But Claude did not stir.  An icy chill had come over him.  For a moment his heart had almost ceased to beat, so cruel had been the disappointment And with his eyes enlarged, attracted and fixed by a resistless force, he looked at his picture.  He was surprised, and scarcely recognised it; it certainly was not such as it had seemed to be in his studio.  It had grown yellow beneath the livid light of the linen screens; it seemed, moreover, to have become smaller; coarser and more laboured also; and whether it was the effect of the light in which it now hung, or the contrast of the works beside it, at all events he now at the first glance saw all its defects, after having remained blind to them, as it were, for months.  With a few strokes of the brush he, in thought, altered the whole of it, deepened the distances, set a badly drawn limb right, and modified a tone.  Decidedly, the gentleman in the velveteen jacket was worth nothing at all, he was altogether pasty and badly seated; the only really good bit of work about him was his hand.  In the background the two little wrestlers—­the fair and the dark one—­had remained too sketchy, and lacked substance; they were amusing only to an artist’s eye.  But he was pleased with the trees, with the sunny glade; and the nude woman —­the woman lying on the grass appeared to him superior to his own powers, as if some one else had painted her, and as if he had never yet beheld her in such resplendency of life.

He turned to Sandoz, and said simply: 

’They do right to laugh; it’s incomplete.  Never mind, the woman is all right!  Bongrand was not hoaxing me.’

His friend wished to take him away, but he became obstinate, and drew nearer instead.  Now that he had judged his work, he listened and looked at the crowd.  The explosion continued—­culminated in an ascending scale of mad laughter.  No sooner had visitors crossed the threshold than he saw their jaws part, their eyes grow small, their entire faces expand; and he heard the tempestuous puffing of the fat men, the rusty grating jeers of the lean ones, amidst all the shrill, flute-like laughter of the women.  Opposite him, against the hand-rails, some young fellows went into contortions, as if somebody had been tickling them.  One lady had flung herself on a seat, stifling and trying to regain breath with her handkerchief over her mouth.  Rumours of this picture, which was so very, very funny, must have been spreading, for there was a rush from the four corners of the Salon, bands of people arrived, jostling each other, and all eagerness to share the fun.  ‘Where is it?’ ‘Over there.’  ‘Oh, what a joke!’ And the witticisms fell thicker than elsewhere.  It was especially the subject that caused merriment; people failed to understand it, thought it insane, comical enough to make one ill with laughter.  ’You see the lady feels too hot, while the gentleman has put on his velveteen jacket for fear of catching cold.’  ’Not at all; she is already blue; the gentleman has pulled her out of a pond, and he is resting at a distance, holding his nose.’  ‘I tell you it’s a young ladies’ school out for a ramble.  Look at the two playing at leap-frog.’  ’Hallo! washing day; the flesh is blue; the trees are blue; he’s dipped his picture in the blueing tub!’