Next he busied himself about his canvas, which he wished to be six and twenty feet in length and sixteen in height.  He insisted upon preparing it himself; ordered a framework and bought the necessary seamless canvas, which he and a couple of friends had all the work in the world to stretch properly by the aid of pincers.  Then he just coated the canvas with ceruse, laid on with a palette-knife, refusing to size it previously, in order that it might remain absorbent, by which method he declared that the painting would be bright and solid.  An easel was not to be thought of.  It would not have been possible to move a canvas of such dimensions on it.  So he invented a system of ropes and beams, which held it slightly slanting against the wall in a cheerful light.  And backwards and forwards in front of the big white surface rolled the steps, looking like an edifice, like the scaffolding by means of which a cathedral is to be reared.

But when everything was ready, Claude once more experienced misgivings.  An idea that he had perhaps not chosen the proper light in which to paint his picture fidgeted him.  Perhaps an early morning effect would have been better?  Perhaps, too, he ought to have chosen a dull day, and so he went back to the Pont des Saint-Peres, and lived there for another three months.

The Cite rose up before him, between the two arms of the river, at all hours and in all weather.  After a late fall of snow he beheld it wrapped in ermine, standing above mud-coloured water, against a light slatey sky.  On the first sunshiny days he saw it cleanse itself of everything that was wintry and put on an aspect of youth, when verdure sprouted from the lofty trees which rose from the ground below the bridge.  He saw it, too, on a somewhat misty day recede to a distance and almost evaporate, delicate and quivering, like a fairy palace.  Then, again, there were pelting rains, which submerged it, hid it as with a huge curtain drawn from the sky to the earth; storms, with lightning flashes which lent it a tawny hue, the opaque light of some cut-throat place half destroyed by the fall of the huge copper-coloured clouds; and there were winds that swept over it tempestuously, sharpening its angles and making it look hard, bare, and beaten against the pale blue sky.  Then, again, when the sunbeams broke into dust amidst the vapours of the Seine, it appeared steeped in diffused brightness, without a shadow about it, lighted up equally on every side, and looking as charmingly delicate as a cut gem set in fine gold.  He insisted on beholding it when the sun was rising and transpiercing the morning mists, when the Quai de l’Horloge flushes and the Quai des Orfevres remains wrapt in gloom; when, up in the pink sky, it is already full of life, with the bright awakening of its towers and spires, while night, similar to a falling cloak, slides slowly from its lower buildings.  He beheld it also at noon, when the sunrays fall on it vertically, when a crude