Ferocious shouts arose at this, and Claude had need of all his authority to secure a hearing.

’He is right.  One must learn one’s trade.  But it won’t do to learn it under the ferule of professors who want to cram their own views forcibly into your nut.  That Mazel is a perfect idiot!’

He flung himself backward on the bed, on which he had been sitting, and with his eyes raised to the ceiling, he went on, in an excited tone: 

’Ah! life! life! to feel it and portray it in its reality, to love it for itself, to behold in it the only real, lasting, and changing beauty, without any idiotic idea of ennobling it by mutilation.  To understand that all so-called ugliness is nothing but the mark of individual character, to create real men and endow them with life —­yes, that’s the only way to become a god!’

His faith was coming back to him, the march across Paris had spurred him on once more; he was again seized by his passion for living flesh.  They listened to him in silence.  He made a wild gesture, then calmed down.

’No doubt every one has his own ideas; but the annoyance is that at the Institute they are even more intolerant than we are.  The hanging committee of the Salon is in their hands.  I am sure that that idiot Mazel will refuse my picture.’

Thereupon they all broke out into imprecations, for this question of the hanging committee was the everlasting subject of their wrath.  They demanded reforms; every one had a solution of the problem ready—­from universal suffrage, applied to the election of a hanging committee, liberal in the widest sense of the word, down to unrestricted liberty, a Salon open to all exhibitors.*

  * The reader will bear in mind that all these complaints made by
    Claude and his friends apply to the old Salons, as organized
    under Government control, at the time of the Second Empire.—­ED.

While the others went on discussing the subject, Gagniere drew Mahoudeau to the open window, where, in a low voice, his eyes the while staring into space, he murmured: 

’Oh, it’s nothing at all, only four bars; a simple impression jotted down there and then.  But what a deal there is in it!  To me it’s first of all a landscape, dwindling away in the distance; a bit of melancholy road, with the shadow of a tree that one cannot see; and then a woman passes along, scarcely a silhouette; on she goes and you never meet her again, no, never more again.’

Just at that moment, however, Fagerolles exclaimed, ’I say, Gagniere, what are you going to send to the Salon this year?’

Gagniere did not hear, but continued talking, enraptured, as it were.

’In Schumann one finds everything—­the infinite.  And Wagner, too, whom they hissed again last Sunday!’

But a fresh call from Fagerolles made him start.

’Eh! what?  What am I going to send to the Salon?  A small landscape, perhaps; a little bit of the Seine.  It is so difficult to decide; first of all I must feel pleased with it myself.’