by himself,
with his hands behind his back, seemed rooted to one spot, crushing
each work beneath his august impassibility. And what especially struck
Claude was the jostling flock-like behaviour of the people, their
banded curiosity in which there was nothing youthful or passionate,
the bitterness of their voices, the weariness to be read on their
faces, their general appearance of suffering. Envy was already at
work; there was the gentleman who makes himself witty with the ladies;
the one who, without a word, looks, gives a terrible shrug of the
shoulders, and then goes off; and there were the two who remain for a
quarter of an hour leaning over the handrail, with their noses close
to a little canvas, whispering very low and exchanging the knowing
glances of conspirators.

But Fagerolles had just appeared, and amid the continuous ebb and flow
of the groups there seemed to be no one left but him. With his hand
outstretched, he seemed to show himself everywhere at the same time,
lavishly exerting himself to play the double part of a young 'master'
and an influential member of the hanging committee. Overwhelmed with
praise, thanks, and complaints, he had an answer ready for everybody
without losing aught of his affability. Since early morning he had
been resisting the assault of the petty painters of his set who found
their pictures badly hung. It was the usual scamper of the first
moment, everybody looking for everybody else, rushing to see one
another and bursting into recriminations--noisy, interminable fury.
Either the picture was too high up, or the light did not fall upon it
properly, or the paintings near it destroyed its effect; in fact, some
talked of unhooking their works and carrying them off. One tall thin
fellow was especially tenacious, going from gallery to gallery in
pursuit of Fagerolles, who vainly explained that he was innocent in
the matter and could do nothing. Numerical order was followed, the
pictures for each wall were deposited on the floor below and then hung
up without anybody being favoured. He carried his obligingness so far
as to promise his intervention when the galleries were rearranged
after the medals had been awarded; but even then he did not manage to
calm the tall thin fellow, who still continued pursuing him.

Claude for a moment elbowed his way through the crowd to go and ask
Fagerolles where his picture had been hung. But on seeing his friend
so surrounded, pride restrained him. Was there not something absurd
and painful about this constant need of another's help? Besides, he
suddenly reflected that he must have skipped a whole suite of
galleries on the right-hand side; and, indeed, there were fresh
leagues of painting there. He ended by reaching a gallery where a
stifling crowd was massed in front of a large picture which filled the
central panel of honour. At first he could not see it, there was such
a surging sea of shoulders, such a thick wall of heads, such a rampart
of hats. People rushed forward with gaping admiration. At length,
however, by dint of rising on tiptoe, he perceived the marvel, and
recognised the subject, by what had been told him.

It was Fagerolles' picture. And in that 'Picnic' he found his own
forgotten work, 'In the Open Air,' the same light key of colour, the
same artistic formula, but softened, trickishly rendered, spoilt by
skin-deep elegance, everything being 'arranged' with infinite skill to
satisfy the low ideal of the public. Fagerolles had not made the
mistake of stripping his three women; but, clad in the audacious
toilets of women of society, they showed no little of their persons.
As for the two gallant gentlemen in summer jackets beside them, they
realised the ideal of everything most _distingue_; while afar off a
footman was pulling a hamper off the box of a landau drawn up behind
the trees. The whole of it, the figures, the drapery, the bits of
still life of the repast, stood out gaily in full sunlight against the
darkened foliage of the background; and the supreme skill of the
painter lay in his pretended audacity, in a mendacious semblance of
forcible treatment which just sufficed to send the multitude into
ecstasies. It was like a storm in a cream-jug!

Claude, being unable to approach, listened to the remarks around him.
At last there was a man who depicted real truth! He did not press his
points like those fools of the new school; he knew how to convey
everything without showing anything. Ah! the art of knowing where to
draw the line, the art of letting things be guessed, the respect due
to the public, the approval of good society! And withal such delicacy,
such charm and art! He did not unseasonably deliver himself of
passionate things of exuberant design; no, when he had taken three
notes from nature, he gave those three notes, nothing more. A
newspaper man who arrived went into raptures over the 'Picnic,' and
coined the expression 'a very Parisian style of painting.' It was
repeated, and people no longer passed without declaring that the
picture was 'very Parisian' indeed.

All those bent shoulders, all those admiring remarks rising from a sea
of spines, ended by exasperating Claude; and seized with a longing to
see the faces of the folk who created success, he manoeuvred in such a
way as to lean his back against the handrail hard by. From that point,
he had the public in front of him in the grey light filtering through
the linen awning which kept the centre of the gallery in shade; whilst
the brighter light, gliding from the edges of the blinds, illumined
the paintings on the walls with a white flow, in which the gilding of
the frames acquired a warm sunshiny tint. Claude at once recognised
the people who had formerly derided him--if these were not the same,
they were at least their relatives--serious, however, and enraptured,
their appearance greatly improved by their respectful attention. The
evil look, the weariness, which he had at first remarked on their
faces, as envious bile drew their skin together and dyed it yellow,
disappeared here while they enjoyed the treat of an amiable lie. Two
fat ladies, open-mouthed, were yawning with satisfaction. Some old
gentlemen opened their eyes wide with a knowing air. A husband
explained the subject to his young wife, who jogged her chin with a
pretty motion of the neck. There was every kind of marvelling,
beatifical, astonished, profound, gay, austere, amidst unconscious
smiles and languid postures of the head. The men threw back their
black silk hats, the flowers in the women's bonnets glided to the
napes of their necks. And all the faces, after remaining motionless
for a moment, were then drawn aside and replaced by others exactly
like them.

Then Claude, stupefied by that triumph, virtually forgot everything
else. The gallery was becoming too small, fresh bands of people
constantly accumulated inside it. There were no more vacant spaces, as
there had been early in the morning; no more cool whiffs rose from the
garden amid the ambient smell of varnish; the atmosphere was now
becoming hot and bitter with the perfumes scattered by the women's
dresses. Before long the predominant odour suggested that of a wet
dog. It must have been raining outside; one of those sudden spring
showers had no doubt fallen, for the last arrivals brought moisture
with them--their clothes hung about them heavily and seemed to steam
as soon as they encountered the heat of the gallery. And, indeed,
patches of darkness had for a moment been passing above the awning of
the roof. Claude, who raised his eyes, guessed that large clouds were
galloping onward lashed by the north wind, that driving rain was
beating upon the glass panes. Moire-like shadows darted along the
walls, all the paintings became dim, the spectators themselves were
blended in obscurity until the cloud was carried away, whereupon the
painter saw the heads again emerge from the twilight, ever agape with
idiotic rapture.

But there was another cup of bitterness in reserve for Claude. On the
left-hand panel, facing Fagerolles', he perceived Bongrand's picture.
And in front of that painting there was no crush whatever; the
visitors walked by with an air of indifference. Yet it was Bongrand's
supreme effort, the thrust he had been trying to give for years, a
last work conceived in his obstinate craving to prove the virility of
his decline. The hatred he harboured against the 'Village Wedding,'
that first masterpiece which had weighed upon all his toilsome
after-life, had impelled him to select a contrasting but corresponding
subject: the 'Village Funeral'--the funeral of a young girl, with
relatives and friends straggling among fields of rye and oats.
Bongrand had wrestled with himself, saying that people should see if
he were done for, if the experience of his sixty years were not worth
all the lucky dash of his youth; and now experience was defeated, the
picture was destined to be a mournful failure, like the silent fall of
an old man, which does not even stay passers-by in their onward
course. There were still some masterly bits, the choirboy holding the
cross, the group of daughters of the Virgin carrying the bier, whose
white dresses and ruddy flesh furnished a pretty contrast with the
black Sunday toggery of the rustic mourners, among all the green
stuff; only the priest in his alb, the girl carrying the Virgin's
banner, the family following the body, were drily handled; the whole
picture, in fact, was displeasing in its very science and the
obstinate stiffness of its treatment. One found in it a fatal,
unconscious return to the troubled romanticism which had been the
starting-point of the painter's career. And the worst of the business
was that there was justification for the indifference with which the
public treated that art of another period, that cooked and somewhat
dull style of painting, which no longer stopped one on one's way,
since great blazes of light had come into vogue.

It precisely happened that Bongrand entered the gallery with the
hesitating step of a timid beginner, and Claude felt a pang at his
heart as he saw him give a glance at his neglected picture and then
another at Fagerolles', which was bringing on a riot. At that moment
the old painter must have been acutely conscious of his fall. If he
had so far been devoured by the fear of slow decline, it was because
he still doubted; and now he obtained sudden certainty; he was
surviving his reputation, his talent was dead, he would never more
give birth to living, palpitating works. He became very pale, and was
about to turn and flee, when Chambouvard, the sculptor, entering the
gallery by the other door, followed by his customary train of
disciples, called to him without caring a fig for the people present:

'Ah! you humbug, I catch you at it--admiring yourself!'

He, Chambouvard, exhibited that year an execrable 'Reaping Woman,' one
of those stupidly spoilt figures which seemed like hoaxes on his part,
so unworthy they were of his powerful hands; but he was none the less
radiant, feeling certain that he had turned out yet another
masterpiece, and promenading his god-like infallibility through the
crowd which he did not hear laughing at him.

Bongrand did not answer, but looked at him with eyes scorched by
fever.

'And my machine downstairs?' continued the sculptor. 'Have you seen
it? The little fellows of nowadays may try it on, but we are the only
masters--we, old France!'

And thereupon he went off, followed by his court and bowing to the
astonished public.

'The brute!' muttered Bongrand, suffocating with grief, as indignant
as at the outburst of some low-bred fellow beside a deathbed.

He perceived Claude, and approached him. Was it not cowardly to flee
from this gallery? And he determined to show his courage, his lofty
soul, into which envy had never entered.

'Our friend Fagerolles has a success and no mistake,' he said. 'I
should be a hypocrite if I went into ecstasies over his picture, which
I scarcely like; but he himself is really a very nice fellow indeed.
Besides, you know how he exerted himself on your behalf.'

Claude was trying to find a word of admiration for the 'Village
Funeral.'

'The little cemetery in the background is so pretty!' he said at last.
'Is it possible that the public--'

But Bongrand interrupted him in a rough voice:

'No compliments of condolence, my friend, eh? I see clear enough.'

At this moment somebody nodded to them in a familiar way, and Claude
recognised Naudet--a Naudet who had grown and expanded, gilded by the
success of his colossal strokes of business. Ambition was turning his
head; he talked about sinking all the other picture dealers; he had
built himself a palace, in which he posed as the king of the market,
centralising masterpieces, and there opening large art shops of the
modern style. One heard a jingle of millions on the very threshold of
his hall; he held exhibitions there, even ran up other galleries
elsewhere; and each time that May came round, he awaited the visits of
the American amateurs whom he charged fifty thousand francs for a
picture which he himself had purchased for ten thousand. Moreover, he
lived in princely style, with a wife and children, a mistress, a
country estate in Picardy, and extensive shooting grounds. His first
large profits had come from the rise in value of works left by
illustrious artists, now defunct, whose talent had been denied while
they lived, such as Courbet, Millet, and Rousseau; and this had ended
by making him disdain any picture signed by a still struggling artist.
However, ominous rumours were already in circulation. As the number of
well-known pictures was limited, and the number of amateurs could
barely be increased, a time seemed to be coming when business would
prove very difficult. There was talk of a syndicate, of an
understanding with certain bankers to keep up the present high prices;
the expedient of simulated sales was resorted to at the Hotel Drouot
--pictures being bought in at a big figure by the dealer himself--and
bankruptcy seemed to be at the end of all that Stock Exchange jobbery,
a perfect tumble head-over-heels after all the excessive, mendacious
_agiotage_.

'Good-day, dear master,' said Naudet, who had drawn near. 'So you have
come, like everybody else, to see my Fagerolles, eh?'

He no longer treated Bongrand in the wheedling, respectful manner of
yore. And he spoke of Fagerolles as of a painter belonging to him, of
a workman to whom he paid wages, and whom he often scolded. It was he
who had settled the young artist in the Avenue de Villiers, compelling
him to have a little mansion of his own, furnishing it as he would
have furnished a place for a hussy, running him into debt with
supplies of carpets and nick-nacks, so that he might afterwards hold
him at his mercy; and now he began to accuse him of lacking
orderliness and seriousness, of compromising himself like a
feather-brain. Take that picture, for instance, a serious painter
would never have sent it to the Salon; it made a stir, no doubt, and
people even talked of its obtaining the medal of honour; but nothing
could have a worse effect on high prices. When a man wanted to get
hold of the Yankees, he ought to know how to remain at home, like an
idol in the depths of his tabernacle.

'You may believe me or not, my dear fellow,' he said to Bongrand, 'but
I would have given twenty thousand francs out of my pocket to prevent
those stupid newspapers from making all this row about my Fagerolles
this year.'

Bongrand, who, despite his sufferings, was listening bravely, smiled.

'In point of fact,' he said, 'they are perhaps carrying indiscretion
too far. I read an article yesterday in which I learnt that Fagerolles
ate two boiled eggs every morning.'

He laughed over the coarse puffery which, after a first article on the
'young master's' picture, as yet seen by nobody, had for a week past
kept all Paris occupied about him. The whole fraternity of reporters
had been campaigning, stripping Fagerolles to the skin, telling their
readers all about his father, the artistic zinc manufacturer, his
education, the house in which he resided, how he lived, even revealing
the colour of his socks, and mentioning a habit he had of pinching his
nose. And he was the passion of the hour, the 'young master' according
to the tastes of the day, one who had been lucky enough to miss the
Prix de Rome, and break off with the School of Arts, whose principles,
however, he retained. After all, the success of that style of painting
which aims merely at approximating reality, not at rendering it in all
its truth, was the fortune of a season which the wind brings and blows
away again, a mere whim on the part of the great lunatic city; the
stir it caused was like that occasioned by some accident, which upsets
the crowd in the morning and is forgotten by night amidst general
indifference.

However, Naudet noticed the 'Village Funeral.'

'Hullo! that's your picture, eh?' he said. 'So you wanted to give a
companion to the "Wedding"? Well, I should have tried to dissuade you!
Ah! the "Wedding"! the "Wedding"!'

Bongrand still listened to him without ceasing to smile. Barely a
twinge of pain passed over his trembling lips. He forgot his
masterpieces, the certainty of leaving an immortal name, he was only
cognisant of the vogue which that youngster, unworthy of cleaning his
palette, had so suddenly and easily acquired, that vogue which seemed
to be pushing him, Bongrand, into oblivion--he who had struggled for
ten years before he had succeeded in making himself known. Ah! when
the new generations bury a man, if they only knew what tears of blood
they make him shed in death!

However, as he had remained silent, he was seized with the fear that
he might have let his suffering be divined. Was he falling to the
baseness of envy? Anger with himself made him raise his head--a man
should die erect. And instead of giving the violent answer which was
rising to his lips, he said in a familiar way:

'You are right, Naudet, I should have done better if I had gone to bed
on the day when the idea of that picture occurred to me.'

'Ah! there he is; excuse me!' cried the dealer, making off.

It was Fagerolles showing himself at the entrance of the gallery. He
discreetly stood there without entering, carrying his good fortune
with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. Besides, he was
looking for somebody; he made a sign to a young man, and gave him an
answer, a favourable one, no doubt, for the other brimmed over with
gratitude. Then two other persons sprang forward to congratulate him;
a woman detained him, showing him, with a martyr's gesture, a bit of
still life hung in a dark corner. And finally he disappeared, after
casting but one glance at the people in raptures before his picture.

Claude, who had looked and listened, was overwhelmed with sadness. The
crush was still increasing, he now had nought before him but faces
gaping and sweating in the heat, which had become intolerable. Above
the nearer shoulders rose others, and so on and so on as far as the
door, whence those who could see nothing pointed out the painting to
each other with the tips of their umbrellas, from which dripped the
water left by the showers outside. And Bongrand remained there out of
pride, erect in defeat, firmly planted on his legs, those of an old
combatant, and gazing with limpid eyes upon ungrateful Paris. He
wished to finish like a brave man, whose kindness of heart is
boundless. Claude, who spoke to him without receiving any answer, saw
very well that there was nothing behind that calm, gay face; the mind
was absent, it had flown away in mourning, bleeding with frightful
torture; and thereupon, full of alarm and respect, he did not insist,
but went off. And Bongrand, with his vacant eyes, did not even notice
his departure.

A new idea had just impelled Claude onward through the crowd. He was
lost in wonderment at not having been able to discover his picture.
But nothing could be more simple. Was there not some gallery where
people grinned, some corner full of noise and banter, some gathering
of jesting spectators, insulting a picture? That picture would
assuredly be his. He could still hear the laughter of the bygone Salon
of the Rejected. And now at the door of each gallery he listened to
ascertain if it were there that he was being hissed.

However, as he found himself once more in the eastern gallery, that
hall where great art agonises, that depository where vast, cold, and
gloomy historical and religious compositions are accumulated, he
started, and remained motionless with his eyes turned upward. He had
passed through that gallery twice already, and yet that was certainly
his picture up yonder, so high up that he hesitated about recognising
it. It looked, indeed, so little, poised like a swallow at the corner
of a frame--the monumental frame of an immense painting
five-and-thirty feet long, representing the Deluge, a swarming of
yellow figures turning topsy-turvy in water of the hue of wine lees.
On the left, moreover, there was a pitiable ashen portrait of a
general; on the right a colossal nymph in a moonlit landscape, the
bloodless corpse of a murdered woman rotting away on some grass; and
everywhere around there were mournful violet-shaded things, mixed up
with a comic scene of some bibulous monks, and an 'Opening of the
Chamber of Deputies,' with a whole page of writing on a gilded
cartouch, bearing the heads of the better-known deputies, drawn in
outline, together with their names. And high up, high up, amid those
livid neighbours, the little canvas, over-coarse in treatment, glared
ferociously with the painful grimace of a monster.

Ah! 'The Dead Child.' At that distance the wretched little creature
was but a confused lump of flesh, the lifeless carcase of some
shapeless animal. Was that swollen, whitened head a skull or a
stomach? And those poor hands twisted among the bedclothes, like the
bent claws of a bird killed by cold! And the bed itself, that
pallidity of the sheets, below the pallidity of the limbs, all that
white looking so sad, those tints fading away as if typical of the
supreme end! Afterwards, however, one distinguished the light eyes
staring fixedly, one recognised a child's head, and it all seemed to
suggest some disease of the brain, profoundly and frightfully pitiful.

Claude approached, and then drew back to see the better. The light was
so bad that refractions darted from all points across the canvas. How
they _had_ hung his little Jacques! no doubt out of disdain, or
perhaps from shame, so as to get rid of the child's lugubrious
ugliness. But Claude evoked the little fellow such as he had once
been, and beheld him again over yonder in the country, so fresh and
pinky, as he rolled about in the grass; then in the Rue de Douai,
growing pale and stupid by degrees, and then in the Rue Tourlaque, no
longer able to carry his head, and dying one night, all alone, while
his mother was asleep; and he beheld her also, that mother, the sad
woman who had stopped at home, to weep there, no doubt, as she was now
in the habit of doing for entire days. No matter, she had done right
in not coming; 'twas too mournful--their little Jacques, already cold
in his bed, cast on one side like a pariah, and so brutalised by the
dancing light that his face seemed to be laughing, distorted by an
abominable grin.

But Claude suffered still more from the loneliness of his work.
Astonishment and disappointment made him look for the crowd, the rush
which he had anticipated. Why was he not hooted? Ah! the insults of
yore, the mocking, the indignation that had rent his heart, but made
him live! No, nothing more, not even a passing expectoration: this was
death. The visitors filed rapidly through the long gallery, seized
with boredom. There were merely some people in front of the 'Opening
of the Chamber,' where they collected to read the inscriptions, and
show each other the deputies' heads. At last, hearing some laughter
behind him, he turned round; but nobody was jeering, some visitors
were simply making merry over the tipsy monks, the comic success of
the Salon, which some gentlemen explained to some ladies, declaring
that it was brilliantly witty. And all these people passed beneath
little Jacques, and not a head was raised, not a soul even knew that
he was up there.

However, the painter had a gleam of hope. On the central settee, two
personages, one of them fat and the other thin, and both of them
decorated with the Legion of Honour, sat talking, reclining against
the velvet, and looking at the pictures in front of them. Claude drew
near them and listened.

'And I followed them,' said the fat fellow. 'They went along the Rue
St. Honore, the Rue St. Roch, the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, the Rue
la Fayette--'

'And you spoke to them?' asked the thin man, who appeared to be deeply
interested.

'No, I was afraid of getting in a rage.'

Claude went off and returned on three occasions, his heart beating
fast each time that some visitor stopped short and glanced slowly from
the line to the ceiling. He felt an unhealthy longing to hear one
word, but one. Why exhibit? How fathom public opinion? Anything rather
than such torturing silence! And he almost suffocated when he saw a
young married couple approach, the husband a good-looking fellow with
little fair moustaches, the wife, charming, with the delicate slim
figure of a shepherdess in Dresden china. She had perceived the
picture, and asked what the subject was, stupefied that she could make
nothing out of it; and when her husband, turning over the leaves of
the catalogue, had found the title, 'The Dead Child,' she dragged him
away, shuddering, and raising this cry of affright:

'Oh, the horror! The police oughtn't to allow such horrors!'

Then Claude remained there, erect, unconscious and haunted, his eyes
raised on high, amid the continuous flow of the crowd which passed on,
quite indifferent, without one glance for that unique sacred thing,
visible to him alone. And it was there that Sandoz came upon him, amid
the jostling.

The novelist, who had been strolling about alone--his wife having
remained at home beside his ailing mother--had just stopped short,
heart-rent, below the little canvas, which he had espied by chance.
Ah! how disgusted he felt with life! He abruptly lived the days of his
youth over again. He recalled the college of Plassans, his freaks with
Claude on the banks of the Viorne, their long excursions under the
burning sun, and all the flaming of their early ambition; and, later
on, when they had lived side by side, he remembered their efforts,
their certainty of coming glory, that fine irresistible, immoderate
appetite that had made them talk of swallowing Paris at one bite! How
many times, at that period, had he seen in Claude a great man, whose
unbridled genius would leave the talent of all others far behind in
the rear! First had come the studio of the Impasse des Bourdonnais;
later, the studio of the Quai de Bourbon, with dreams of vast
compositions, projects big enough to make the Louvre burst; and,
meanwhile, the struggle was incessant; the painter laboured ten hours
a day, devoting his whole being to his work. And then what? After
twenty years of that passionate life he ended thus--he finished with
that poor, sinister little thing, which nobody noticed, which looked
so distressfully sad in its leper-like solitude! So much hope and
torture, a lifetime spent in the toil of creating, to come to that, to
that, good God!

Sandoz recognised Claude standing by, and fraternal emotion made his
voice quake as he said to him:

'What! so you came? Why did you refuse to call for me, then?'

The painter did not even apologise. He seemed very tired, overcome
with somniferous stupor.

'Well, don't stay here,' added Sandoz. 'It's past twelve o'clock, and
you must lunch with me. Some people were to wait for me at Ledoyen's;
but I shall give them the go-by. Let's go down to the buffet; we shall
pick up our spirits there, eh, old fellow?'

And then Sandoz led him away, holding his arm, pressing it, warming
it, and trying to draw him from his mournful silence.

'Come, dash it all! you mustn't give way like that. Although they have
hung your picture badly, it is all the same superb, a real bit of
genuine painting. Oh! I know that you dreamt of something else! But
you are not dead yet, it will be for later on. And, just look, you
ought to be proud, for it's you who really triumph at the Salon this
year. Fagerolles isn't the only one who pillages you; they all imitate
you now; you have revolutionised them since your "Open Air," which
they laughed so much about. Look, look! there's an "open air" effect,
and there's another, and here and there--they all do it.'

He waved his hand towards the pictures as he and Claude passed along
the galleries. In point of fact, the dash of clear light, introduced
by degrees into contemporary painting, had fully burst forth at last.
The dingy Salons of yore, with their pitchy canvases, had made way for
a Salon full of sunshine, gay as spring itself. It was the dawn, the
aurora which had first gleamed at the Salon of the Rejected, and which
was now rising and rejuvenating art with a fine, diffuse light, full
of infinite shades. On all sides you found Claude's famous 'bluey
tinge,' even in the portraits and the _genre_ scenes, which had
acquired the dimensions and the serious character of historical
paintings. The old academical subjects had disappeared with the cooked
juices of tradition, as if the condemned doctrine had carried its
people of shadows away with it; rare were the works of pure
imagination, the cadaverous nudities of mythology and catholicism, the
legendary subjects painted without faith, the anecdotic bits destitute
of life--in fact, all the bric-a-brac of the School of Arts used up by
generations of tricksters and fools; and the influence of the new
principle was evident even among those artists who lingered over the
antique recipes, even among the former masters who had now grown old.
The flash of sunlight had penetrated to their studios. From afar, at
every step you took, you saw a painting transpierce the wall and form,
as it were, a window open upon Nature. Soon the walls themselves would
fall, and Nature would walk in; for the breach was a broad one, and
the assault had driven routine away in that gay battle waged by
audacity and youth.

'Ah! your lot is a fine one, all the same, old fellow!' continued
Sandoz. 'The art of to-morrow will be yours; you have made them all.'

Claude thereupon opened his mouth, and, with an air of gloomy
brutality, said in a low voice:

'What do I care if I _have_ made them all, when I haven't made myself?
See here, it's too big an affair for me, and that's what stifles me.'

He made a gesture to finish expressing his thought, his consciousness
of his inability to prove the genius of the formula he had brought
with him, the torture he felt at being merely a precursor, the one who
sows the idea without reaping the glory, his grief at seeing himself
pillaged, devoured by men who turned out hasty work, by a whole flight
of fellows who scattered their efforts and lowered the new form of
art, before he or another had found strength enough to produce the
masterpiece which would make the end of the century a date in art.

But Sandoz protested, the future lay open. Then, to divert Claude, he
stopped him while crossing the Gallery of Honour and said:

'Just look at that lady in blue before that portrait! What a slap
Nature does give to painting! You remember when we used to look at the
dresses and the animation of the galleries in former times? Not a
painting then withstood the shock. And yet now there are some which
don't suffer overmuch. I even noticed over there a landscape, the
general yellowish tinge of which completely eclipsed all the women who
approached it.'

Claude was quivering with unutterable suffering.

'Pray, let's go,' he said. 'Take me away--I can't stand it any
longer.'

They had all the trouble in the world to find a free table in the
refreshment room. People were pressed together in that big, shady
retreat, girt round with brown serge drapery under the girders of the
lofty iron flooring of the upstairs galleries. In the background, and
but partially visible in the darkness, stood three dressers displaying
dishes of preserved fruit symmetrically ranged on shelves; while,
nearer at hand, at counters placed on the right and left, two ladies,
a dark one and a fair one, watched the crowd with a military air; and
from the dim depths of this seeming cavern rose a sea of little marble
tables, a tide of chairs, serried, entangled, surging, swelling,
overflowing and spreading into the garden, under the broad, pallid
light which fell from the glass roof.

At last Sandoz saw some people rise. He darted forward and conquered
the vacant table by sheer struggling with the mob.

'Ah! dash it! we are here at all events. What will you have to eat?'

Claude made a gesture of indifference. The lunch was execrable; there
was some trout softened by over-boiling, some undercut of beef dried
up in the oven, some asparagus smelling of moist linen, and, in
addition, one had to fight to get served; for the hustled waiters,
losing their heads, remained in distress in the narrow passages which
the chairs were constantly blocking. Behind the hangings on the left,
one could hear a racket of saucepans and crockery; the kitchen being
installed there on the sand, like one of those Kermesse cook-shops set
up by the roadside in the open air.

Sandoz and Claude had to eat, seated obliquely and half strangled
between two parties of people whose elbows almost ended by getting
into their plates; and each time that a waiter passed he gave their
chairs a shake with his hips. However, the inconvenience, like the
abominable cookery, made one gay. People jested about the dishes,
different tables fraternised together, common misfortune brought about
a kind of pleasure party. Strangers ended by sympathising; friends
kept up conversations, although they were seated three rows distant
from one another, and were obliged to turn their heads and gesticulate
over their neighbours' shoulders. The women particularly became
animated, at first rather anxious as to the crush, and then ungloving
their hands, catching up their skirts, and laughing at the first
thimbleful of neat wine they drank.

However, Sandoz, who had renounced finishing his meat, raised his
voice amid the terrible hubbub caused by the chatter and the serving:

'A bit of cheese, eh? And let's try to get some coffee.'

Claude, whose eyes looked dreamy, did not hear. He was gazing into the
garden. From his seat he could see the central clump of verdure, some
lofty palms which stood in relief against the grey hangings with which
the garden was decorated all round. A circle of statues was set out
there; and you could see the back of a faun; the profile of a young
girl with full cheeks; the face of a bronze Gaul, a colossal bit of
romanticism which irritated one by its stupid assumption of
patriotism; the trunk of a woman hanging by the wrists, some Andromeda
of the Place Pigalle; and others, and others still following the bends
of the pathways; rows of shoulders and hips, heads, breasts, legs, and
arms, all mingling and growing indistinct in the distance. On the left
stretched a line of busts--such delightful ones--furnishing a most
comical and uncommon suite of noses. There was the huge pointed nose
of a priest, the tip-tilted nose of a soubrette, the handsome
classical nose of a fifteenth-century Italian woman, the mere fancy
nose of a sailor--in fact, every kind of nose, both the magistrate's
and the manufacturer's, and the nose of the gentleman decorated with
the Legion of Honour--all of them motionless and ranged in endless
succession!

However, Claude saw nothing of them; to him they were but grey spots
in the hazy, greenish light. His stupor still lasted, and he was only
conscious of one thing, the luxuriousness of the women's dresses, of
which he had formed a wrong estimate amid the pushing in the
galleries, and which were here freely displayed, as if the wearers had
been promenading over the gravel in the conservatory of some chateau.
All the elegance of Paris passed by, the women who had come to show
themselves, in dresses thoughtfully combined and destined to be
described in the morrow's newspapers. People stared a great deal at an
actress, who walked about with a queen-like tread, on the arm of a
gentleman who assumed the complacent airs of a prince consort. The
women of society looked like so many hussies, and they all of them
took stock of one another with that slow glance which estimates the
value of silk and the length of lace, and which ferrets everywhere,
from the tips of boots to the feathers upon bonnets. This was neutral
ground, so to say; some ladies who were seated had drawn their chairs
together, after the fashion in the garden of the Tuileries, and
occupied themselves exclusively with criticising those of their own
sex who passed by. Two female friends quickened their pace, laughing.
Another woman, all alone, walked up and down, mute, with a black look
in her eyes. Some others, who had lost one another, met again, and
began ejaculating about the adventure. And, meantime, the dark moving
mass of men came to a standstill, then set off again till it stopped
short before a bit of marble, or eddied back to a bit of bronze. And
among the mere bourgeois, who were few in number, though all of them
looked out of their element there, moved men with celebrated names
--all the _illustrations_ of Paris. A name of resounding glory
re-echoed as a fat, ill-clad gentleman passed by; the winged name of a
poet followed as a pale man with a flat, common face approached. A
living wave was rising from this crowd in the even, colourless light
when suddenly a flash of sunshine, from behind the clouds of a final
shower, set the glass panes on high aflame, making the stained window
on the western side resplendent, and raining down in golden particles
through the still atmosphere; and then everything became warm--the
snowy statues amid the shiny green stuff, the soft lawns parted by the
yellow sand of the pathways, the rich dresses with their glossy satin
and bright beads, even the very voices, whose hilarious murmur seemed
to crackle like a bright fire of vine shoots. Some gardeners,
completing the arrangements of the flower-beds, turned on the taps of
the stand-pipes and promenaded about with their pots, the showers
squirting from which came forth again in tepid steam from the drenched
grass. And meanwhile a plucky sparrow, who had descended from the iron
girders, despite the number of people, dipped his beak in the sand in
front of the buffet, eating some crumbs which a young woman threw him
by way of amusement. Of all the tumult, however, Claude only heard the
ocean-like din afar, the rumbling of the people rolling onwards in the
galleries. And a recollection came to him, he remembered that noise
which had burst forth like a hurricane in front of his picture at the
Salon of the Rejected. But nowadays people no longer laughed at him;
upstairs the giant roar of Paris was acclaiming Fagerolles!

It so happened that Sandoz, who had turned round, said to Claude:
'Hallo! there's Fagerolles!'

And, indeed, Fagerolles and Jory had just laid hands on a table near
by without noticing their friends, and the journalist, continuing in
his gruff voice a conversation which had previously begun, remarked:

'Yes, I saw his "Dead Child"! Ah! the poor devil! what an ending!'

But Fagerolles nudged Jory, and the latter, having caught sight of his
two old comrades, immediately added:

'Ah! that dear old Claude! How goes it, eh? You know that I haven't
yet seen your picture. But I'm told that it's superb.'

'Superb!' declared Fagerolles, who then began to express his surprise.
'So you lunched here. What an idea! Everything is so awfully bad. We
two have just come from Ledoyen's. Oh! such a crowd and such hustling,
such mirth! Bring your table nearer and let us chat a bit.'

They joined the two tables together. But flatterers and petitioners
were already after the triumphant young master. Three friends rose up
and noisily saluted him from afar. A lady became smilingly
contemplative when her husband had whispered his name in her ear. And
the tall, thin fellow, the artist whose picture had been badly hung,
and who had pursued him since the morning, as enraged as ever, left a
table where he was seated at the further end of the buffet, and again
hurried forward to complain, imperatively demanding 'the line' at
once.

'Oh! go to the deuce!' at last cried Fagerolles, his patience and
amiability exhausted. And he added, when the other had gone off,
mumbling some indistinct threats: 'It's true; a fellow does all he can
to be obliging, but those chaps would drive one mad! All of them on
the "line"! leagues of "line" then! Ah! what a business it is to be a
committee-man! One wears out one's legs, and one only reaps hatred as
reward.'

Claude, who was looking at him with his oppressed air, seemed to wake
up for a moment, and murmured:

'I wrote to you; I wanted to go and see you to thank you. Bongrand
told me about all the trouble you had. So thanks again.'

But Fagerolles hastily broke in:

'Tut, tut! I certainly owed that much to our old friendship. It's I
who am delighted to have given you any pleasure.'

He showed the embarrassment which always came upon him in presence of
the acknowledged master of his youth, that kind of humility which
filled him perforce when he was with the man whose mute disdain, even
at this moment, sufficed to spoil all his triumph.

'Your picture is very good,' slowly added Claude, who wished to be
kind-hearted and generous.

This simple praise made Fagerolles' heart swell with exaggerated,
irresistible emotion, springing he knew not whence; and this rascal,
who believed in nothing, who was usually so proficient in humbug,
answered in a shaky voice:

'Ah! my dear fellow, ah! it's very kind of you to tell me that!'

Sandoz had at last obtained two cups of coffee, and as the waiter had
forgotten to bring any sugar, he had to content himself with some
pieces which a party had left on an adjoining table. A few tables,
indeed, had now become vacant, but the general freedom had increased,
and one woman's laughter rang out so loudly that every head turned
round. The men were smoking, and a bluish cloud slowly rose above the
straggling tablecloths, stained by wine and littered with dirty plates
and dishes. When Fagerolles, on his aide, succeeded in obtaining two
glasses of chartreuse for himself and Jory, he began to talk to
Sandoz, whom he treated with a certain amount of deference, divining
that the novelist might become a power. And Jory thereupon
appropriated Claude, who had again become mournful and silent.

'You know, my dear fellow,' said the journalist, 'I didn't send you
any announcement of my marriage. On account of our position we managed
it on the quiet without inviting any guests. All the same, I should
have liked to let you know. You will excuse me, won't you?'

He showed himself expansive, gave particulars, full of the happiness
of life, and egotistically delighted to feel fat and victorious in
front of that poor vanquished fellow. He succeeded with everything, he
said. He had given up leader-writing, feeling the necessity of
settling down seriously, and he had risen to the editorship of a
prominent art review, on which, so it was asserted, he made thirty
thousand francs a year, without mentioning certain profits realised by
shady trafficking in the sale of art collections. The middle-class
rapacity which he had inherited from his mother, the hereditary
passion for profit which had secretly impelled him to embark in petty
speculations as soon as he had gained a few coppers, now openly
displayed itself, and ended by making him a terrible customer, who
bled all the artists and amateurs who came under his clutches.

It was amidst this good luck of his that Mathilde, now all-powerful,
had brought him to the point of begging her, with tears in his eyes,
to become his wife, a request which she had proudly refused during six
long months.

'When folks are destined to live together,' he continued, 'the best
course is to set everything square. You experienced it yourself, my
dear fellow; you know something about it, eh? And if I told you that
she wouldn't consent at first--yes, it's a fact--for fear of being
misjudged and of doing me harm. Oh! she has such grandeur, such
delicacy of mind! No, nobody can have an idea of that woman's
qualities. Devoted, taking all possible care of one, economical, and
acute, too, and such a good adviser! Ah! it was a lucky chance that I
met her! I no longer do anything without consulting her; I let her do
as she likes; she manages everything, upon my word.'

The truth was that Mathilde had finished by reducing him to the
frightened obedience of a little boy. The once dissolute she-ghoul had
become a dictatorial spouse, eager for respect, and consumed with
ambition and love of money. She showed, too, every form of sourish
virtue. It was said that they had been seen taking the Holy Communion
together at Notre Dame de Lorette. They kissed one another before
other people, and called each other by endearing nicknames. Only, of
an evening, he had to relate how he had spent his time during the day,
and if the employment of a single hour remained suspicious, if he did
not bring home all the money he had received, down to the odd coppers,
she led him the most abominable life imaginable.

This, of course, Jory left unmentioned. By way of conclusion he
exclaimed: 'And so we waited for my father's death, and then I married
her.'

Claude, whose mind had so far been wandering, and who had merely
nodded without listening, was struck by that last sentence.

'What! you married her--married Mathilde?'

That exclamation summed up all the astonishment that the affair caused
him, all the recollections that occurred to him of Mahoudeau's shop.
That Jory, why, he could still hear him talking about Mathilde in an
abominable manner; and yet he had married her! It was really stupid
for a fellow to speak badly of a woman, for he never knew if he might
not end by marrying her some day or other!

However, Jory was perfectly serene, his memory was dead, he never
allowed himself an allusion to the past, never showed the slightest
embarrassment when his comrades' eyes were turned on him. Besides,
Mathilde seemed to be a new-comer. He introduced her to them as if
they knew nothing whatever about her.

Sandoz, who had lent an ear to the conversation, greatly interested by
this fine business, called out as soon as Jory and Claude became
silent:

'Let's be off, eh? My legs are getting numbed.'

But at that moment Irma Becot appeared, and stopped in front of the
buffet. With her hair freshly gilded, she had put on her best looks
--all the tricky sheen of a tawny hussy, who seemed to have just
stepped out of some old Renaissance frame; and she wore a train of
light blue brocaded silk, with a satin skirt covered with Alencon
lace, of such richness that quite an escort of gentlemen followed her
in admiration. On perceiving Claude among the others, she hesitated
for a moment, seized, as it were, with cowardly shame in front of that
ill-clad, ugly, derided devil. Then, becoming valiant, as it were, it
was his hand that she shook the first amid all those well-dressed men,
who opened their eyes in amazement. She laughed with an affectionate
air, and spoke to him in a friendly, bantering way.

Fagerolles, however, was already paying for the two chartreuses he had
ordered, and at last he went off with Irma, whom Jory also decided to
follow. Claude watched them walk away together, she between the two
men, moving on in regal fashion, greatly admired, and repeatedly bowed
to by people in the crowd.

'One can see very well that Mathilde isn't here,' quietly remarked
Sandoz. 'Ah! my friend, what clouts Jory would receive on getting
home!'

The novelist now asked for the bill. All the tables were becoming
vacant; there only remained a litter of bones and crusts. A couple of
waiters were wiping the marble slabs with sponges, whilst a third
raked up the soiled sand. Behind the brown serge hangings the staff of
the establishment was lunching--one could hear a grinding of jaws and
husky laughter, a rumpus akin to that of a camp of gipsies devouring
the contents of their saucepans.

Claude and Sandoz went round the garden, where they discovered a
statue by Mahoudeau, very badly placed in a corner near the eastern
vestibule. It was the bathing girl at last, standing erect, but of
diminutive proportions, being scarcely as tall as a girl ten years
old, but charmingly delicate--with slim hips and a tiny bosom,
displaying all the exquisite hesitancy of a sprouting bud. The figure
seemed to exhale a perfume, that grace which nothing can give, but
which flowers where it lists, stubborn, invincible, perennial grace,
springing still and ever from Mahoudeau's thick fingers, which were so
ignorant of their special aptitude that they had long treated this
very grace with derision.

Sandoz could not help smiling.

'And to think that this fellow has done everything he could to warp
his talent. If his figure were better placed, it would meet with great
success.'

'Yes, great success,' repeated Claude. 'It is very pretty.'

Precisely at that moment they perceived Mahoudeau, already in the
vestibule, and going towards the staircase. They called him, ran after
him, and then all three remained talking together for a few minutes.
The ground-floor gallery stretched away, empty, with its sanded
pavement, and the pale light streaming through its large round
windows. One might have fancied oneself under a railway bridge. Strong
pillars supported the metallic framework, and an icy chillness blew
from above, moistening the sand in which one's feet sank. In the
distance, behind a torn curtain, one could see rows of statues, the
rejected sculptural exhibits, the casts which poor sculptors did not
even remove, gathered together in a livid kind of Morgue, in a state
of lamentable abandonment. But what surprised one, on raising one's
head, was the continuous din, the mighty tramp of the public over the
flooring of the upper galleries. One was deafened by it; it rolled on
without a pause, as if interminable trains, going at full speed, were
ever and ever shaking the iron girders.

When Mahoudeau had been complimented, he told Claude that he had
searched for his picture in vain. In the depths of what hole could
they have put it? Then, in a fit of affectionate remembrance for the
past, he asked anxiously after Gagniere and Dubuche. Where were the
Salons of yore which they had all reached in a band, the mad
excursions through the galleries as in an enemy's country, the violent
disdain they had felt on going away, the discussions which had made
their tongues swell and emptied their brains? Nobody now saw Dubuche.
Two or three times a month Gagniere came from Melun, in a state of
bewilderment, to attend some concert; and he now took such little
interest in painting that he had not even looked in at the Salon,
although he exhibited his usual landscape, the same view of the banks
of the Seine which he had been sending for the last fifteen years--a
picture of a pretty greyish tint, so conscientious and quiet that the
public had never remarked it.

'I was going upstairs,' resumed Mahoudeau. 'Will you come with me?'

Claude, pale with suffering, raised his eyes every second. Ah! that
terrible rumbling, that devouring gallop of the monster overhead, the
shock of which he felt in his very limbs!

He held out his hand without speaking.

'What! are you going to leave us?' exclaimed Sandoz. Take just another
turn with us, and we'll go away together.'

Then, on seeing Claude so weary, a feeling of pity made his heart
contract. He divined that the poor fellow's courage was exhausted,
that he was desirous of solitude, seized with a desire to fly off
alone and hide his wound.

'Then, good-bye, old man: I'll call and see you to-morrow.'

Staggering, and as if pursued by the tempest upstairs, Claude
disappeared behind the clumps of shrubbery in the garden. But two
hours later Sandoz, who after losing Mahoudeau had just found him
again with Jory and Fagerolles, perceived the unhappy painter again
standing in front of his picture, at the same spot where he had met
him the first time. At the moment of going off the wretched fellow had
come up there again, harassed and attracted despite himself.

There was now the usual five o'clock crush. The crowd, weary of
winding round the galleries, became distracted, and pushed and shoved
without ever finding its way out. Since the coolness of the morning,
the heat of all the human bodies, the odour of all the breath exhaled
there had made the atmosphere heavy, and the dust of the floors,
flying about, rose up in a fine mist. People still took each other to
see certain pictures, the subjects of which alone struck and attracted
the crowd. Some went off, came back, and walked about unceasingly. The
women were particularly obstinate in not retiring; they seemed
determined to remain there till the attendants should push them out
when six o'clock began to strike. Some fat ladies had foundered.
Others, who had failed to find even the tiniest place to sit down,
leaned heavily on their parasols, sinking, but still obstinate. Every
eye was turned anxiously and supplicatingly towards the settees laden
with people. And all that those thousands of sight-seers were now
conscious of, was that last fatigue of theirs, which made their legs
totter, drew their features together, and tortured them with headache
--that headache peculiar to fine-art shows, which is caused by the
constant straining of one's neck and the blinding dance of colours.

Alone on the little settee where at noon already they had been talking
about their private affairs, the two decorated gentlemen were still
chatting quietly, with their minds a hundred leagues away from the
place. Perhaps they had returned thither, perhaps they had not even
stirred from the spot.

'And so,' said the fat one, 'you went in, pretending not to
understand?'

'Quite so,' replied the thin one. 'I looked at them and took off my
hat. It was clear, eh?'

'Astonishing! You really astonish me, my dear friend.'

Claude, however, only heard the low beating of his heart, and only
beheld the 'Dead Child' up there in the air, near the ceiling. He did
not take his eyes off it, a prey to a fascination which held him
there, quite independent of his will. The crowd turned round him,
people's feet trod on his own, he was pushed and carried away; and,
like some inert object, he abandoned himself, waved about, and
ultimately found himself again on the same spot as before without
having once lowered his head, quite ignorant of what was occurring
below, all his life being concentrated up yonder beside his work, his
little Jacques, swollen in death. Two big tears which stood motionless
between his eyelids prevented him from seeing clearly. And it seemed
to him as if he would never have time to see enough.

Then Sandoz, in his deep compassion, pretended he did not perceive his
old friend; it was as if he wished to leave him there, beside the tomb
of his wrecked life. Their comrades once more went past in a band.
Fagerolles and Jory darted on ahead, and, Mahoudeau having asked
Sandoz where Claude's picture was hung, the novelist told a lie, drew
him aside and took him off. All of them went away.

In the evening Christine only managed to draw curt words from Claude;
everything was going on all right, said he; the public showed no
ill-humour; the picture had a good effect, though it was hung perhaps
rather high up. However, despite this semblance of cold tranquillity,
he seemed so strange that she became frightened.

After dinner, as she returned from carrying the dirty plates into the
kitchen, she no longer found him near the table. He had opened a
window which overlooked some waste ground, and he stood there, leaning
out to such a degree that she could scarcely see him. At this she
sprang forward, terrified, and pulled him violently by his jacket.

'Claude! Claude! what are you doing?'

He turned round, with his face as white as a sheet and his eyes
haggard.

'I'm looking,' he said.

But she closed the window with trembling hands, and after that
significant incident such anguish clung to her that she no longer
slept at night-time.

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