‘Well, now, what are you going to call it?’ asked Sandoz.

‘The Open Air,’ replied Claude, somewhat curtly.

The title sounded rather technical to the writer, who, in spite of himself, was sometimes tempted to introduce literature into pictorial art.

‘The Open Air! that doesn’t suggest anything.’

’There is no occasion for it to suggest anything.  Some women and a man are reposing in a forest in the sunlight.  Does not that suffice?  Don’t fret, there’s enough in it to make a masterpiece.’

He threw back his head and muttered between his teeth:  ’Dash it all! it’s very black still.  I can’t get Delacroix out of my eye, do what I will.  And then the hand, that’s Courbet’s manner.  Everyone of us dabs his brush into the romantic sauce now and then.  We had too much of it in our youth, we floundered in it up to our very chins.  We need a jolly good wash to get clear of it.’

Sandoz shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of despair.  He also bewailed the fact that he had been born at what he called the confluence of Hugo and Balzac.  Nevertheless, Claude remained satisfied, full of the happy excitement of a successful sitting.  If his friend could give him two or three more Sundays the man in the jacket would be all there.  He had enough of him for the present.  Both began to joke, for, as a rule, Claude almost killed his models, only letting them go when they were fainting, half dead with fatigue.  He himself now very nigh dropped, his legs bending under him, and his stomach empty.  And as the cuckoo clock struck five, he snatched at his crust of bread and devoured it.  Thoroughly worn out, he broke it with trembling fingers, and scarcely chewed it, again standing before his picture, pursued by his passion to such a degree as to be unconscious even that he was eating.

‘Five o’clock,’ said Sandoz, as he stretched himself, with his arms upraised.  ’Let’s go and have dinner.  Ah! here comes Dubuche, just in time.’

There was a knock at the door, and Dubuche came in.  He was a stout young fellow, dark, with regular but heavy features, close-cropped hair, and moustaches already full-blown.  He shook hands with both his friends, and stopped before the picture, looking nonplussed.  In reality that harum-scarum style of painting upset him, such was the even balance of his nature, such his reverence as a steady student for the established formulas of art; and it was only his feeling of friendship which, as a rule, prevented him from criticising.  But this time his whole being revolted visibly.

‘Well, what’s the matter?  Doesn’t it suit you?’ asked Sandoz, who was watching him.

‘Yes, oh yes, it’s very well painted—­but—­’

‘Well, spit it out.  What is it that ruffles you?’

’Not much, only the gentleman is fully dressed, and the women are not.  People have never seen anything like that before.’

This sufficed to make both the others wild.  Why, were there not a hundred pictures in the Louvre composed in precisely the same way?  Hadn’t all Paris and all the painters and tourists of the world seen them?  And besides, if people had never seen anything like it, they would see it now.  After all, they didn’t care a fig for the public!