the rivals who execrated one another, although they shouted words of praise in full voices; the savage fellows who covertly watched their comrades’ success from the corner of a doorway; the timid ones whom one could not for an empire induce to pass through the gallery where their pictures were hung; the jokers who hid the bitter mortification of their defeat under an amusing witticism; the sincere ones who were absorbed in contemplation, trying to understand the various works, and already in fancy distributing the medals.  And the painters’ families were also there.  One charming young woman was accompanied by a coquettishly bedecked child; a sour-looking, skinny matron of middle-class birth was flanked by two ugly urchins in black; a fat mother had foundered on a bench amid quite a tribe of dirty brats; and a lady of mature charms, still very good-looking, stood beside her grown-up daughter, quietly watching a hussy pass—­this hussy being the father’s mistress.  And then there were also the models—­women who pulled one another by the sleeve, who showed one another their own forms in the various pictorial nudities, talking very loudly the while and dressed without taste, spoiling their superb figures by such wretched gowns that they seemed to be hump-backed beside the well-dressed dolls—­those Parisiennes who owed their figures entirely to their dressmakers.

When Claude got free of the crowd, he enfiladed the line of doorways on the right hand.  His letter was on that side; but he searched the galleries marked with an L without finding anything.  Perhaps his canvas had gone astray and served to fill up a vacancy elsewhere.  So when he had reached the large eastern gallery, he set off along a number of other little ones, a secluded suite visited by very few people, where the pictures seemed to frown with boredom.  And there again he found nothing.  Bewildered, distracted, he roamed about, went on to the garden gallery, searching among the superabundant exhibits which overflowed there, pallid and shivering in the crude light; and eventually, after other distant excursions, he tumbled into the Gallery of Honour for the third time.

There was now quite a crush there.  All those who in any way create a stir in Paris were assembled together—­the celebrities, the wealthy, the adored, talent, money and grace, the masters of romance, of the drama and of journalism, clubmen, racing men and speculators, women of every category, hussies, actresses and society belles.  And Claude, angered by his vain search, grew amazed at the vulgarity of the faces thus massed together, at the incongruity of the toilets—­but a few of which were elegant, while so many were common looking—­at the lack of majesty which that vaunted ‘society’ displayed, to such a point, indeed, that the fear which had made him tremble was changed into contempt.  Were these the people, then, who were going to jeer at his picture, provided it were found again?  Two little reporters with fair complexions were completing