He complimented Mahoudeau on his ‘Vintaging Girl’; showed himself paternal to all of them, with that broad-minded good-nature of his, the free and easy manner of an old Bohemian of the romantic school, who had settled down and was decorated.  Then, turning to Claude: 

’Well, what did I tell you?  Did you see upstairs?  You have become the chief of a school.’

‘Ah! yes,’ replied Claude.  ’They are giving it me nicely.  You are the master of us all.’

But Bongrand made his usual gesture of vague suffering and went off, saying, ‘Hold your tongue!  I am not even my own master.’

For a few moments longer the band wandered through the garden.  They had gone back to look at the ‘Vintaging Girl,’ when Jory noticed that Gagniere no longer had Irma Becot on his arm.  Gagniere was stupefied; where the deuce could he have lost her?  But when Fagerolles had told him that she had gone off in the crowd with two gentlemen, he recovered his composure, and followed the others, lighter of heart now that he was relieved of that girl who had bewildered him.

People now only moved about with difficulty.  All the seats were taken by storm; groups blocked up the paths, where the promenaders paused every now and then, flowing back around the successful bits of bronze and marble.  From the crowded buffet there arose a loud buzzing, a clatter of saucers and spoons which mingled with the throb of life pervading the vast nave.  The sparrows had flown up to the forest of iron girders again, and one could hear their sharp little chirps, the twittering with which they serenaded the setting sun, under the warm panes of the glass roof.  The atmosphere, moreover, had become heavy, there was a damp greenhouse-like warmth; the air, stationary as it was, had an odour as of humus, freshly turned over.  And rising above the garden throng, the din of the first-floor galleries, the tramping of feet on their iron-girdered flooring still rolled on with the clamour of a tempest beating against a cliff.

Claude, who had a keen perception of that rumbling storm, ended by hearing nothing else; it had been let loose and was howling in his ears.  It was the merriment of the crowd whose jeers and laughter swept hurricane-like past his picture.  With a weary gesture he exclaimed: 

’Come, what are we messing about here for?  I sha’n’t take anything at the refreshment bar, it reeks of the Institute.  Let’s go and have a glass of beer outside, eh?’

They all went out, with sinking legs and tired faces, expressive of contempt.  Once outside, on finding themselves again face to face with healthy mother Nature in her springtide season, they breathed noisily with an air of delight.  It had barely struck four o’clock, the slanting sun swept along the Champs Elysees and everything flared:  the serried rows of carriages, like the fresh foliage of the trees, and the sheaf-like fountains which spouted up and whirled away in golden dust.  With a sauntering