t was little Flore Beauchamp, you know. "Well,"
Mazel furiously replies, "if she has them like that, it's very wrong of
her."'

They almost all shrieked, especially Claude, to whom Fagerolles told
the story by way of paying court. For some time previously the younger
artist had yielded to the elder's influence; and although he continued
to paint with purely tricky skill, he no longer talked of anything
but substantial, thickly-painted work, of bits of nature thrown on to
canvas, palpitating with life, such as they really were. This did not
prevent him, though, from elsewhere chaffing the adepts of the open-air
school, whom he accused of impasting with a kitchen ladle.

Dubuche, who had not laughed, his sense of rectitude being offended,
made so bold as to reply:

'Why do you stop at the School if you think you are being brutified
there? It's simple enough, one goes away--Oh, I know you are all against
me, because I defend the School. But, you see, my idea is that, when a
fellow wants to carry on a trade, it is not a bad thing for him to begin
by learning it.'

Ferocious shouts arose at this, and Claude had need of all his authority
to secure a hearing.

'He is right. One must learn one's trade. But it won't do to learn it
under the ferule of professors who want to cram their own views forcibly
into your nut. That Mazel is a perfect idiot!'

He flung himself backward on the bed, on which he had been sitting, and
with his eyes raised to the ceiling, he went on, in an excited tone:

'Ah! life! life! to feel it and portray it in its reality, to love it
for itself, to behold in it the only real, lasting, and changing beauty,
without any idiotic idea of ennobling it by mutilation. To understand
that all so-called ugliness is nothing but the mark of individual
character, to create real men and endow them with life--yes, that's the
only way to become a god!'

His faith was coming back to him, the march across Paris had spurred him
on once more; he was again seized by his passion for living flesh. They
listened to him in silence. He made a wild gesture, then calmed down.

'No doubt every one has his own ideas; but the annoyance is that at
the Institute they are even more intolerant than we are. The hanging
committee of the Salon is in their hands. I am sure that that idiot
Mazel will refuse my picture.'

Thereupon they all broke out into imprecations, for this question of
the hanging committee was the everlasting sub