then drops into the Cafe Baudequin to
look up old friends!'

Irma had now seen them, and was making gestures from afar. They could
but go to her. When Gagniere, with his light hair and little beardless
face, turned round, looking more grotesque than over, he did not show
the least surprise at finding them there.

'It's wonderful,' he muttered.

'What's wonderful?' asked Fagerolles.

'This little masterpiece--and withal honest and naif, and full of
conviction.'

He pointed to a tiny canvas before which he had stood absorbed, an
absolutely childish picture, such as an urchin of four might have
painted; a little cottage at the edge of a little road, with a little
tree beside it, the whole out of drawing, and girt round with black
lines. Not even a corkscrew imitation of smoke issuing from the roof was
forgotten.

Claude made a nervous gesture, while Fagerolles repeated phlegmatically:

'Very delicate, very delicate. But your picture, Gagniere, where is it?'

'My picture, it is there.'

In fact, the picture he had sent happened to be very near the little
masterpiece. It was a landscape of a pearly grey, a bit of the Seine
banks, painted carefully, pretty in tone, though somewhat heavy, and
perfectly ponderated without a sign of any revolutionary splash.

'To think that they were idiotic enough to refuse that!' said Claude,
who had approached with an air of interest. But why, I ask you, why?'

'Because it's realistic,' said Fagerolles, in so sharp a voice that one
could not tell whether he was gibing at the jury or at the picture.

Meanwhile, Irma, of whom no one took any notice, was looking fixedly at
Claude with the unconscious smile which the savage loutishness of that
big fellow always brought to her lips. To think that he had not even
cared to see her again. She found him so much altered since the last
time she had seen him, so funny, and not at all prepossessing, with his
hair standing on end, and his face wan and sallow, as if he had had a
severe fever. Pained that he did not seem to notice her, she wanted to
attract his attention, and touched his arm with a familiar gesture.

'I say, isn't that one of your friends over there, looking for you?'

It was Dubuche, whom she knew from having seen him on one occasion at
the Cafe Baudequin. He was, with difficulty, elbowing his way through
the crowd, and staring vaguely at the sea of heads around him. But
all at once, when Claude was trying to attract his no