arms and mighty ambitions in
their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust
he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists
crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his
position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he
who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who
followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the
prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the
news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of
respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales?
The greatest painter in the world. Next to Velasquez." And at the end of
the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns
of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped
out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist
has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences
were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the
statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping
at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery
they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished.
Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale,
looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they
wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek facade
and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of
the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old
fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything
worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the
annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an
unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in
some obscure paper, he remembered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that
stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their
sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those
youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving
their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture,
less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the
ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a
meaning like that of a soldier's stripe