landscapes, and indoor scenes, all glaring sharply amid the fresh gilding of their frames.  However, the fear which he retained of the folks usually present at this solemnity led him to direct his glances upon the gradually increasing crowd.  On a circular settee in the centre of the gallery, from which sprang a sheaf of tropical foliage, there sat three ladies, three monstrously fat creatures, attired in an abominable fashion, who had settled there to indulge in a whole day’s backbiting.  Behind him he heard somebody crushing harsh syllables in a hoarse voice.  It was an Englishman in a check-pattern jacket, explaining the massacre scene to a yellow woman buried in the depths of a travelling ulster.  There were some vacant spaces; groups of people formed, scattered, and formed again further on; all heads were raised; the men carried walking-sticks and had overcoats on their arms, the women strolled about slowly, showing distant profiles as they stopped before the pictures; and Claude’s artistic eye was caught by the flowers in their hats and bonnets, which seemed very loud in tint amid the dark waves of the men’s silk hats.  He perceived three priests, two common soldiers who had found their way there no one knew whence, some endless processions of gentlemen decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and troops of girls and their mothers, who constantly impeded the circulation.  However, a good many of these people knew each other; there were smiles and bows from afar, at times a rapid handshake in passing.  And conversation was carried on in a discreet tone of voice, above which rose the continuous tramping of feet.

Then Claude began to look for his own picture.  He tried to find his way by means of the initial letters inscribed above the entrances of the galleries, but made a mistake, and went through those on the left hand.  There was a succession of open entrances, a perspective of old tapestry door-hangings, with glimpses of the distant pictures.  He went as far as the great western gallery, and came back by the parallel suite of smaller galleries without finding that allotted to the letter L. And when he reached the Gallery of Honour again, the crowd had greatly increased.  In fact, it was now scarcely possible for one to move about there.  Being unable to advance, he looked around, and recognised a number of painters, that nation of painters which was at home there that day, and was therefore doing the honours of its abode.  Claude particularly remarked an old friend of the Boutin Studio—­a young fellow consumed with the desire to advertise himself, who had been working for a medal, and who was now pouncing upon all the visitors possessed of any influence and forcibly taking them to see his pictures.  Then there was a celebrated and wealthy painter who received his visitors in front of his work with a smile of triumph on his lips, showing himself compromisingly gallant with the ladies, who formed quite a court around him.  And there were all the others: