After that Sandoz diligently devised motives for various walks, arriving at Claude’s early in the morning, and carrying him away from his work perforce.  It was almost always necessary to drag him from his steps, on which he habitually sat, even when he was not painting.  A feeling of weariness stopped him, a kind of torpor benumbed him for long minutes, during which he did not give a single stroke with the brush.  In those moments of mute contemplation, his gaze reverted with pious fervour to the woman’s figure which he no longer touched:  it was like a hesitating desire combined with sacred awe, a passion which he refused to satisfy, as he felt certain that it would cost him his life.  When he set to work again at the other figures and the background of the picture, he well knew that the woman’s figure was still there, and his glance wavered whenever he espied it; he felt that he would only remain master of himself as long as he did not touch it again.

One evening, Christine, who now visited at Sandoz’s and never missed a single Thursday there, in the hope of seeing her big sick child of an artist brighten up in the society of his friends, took the novelist aside and begged him to drop in at their place on the morrow.  And on the next day Sandoz, who, as it happened, wanted to take some notes for a novel, on the other side of Montmartre, went in search of Claude, carried him off and kept him idling about until night-time.

On this occasion they went as far as the gate of Clignancourt, where a perpetual fair was held, with merry-go-rounds, shooting-galleries, and taverns, and on reaching the spot they were stupefied to find themselves face to face with Chaine, who was enthroned in a large and stylish booth.  It was a kind of chapel, highly ornamented.  There were four circular revolving stands set in a row and loaded with articles in china and glass, all sorts of ornaments and nick-nacks, whose gilding and polish shone amid an harmonica-like tinkling whenever the hand of a gamester set the stand in motion.  It then spun round, grating against a feather, which, on the rotatory movement ceasing, indicated what article, if any, had been won.  The big prize was a live rabbit, adorned with pink favours, which waltzed and revolved unceasingly, intoxicated with fright.  And all this display was set in red hangings, scalloped at the top; and between the curtains one saw three pictures hanging at the rear of the booth, as in the sanctuary of some tabernacle.  They were Chaine’s three masterpieces, which now followed him from fair to fair, from one end of Paris to the other.  The ‘Woman taken in Adultery’ in the centre, the copy of the Mantegna on the left, and Mahoudeau’s stove on the right.  Of an evening, when the petroleum lamps flamed and the revolving stands glowed and radiated like planets, nothing seemed finer than those pictures hanging amid the blood-tinged purple of the hangings, and a gaping crowd often flocked to view them.