He laughed his big, joyous laugh, stretching out his arms the while as if to embrace all the youthfulness that he divined rising around him.

‘Your disciples are growing,’ said Claude, simply.

But Bongrand, becoming embarrassed, silenced him with a wave of his hand.  He himself had not sent anything for exhibition, and the prodigious mass of work amidst which he found himself—­those pictures, those statues, all those proofs of creative effort—­filled him with regret.  It was not jealousy, for there lived not a more upright and better soul; but as a result of self-examination, a gnawing fear of impotence, an unavowed dread haunted him.

‘And at “the Rejected,"’ asked Sandoz; ‘how goes it there?’

‘Superb; you’ll see.’

Then turning towards Claude, and keeping both the young man’s hands in his own, ’You, my good fellow, you are a trump.  Listen! they say I am clever:  well, I’d give ten years of my life to have painted that big hussy of yours.’

Praise like that, coming from such lips, moved the young painter to tears.  Victory had come at last, then?  He failed to find a word of thanks, and abruptly changed the conversation, wishing to hide his emotion.

‘That good fellow Mahoudeau!’ he said, ’why his figure’s capital!  He has a deuced fine temperament, hasn’t he?’

Sandoz and Claude had begun to walk round the plaster figure.  Bongrand replied with a smile.

’Yes, yes; there’s too much fulness and massiveness in parts.  But just look at the articulations, they are delicate and really pretty.  Come, good-bye, I must leave you.  I’m going to sit down a while.  My legs are bending under me.’

Claude had raised his head to listen.  A tremendous uproar, an incessant crashing that had not struck him at first, careered through the air; it was like the din of a tempest beating against a cliff, the rumbling of an untiring assault, dashing forward from endless space.

‘Hallow, what’s that?’ he muttered.

‘That,’ said Bongrand, as he walked away, ’that’s the crowd upstairs in the galleries.’

And the two young fellows, having crossed the garden, then went up to the Salon of the Rejected.

It had been installed in first-rate style.  The officially received pictures were not lodged more sumptuously:  lofty hangings of old tapestry at the doors; ‘the line’ set off with green baize; seats of crimson velvet; white linen screens under the large skylights of the roof.  And all along the suite of galleries the first impression was the same—­there were the same gilt frames, the same bright colours on the canvases.  But there was a special kind of cheerfulness, a sparkle of youth which one did not altogether realise at first.  The crowd, already compact, increased every minute, for the official Salon was being deserted.  People came stung by curiosity, impelled by a desire to judge the judges, and, above all, full of the conviction that they were going to see some very diverting things.  It was very hot; a fine dust arose from the flooring; and certainly, towards four o’clock people would stifle there.