His words came slowly; he blinked while he spoke as if the thought of his picture had returned to him and was gradually taking possession of him, to such a degree as to hamper him in his speech about other matters.

’Well, as luck would have it, I found Courajod on his doorstep to-day.  An old man of more than eighty, wrinkled and shrunk to the size of a boy.  I should like you to see him, with his clogs, his peasant’s jersey and his coloured handkerchief wound over his head as if he were an old market-woman.  I pluckily went up to him, saying, “Monsieur Courajod, I know you very well; you have a picture in the Luxembourg Gallery which is a masterpiece.  Allow a painter to shake hands with you as he would with his master.”  And then you should have seen him take fright, draw back and stutter, as if I were going to strike him.  A regular flight!  However, I followed him, and gradually he recovered his composure, and showed me his hens, his ducks, his rabbits and dogs—­an extraordinary collection of birds and beasts; there was even a raven among them.  He lives in the midst of them all; he speaks to no one but his animals.  As for the view, it’s simply magnificent; you see the whole of the St. Denis plain for miles upon miles; rivers and towns, smoking factory-chimneys, and puffing railway-engines; in short, the place is a real hermitage on a hill, with its back turned to Paris and its eyes fixed on the boundless country.  As a matter of course, I came back to his picture.  “Oh, Monsieur Courajod,” said I, “what talent you showed!  If you only knew how much we all admire you.  You are one of our illustrious men; you’ll remain the ancestor of us all.”  But his lips began to tremble again; he looked at me with an air of terror-stricken stupidity; I am sure he would not have waved me back with a more imploring gesture if I had unearthed under his very eyes the corpse of some forgotten comrade of his youth.  He kept chewing disconnected words between his toothless gums; it was the mumbling of an old man who had sunk into second childhood, and whom it’s impossible to understand.  “Don’t know—­so long ago—­too old —­don’t care a rap.”  To make a long story short, he showed me the door; I heard him hurriedly turn the key in lock, barricading himself and his birds and animals against the admiration of the outside world.  Ah, my good fellow, the idea of it!  That great man ending his life like a retired grocer; that voluntary relapse into “nothingness” even before death.  Ah, the glory, the glory for which we others are ready to die!’

Claude’s voice, which had sunk lower and lower, died away at last in a melancholy sigh.  Darkness was still coming on; after gradually collecting in the corners, it rose like a slow, inexorable tide, first submerging the legs of the chairs and the table, all the confusion of things that littered the tiled floor.  The lower part of the picture was already growing dim, and Claude, with his eyes still desperately fixed on it, seemed to be watching the ascent of the darkness as if he had at last judged his work in the expiring light.  And no sound was heard save the stertorous breathing of the sick child, near whom there still loomed the dark silhouette of the motionless mother.