hey, the realists,
who triumph. Ah! I hear some nice things said; I wouldn't give a high
price for your skins, youngsters.'

He laughed his big, joyous laugh, stretching out his arms the while as
if to embrace all the youthfulness that he divined rising around him.

'Your disciples are growing,' said Claude, simply.

But Bongrand, becoming embarrassed, silenced him with a wave of
his hand. He himself had not sent anything for exhibition, and the
prodigious mass of work amidst which he found himself--those pictures,
those statues, all those proofs of creative effort--filled him with
regret. It was not jealousy, for there lived not a more upright and
better soul; but as a result of self-examination, a gnawing fear of
impotence, an unavowed dread haunted him.

'And at "the Rejected,"' asked Sandoz; 'how goes it there?'

'Superb; you'll see.'

Then turning towards Claude, and keeping both the young man's hands in
his own, 'You, my good fellow, you are a trump. Listen! they say I am
clever: well, I'd give ten years of my life to have painted that big
hussy of yours.'

Praise like that, coming from such lips, moved the young painter to
tears. Victory had come at last, then? He failed to find a word of
thanks, and abruptly changed the conversation, wishing to hide his
emotion.

'That good fellow Mahoudeau!' he said, 'why his figure's capital! He has
a deuced fine temperament, hasn't he?'

Sandoz and Claude had begun to walk round the plaster figure. Bongrand
replied with a smile.

'Yes, yes; there's too much fulness and massiveness in parts. But just
look at the articulations, they are delicate and really pretty. Come,
good-bye, I must leave you. I'm going to sit down a while. My legs are
bending under me.'

Claude had raised his head to listen. A tremendous uproar, an incessant
crashing that had not struck him at first, careered through the air; it
was like the din of a tempest beating against a cliff, the rumbling of
an untiring assault, dashing forward from endless space.

'Hallow, what's that?' he muttered.

'That,' said Bongrand, as he walked away, 'that's the crowd upstairs in
the galleries.'

And the two young fellows, having crossed the garden, then went up to
the Salon of the Rejected.

It had been installed in first-rate style. The officially received
pictures were not lodged more sumptuously: lofty hangings of old
tapestry at the doors; 'the line' set off with green baize; seats of
crimson velve