There was a mad roar of laughter.  Fagerolles alone grinned with an ill grace, for he fancied himself the butt of some spiteful joke.  But Gagniere spoke in absolute good faith.  He felt surprised at the success of a painter who did not even observe the laws regulating the value of tints.  Success for that trickster!  Never!  For in that case what would become of conscientiousness?

This boisterous hilarity enlivened the end of the dinner.  They all left off eating, though the mistress of the house still insisted upon filling their plates.

‘My dear, do attend to them,’ she kept saying to Sandoz, who had grown greatly excited amidst the din.  ’Just stretch out your hand; the biscuits are on the side-board.’

They all declined anything more, and rose up.  As the rest of the evening was to be spent there, round the table, drinking tea, they leaned back against the walls and continued chatting while the servant cleared away.  The young couple assisted, Henriette putting the salt-cellars in a drawer, and Sandoz helping to fold the cloth.

‘You can smoke,’ said Henriette.  ’You know that it doesn’t inconvenience me in the least.’

Fagerolles, who had drawn Claude into the window recess, offered him a cigar, which was declined.

’True, I forgot; you don’t smoke.  Ah!  I say, I must go to see what you have brought back with you.  Some very interesting things, no doubt.  You know what I think of your talent.  You are the cleverest of us all.’

He showed himself very humble, sincere at heart, and allowing his admiration of former days to rise once more to the surface; indeed, he for ever bore the imprint of another’s genius, which he admitted, despite the complex calculations of his cunning mind.  But his humility was mingled with a certain embarrassment very rare with him—­the concern he felt at the silence which the master of his youth preserved respecting his last picture.  At last he ventured to ask, with quivering lips: 

’Did you see my actress at the Salon?  Do you like it?  Tell me candidly.’

Claude hesitated for a moment; then, like the good-natured fellow he was, said: 

‘Yes; there are some very good bits in it.’

Fagerolles already repented having asked that stupid question, and he ended by altogether floundering; he tried to excuse himself for his plagiarisms and his compromises.  When with great difficulty he had got out of the mess, enraged with himself for his clumsiness, he for a moment became the joker of yore again, made even Claude laugh till he cried, and amused them all.  At last he held out his hand to take leave of Henriette.

‘What, going so soon?’

’Alas! yes, dear madame.  This evening my father is entertaining the head of a department at one of the ministries, an official whom he’s trying to influence in view of obtaining a decoration; and, as I am one of his titles to that distinction, I had to promise that I would look in.’