tated,
disturbed by the gaslight, which deceived him as to tones. At last he
chose a group of little girls jumping the rope on a sidewalk; and almost
at once he wished to depart, and to take his present with him.

"I will have it taken to your house," said the painter.

"No; I should like better to have it this very evening, so that I may
admire it while I am going to bed," said Musadieu.

Nothing could keep him, and Olivier Bertin found himself again alone in
his house, that prison of his memories and his painful agitation.

When the servant entered the next morning, bringing tea and the
newspapers, he found his master sitting up in bed, so pale and shaken
that he was alarmed.

"Is Monsieur indisposed?" he inquired.

"It is nothing--only a little headache."

"Does not Monsieur wish me to bring him something?"

"No. What sort of weather is it?"

"It rains, Monsieur."

"Very well. That is all."

The man withdrew, having placed on the little table the tea-tray and the
newspapers.

Olivier took up the _Figaro_ and opened it. The leading article was
entitled "Modern Painting." It was a dithyrambic eulogy on four or
five young painters who, gifted with real ability as colorists, and
exaggerating them for effect, now pretended to be revolutionists and
renovators of genius.

As did all the older painters, Bertin sneered at these newcomers, was
irritated at their assumption of exclusiveness, and disputed their
doctrines. He began to read the article, then, with the rising anger
so quickly felt by a nervous person; at last, glancing a little further
down, he saw his own name, and these words at the end of a sentence
struck him like a blow of the fist full in the chest: "The old-fashioned
art of Olivier Bertin."

He had always been sensitive to either criticism or praise, but, at the
bottom of his heart, in spite of his legitimate vanity, he suffered
more from being criticised than he enjoyed being praised, because of
the uneasiness concerning himself which his hesitations had always
encouraged. Formerly, however, at the time of his triumphs, the incense
offered was so frequent that it made him forget the pin-pricks.
To-day, before the ceaseless influx of new artists and new admirers,
congratulations were more rare and criticism was more marked. He felt
that he had been enrolled in the battalion of old painters of talent,
whom the younger ones do not treat as masters; and as he was as
intelligent as he was pers