fellow of twenty-seven had the innocence of a lad
of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful, surly artists, would
have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face and seen the twitching
of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his moustache, and the movement
of his shoulders which betrayed the satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew
in swindling a Christian.

Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to his
honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy protecting
a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one of those
eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had,
to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to
the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he
was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle
of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented
thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself a man of genius. The
next day he bought colors, and canvases of various dimensions; he piled
up bread and cheese on his table, he filled a water-pot with water,
he laid in a provision of wood for his stove; then, to use a studio
expression, he dug at his pictures. He hired several models and Magus
lent him stuffs.

After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures. Again
he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the invitation.
The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile imitation
of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a copy of
Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."

"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
original."

"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.

"What?" asked Fougeres.

"Fling yourself into literature."

Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked and
obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before taking
them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that
price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to
his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what
became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination.
His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were
covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out,
and Pierre could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fa