He began again, never wearying, but constantly retouching the sketch, and adding innumerable little characteristic details which his painter’s eye had noticed; here the red signboard of a distant shop vibrated in the light; closer by was a greenish bit of the Seine, on whose surface large patches of oil seemed to be floating; and then there was the delicate tone of a tree, the gamut of greys supplied by the house frontages, and the luminous cast of the sky.  She complaisantly approved of all he said and tried to look delighted.

But Jacques once again forgot what he had been told.  After long remaining silent before his book, absorbed in the contemplation of a wood-cut depicting a black cat, he began to hum some words of his own composition:  ’Oh, you pretty cat; oh, you ugly cat; oh, you pretty, ugly cat,’ and so on, ad infinitum, ever in the same lugubrious manner.

Claude, who was made fidgety by the buzzing noise, did not at first understand what was upsetting him.  But after a time the child’s harassing phrase fell clearly upon his ear.

‘Haven’t you done worrying us with your cat?’ he shouted furiously.

‘Hold your tongue, Jacques, when your father is talking!’ repeated Christine.

Upon my word, I do believe he is becoming an idiot.  Just look at his head, if it isn’t like an idiot’s.  It’s dreadful.  Just say; what do you mean by your pretty and ugly cat?’

The little fellow, turning pale and wagging his big head, looked stupid, and replied:  ‘Don’t know.’

Then, as his father and mother gazed at each other with a discouraged air, he rested his cheek on the open picture-book, and remained like that, neither stirring nor speaking, but with his eyes wide open.

It was getting late; Christine wanted to put him to bed, but Claude had already resumed his explanations.  He now told her that, the very next morning, he should go and make a sketch on the spot, just in order to fix his ideas.  And, as he rattled on, he began to talk of buying a small camp easel, a thing upon which he had set his heart for months.  He kept harping on the subject, and spoke of money matters till she at last became embarrassed, and ended by telling him of everything—­the last copper she had spent that morning, and the silk dress she had pledged in order to dine that evening.  Thereupon he became very remorseful and affectionate; he kissed her and asked her forgiveness for having complained about the dinner.  She would excuse him, surely; he would have killed father and mother, as he kept on repeating, when that confounded painting got hold of him.  As for the pawn-shop, it made him laugh; he defied misery.

‘I tell you that we are all right,’ he exclaimed.  ’That picture means success.’

She kept silent, thinking about her meeting of the morning, which she wished to hide from him; but without apparent cause or transition, in the kind of torpor that had come over her, the words she would have kept back rose invincibly to her lips.