‘You may believe me or not, my dear fellow,’ he said to Bongrand, ’but I would have given twenty thousand francs out of my pocket to prevent those stupid newspapers from making all this row about my Fagerolles this year.’

Bongrand, who, despite his sufferings, was listening bravely, smiled.

‘In point of fact,’ he said, ’they are perhaps carrying indiscretion too far.  I read an article yesterday in which I learnt that Fagerolles ate two boiled eggs every morning.’

He laughed over the coarse puffery which, after a first article on the ‘young master’s’ picture, as yet seen by nobody, had for a week past kept all Paris occupied about him.  The whole fraternity of reporters had been campaigning, stripping Fagerolles to the skin, telling their readers all about his father, the artistic zinc manufacturer, his education, the house in which he resided, how he lived, even revealing the colour of his socks, and mentioning a habit he had of pinching his nose.  And he was the passion of the hour, the ‘young master’ according to the tastes of the day, one who had been lucky enough to miss the Prix de Rome, and break off with the School of Arts, whose principles, however, he retained.  After all, the success of that style of painting which aims merely at approximating reality, not at rendering it in all its truth, was the fortune of a season which the wind brings and blows away again, a mere whim on the part of the great lunatic city; the stir it caused was like that occasioned by some accident, which upsets the crowd in the morning and is forgotten by night amidst general indifference.

However, Naudet noticed the ‘Village Funeral.’

‘Hullo! that’s your picture, eh?’ he said.  ’So you wanted to give a companion to the “Wedding”?  Well, I should have tried to dissuade you!  Ah! the “Wedding”! the “Wedding"!’

Bongrand still listened to him without ceasing to smile.  Barely a twinge of pain passed over his trembling lips.  He forgot his masterpieces, the certainty of leaving an immortal name, he was only cognisant of the vogue which that youngster, unworthy of cleaning his palette, had so suddenly and easily acquired, that vogue which seemed to be pushing him, Bongrand, into oblivion—­he who had struggled for ten years before he had succeeded in making himself known.  Ah! when the new generations bury a man, if they only knew what tears of blood they make him shed in death!

However, as he had remained silent, he was seized with the fear that he might have let his suffering be divined.  Was he falling to the baseness of envy?  Anger with himself made him raise his head—­a man should die erect.  And instead of giving the violent answer which was rising to his lips, he said in a familiar way: 

’You are right, Naudet, I should have done better if I had gone to bed on the day when the idea of that picture occurred to me.’

‘Ah! there he is; excuse me!’ cried the dealer, making off.