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.