As he spoke Fagerolles’ delicate girlish face remained perfectly grave, and it was impossible to tell whether he was joking.  There was but the slightest yellow twinkle of spitefulness in the depths of his grey eyes.  And he finished with a sarcastic allusion, the drift of which was as yet patent to him alone.  ’Ah, well! if you let yourself be influenced by the fools who laugh, you’ll have enough to do by and by.’

The three friends had gone on again, only advancing, however, with infinite difficulty amid that sea of surging shoulders.  On entering the second gallery they gave a glance round the walls, but the picture they sought was not there.  In lieu thereof they perceived Irma Becot on the arm of Gagniere, both of them pressed against a hand-rail, he busy examining a small canvas, while she, delighted at being hustled about, raised her pink little mug and laughed at the crowd.

‘Hallo!’ said Sandoz, surprised, ‘here she is with Gagniere now!’

‘Oh, just a fancy of hers!’ exclaimed Fagerolles quietly.  ’She has a very swell place now.  Yes, it was given her by that young idiot of a marquis, whom the papers are always talking about.  She’s a girl who’ll make her way; I’ve always said so!  But she seems to retain a weakness for painters, and every now and then drops into the Cafe Baudequin to look up old friends!’

Irma had now seen them, and was making gestures from afar.  They could but go to her.  When Gagniere, with his light hair and little beardless face, turned round, looking more grotesque than over, he did not show the least surprise at finding them there.

‘It’s wonderful,’ he muttered.

‘What’s wonderful?’ asked Fagerolles.

’This little masterpiece—­and withal honest and naif, and full of conviction.’

He pointed to a tiny canvas before which he had stood absorbed, an absolutely childish picture, such as an urchin of four might have painted; a little cottage at the edge of a little road, with a little tree beside it, the whole out of drawing, and girt round with black lines.  Not even a corkscrew imitation of smoke issuing from the roof was forgotten.

Claude made a nervous gesture, while Fagerolles repeated phlegmatically: 

’Very delicate, very delicate.  But your picture, Gagniere, where is it?’

‘My picture, it is there.’

In fact, the picture he had sent happened to be very near the little masterpiece.  It was a landscape of a pearly grey, a bit of the Seine banks, painted carefully, pretty in tone, though somewhat heavy, and perfectly ponderated without a sign of any revolutionary splash.

‘To think that they were idiotic enough to refuse that!’ said Claude, who had approached with an air of interest.  But why, I ask you, why?’

‘Because it’s realistic,’ said Fagerolles, in so sharp a voice that one could not tell whether he was gibing at the jury or at the picture.