Having pushed the door open, Claude remained motionless on the threshold.  The place stretched out before him, with its four long tables ranged lengthwise to the windows—­broad double tables they were, which had swarms of students on either side, and were littered with moist sponges, paint saucers, iron candlesticks, water bowls, and wooden boxes, in which each pupil kept his white linen blouse, his compasses, and colours.  In one corner, the stove, neglected since the previous winter, stood rusting by the side of a pile of coke that had not been swept away; while at the other end a large iron cistern with a tap was suspended between two towels.  And amidst the bare untidiness of this shed, the eye was especially attracted by the walls which, above, displayed a litter of plaster casts ranged in haphazard fashion on shelves, and disappeared lower down behind forests of T-squares and bevels, and piles of drawing boards, tied together with webbing straps.  Bit by bit, such parts of the partitions as had remained unoccupied had become covered with inscriptions and drawings, a constantly rising flotsam and jetsam of scrawls traced there as on the margin of an ever-open book.  There were caricatures of the students themselves, coarse witticisms fit to make a gendarme turn pale, epigrammatic sentences, addition sums, addresses, and so forth; while, above all else, written in big letters, and occupying the most prominent place, appeared this inscription:  ’On the 7th of June, Gorfu declared that he didn’t care a hang for Rome.—­Signed, Godemard.’*

  * The allusion is to the French Art School at Rome, and the
    competitions into which students enter to obtain admission
    to it, or to secure the prizes offered for the best exhibits
    which, during their term of residence, they send to Paris.—­ED.

Claude was greeted with a growl like that of wild beasts disturbed in their lair.  What kept him motionless was the strange aspect of this place on the morning of the ‘truck night,’ as the embryo architects termed the crucial night of labour.  Since the previous evening, the whole studio, some sixty pupils, had been shut up there; those who had no designs to exhibit—­’the niggers,’ as they were called remaining to help the others, the competitors who, being behind time, had to knock off the work of a week in a dozen hours.  Already, at midnight, they had stuffed themselves with brawn, saveloys, and similar viands, washed down with cheap wine.  Towards one o’clock they had secured the company of some ‘ladies’; and, without the work abating, the feast had turned into a Roman orgy, blended with a smoking competition.  On the damp, stained floor there remained a great litter of greasy paper and broken bottles; while the atmosphere reeked of burnt tallow, musk, highly seasoned sausages, and cheap bluish wine.

And now many voices savagely yelled:  ’Turn him out.  Oh, that mug!  What does he want, that guy?  Turn him out, turn him out.’