Those who did not laugh flew into a rage:  that bluish tinge, that novel rendering of light seemed an insult to them.  Some old gentlemen shook their sticks.  Was art to be outraged like this?  One grave individual went away very wroth, saying to his wife that he did not like practical jokes.  But another, a punctilious little man, having looked in the catalogue for the title of the work, in order to tell his daughter, read out the words, ‘In the Open Air,’ whereupon there came a formidable renewal of the clamour, hisses and shouts, and what not else besides.  The title sped about; it was repeated, commented on. ’In the Open Air! ah, yes, the open air, the nude woman in the air, everything in the air, tra la la laire.’  The affair was becoming a scandal.  The crowd still increased.  People’s faces grew red with congestion in the growing heat.  Each had the stupidly gaping mouth of the ignoramus who judges painting, and between them they indulged in all the asinine ideas, all the preposterous reflections, all the stupid spiteful jeers that the sight of an original work can possibly elicit from bourgeois imbecility.

At that moment, as a last blow, Claude beheld Dubuche reappear, dragging the Margaillans along.  As soon as he came in front of the picture, the architect, ill at ease, overtaken by cowardly shame, wished to quicken his pace and lead his party further on, pretending that he saw neither the canvas nor his friends.  But the contractor had already drawn himself up on his short, squat legs, and was staring at the picture, and asking aloud in his thick hoarse voice: 

‘I say, who’s the blockhead that painted this?’

That good-natured bluster, that cry of a millionaire parvenu resuming the average opinion of the assembly, increased the general merriment; and he, flattered by his success, and tickled by the strange style of the painting, started laughing in his turn, so sonorously that he could be heard above all the others.  This was the hallelujah, a final outburst of the great organ of opinion.

‘Take my daughter away,’ whispered pale-faced Madame Margaillan in Dubuche’s ear.

He sprang forward and freed Regine, who had lowered her eyelids, from the crowd; displaying in doing so as much muscular energy as if it had been a question of saving the poor creature from imminent death.  Then having taken leave of the Margaillans at the door, with a deal of handshaking and bows, he came towards his friends, and said straightway to Sandoz, Fagerolles, and Gagniere: 

’What would you have?  It isn’t my fault—­I warned him that the public would not understand him.  It’s improper; yes, you may say what you like, it’s improper.’

‘They hissed Delacroix,’ broke in Sandoz, white with rage, and clenching his fists.  ’They hissed Courbet.  Oh, the race of enemies!  Oh, the born idiots!’

Gagniere, who now shared this artistic vindictiveness, grew angry at the recollection of his Sunday battles at the Pasdeloup Concerts in favour of real music.