Sandoz recognised Claude standing by, and fraternal emotion made his voice quake as he said to him: 

‘What! so you came?  Why did you refuse to call for me, then?’

The painter did not even apologise.  He seemed very tired, overcome with somniferous stupor.

‘Well, don’t stay here,’ added Sandoz.  ’It’s past twelve o’clock, and you must lunch with me.  Some people were to wait for me at Ledoyen’s; but I shall give them the go-by.  Let’s go down to the buffet; we shall pick up our spirits there, eh, old fellow?’

And then Sandoz led him away, holding his arm, pressing it, warming it, and trying to draw him from his mournful silence.

’Come, dash it all! you mustn’t give way like that.  Although they have hung your picture badly, it is all the same superb, a real bit of genuine painting.  Oh!  I know that you dreamt of something else!  But you are not dead yet, it will be for later on.  And, just look, you ought to be proud, for it’s you who really triumph at the Salon this year.  Fagerolles isn’t the only one who pillages you; they all imitate you now; you have revolutionised them since your “Open Air,” which they laughed so much about.  Look, look! there’s an “open air” effect, and there’s another, and here and there—­they all do it.’

He waved his hand towards the pictures as he and Claude passed along the galleries.  In point of fact, the dash of clear light, introduced by degrees into contemporary painting, had fully burst forth at last.  The dingy Salons of yore, with their pitchy canvases, had made way for a Salon full of sunshine, gay as spring itself.  It was the dawn, the aurora which had first gleamed at the Salon of the Rejected, and which was now rising and rejuvenating art with a fine, diffuse light, full of infinite shades.  On all sides you found Claude’s famous ’bluey tinge,’ even in the portraits and the genre scenes, which had acquired the dimensions and the serious character of historical paintings.  The old academical subjects had disappeared with the cooked juices of tradition, as if the condemned doctrine had carried its people of shadows away with it; rare were the works of pure imagination, the cadaverous nudities of mythology and catholicism, the legendary subjects painted without faith, the anecdotic bits destitute of life—­in fact, all the bric-a-brac of the School of Arts used up by generations of tricksters and fools; and the influence of the new principle was evident even among those artists who lingered over the antique recipes, even among the former masters who had now grown old.  The flash of sunlight had penetrated to their studios.  From afar, at every step you took, you saw a painting transpierce the wall and form, as it were, a window open upon Nature.  Soon the walls themselves would fall, and Nature would walk in; for the breach was a broad one, and the assault had driven routine away in that gay battle waged by audacity and youth.