ve a really sacred
effect. It is true that Chenavard said that Christianity loves the
picturesque, but Chenavard was a rascal with neither faith nor
principle--an infidel.... Look, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, I fill up the
crevice, I relay the scales of paint which are peeling. That is all....
The damage, due to the sinking of the wall, or more probably to a
seismic shock, is confined to a very small space. This painting of oil
and wax applied on a very dry foundation is far more solid than one
might think.

"I saw Delacroix engaged on this work. Impassioned but anxious, he
modelled feverishly, scraped out, re-painted unceasingly; his mighty
hand made childish blunders, but the thing is done with the mastery of a
genius and the inexperience of a schoolboy. It is a marvel how it
holds."

The good man was silent, and went on filling in the crevice.

"How classic and traditional the composition is," said Gaetan. "Time was
when one could recognise nothing but its amazing novelty; now one can
see in it a multitude of old Italian formulas."

"I may allow myself the luxury of being just, I possess the
qualifications," said the old man from the top of his lofty ladder.
"Delacroix lived in a blasphemous and godless age. A painter of the
decadence, he was not without pride nor grandeur. He was greater than
his times. But he lacked faith, single-heartedness, and purity. To be
able to see and paint angels he needed that virtue of angels and
primitives, that supreme virtue which, with God's help, I do my best to
practise, chastity."

"Hold your tongue, Michel; you are as big a brute as any of them."

Thus Zephyrine, devoured with jealousy because that very morning on the
stairs she had seen her lover kiss the bread-woman's daughter, to wit
the youthful Octavie, who was as squalid and radiant as one of
Rembrandt's Brides. She had loved Michel madly in the happy days long
since past, and love had never died out in Zephyrine's heart.

Old Guinardon received the flattering insult with a smile that he
dissembled, and raised his eyes to the ceiling, where the archangel
Michael, terrible in azure cuirass and gilt helmet, was springing
heavenwards in all the radiance of his glory.

Meanwhile Abbe Patouille, blinking, and shielding his eyes with his hat
against the glaring light from the window, began to examine the pictures
one after another: Heliodorus being scourged by the angels, St. Michael
vanquishing the Demons, and the combat of