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

cafés 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 soirée

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 _distingué_; 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 Hôtel 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. Honoré, the Rue St. Roch, the Rue de la Chaussée 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 château. 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 Bécot 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 Alençon 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 Gagnière 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 Gagnière 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.