group of daughters of the Virgin carrying the bier, whose white dresses and ruddy flesh furnished a pretty contrast with the black Sunday toggery of the rustic mourners, among all the green stuff; only the priest in his alb, the girl carrying the Virgin’s banner, the family following the body, were drily handled; the whole picture, in fact, was displeasing in its very science and the obstinate stiffness of its treatment.  One found in it a fatal, unconscious return to the troubled romanticism which had been the starting-point of the painter’s career.  And the worst of the business was that there was justification for the indifference with which the public treated that art of another period, that cooked and somewhat dull style of painting, which no longer stopped one on one’s way, since great blazes of light had come into vogue.

It precisely happened that Bongrand entered the gallery with the hesitating step of a timid beginner, and Claude felt a pang at his heart as he saw him give a glance at his neglected picture and then another at Fagerolles’, which was bringing on a riot.  At that moment the old painter must have been acutely conscious of his fall.  If he had so far been devoured by the fear of slow decline, it was because he still doubted; and now he obtained sudden certainty; he was surviving his reputation, his talent was dead, he would never more give birth to living, palpitating works.  He became very pale, and was about to turn and flee, when Chambouvard, the sculptor, entering the gallery by the other door, followed by his customary train of disciples, called to him without caring a fig for the people present: 

‘Ah! you humbug, I catch you at it—­admiring yourself!’

He, Chambouvard, exhibited that year an execrable ‘Reaping Woman,’ one of those stupidly spoilt figures which seemed like hoaxes on his part, so unworthy they were of his powerful hands; but he was none the less radiant, feeling certain that he had turned out yet another masterpiece, and promenading his god-like infallibility through the crowd which he did not hear laughing at him.

Bongrand did not answer, but looked at him with eyes scorched by fever.

‘And my machine downstairs?’ continued the sculptor.  ’Have you seen it?  The little fellows of nowadays may try it on, but we are the only masters—­we, old France!’

And thereupon he went off, followed by his court and bowing to the astonished public.

‘The brute!’ muttered Bongrand, suffocating with grief, as indignant as at the outburst of some low-bred fellow beside a deathbed.

He perceived Claude, and approached him.  Was it not cowardly to flee from this gallery?  And he determined to show his courage, his lofty soul, into which envy had never entered.

‘Our friend Fagerolles has a success and no mistake,’ he said.  ’I should be a hypocrite if I went into ecstasies over his picture, which I scarcely like; but he himself is really a very nice fellow indeed.  Besides, you know how he exerted himself on your behalf.’