f an original work can possibly elicit from bourgeois imbecility.

At that moment, as a last blow, Claude beheld Dubuche reappear, dragging
the Margaillans along. As soon as he came in front of the picture, the
architect, ill at ease, overtaken by cowardly shame, wished to quicken
his pace and lead his party further on, pretending that he saw neither
the canvas nor his friends. But the contractor had already drawn himself
up on his short, squat legs, and was staring at the picture, and asking
aloud in his thick hoarse voice:

'I say, who's the blockhead that painted this?'

That good-natured bluster, that cry of a millionaire parvenu resuming
the average opinion of the assembly, increased the general merriment;
and he, flattered by his success, and tickled by the strange style of
the painting, started laughing in his turn, so sonorously that he could
be heard above all the others. This was the hallelujah, a final outburst
of the great organ of opinion.

'Take my daughter away,' whispered pale-faced Madame Margaillan in
Dubuche's ear.

He sprang forward and freed Regine, who had lowered her eyelids, from
the crowd; displaying in doing so as much muscular energy as if it had
been a question of saving the poor creature from imminent death. Then
having taken leave of the Margaillans at the door, with a deal of
handshaking and bows, he came towards his friends, and said straightway
to Sandoz, Fagerolles, and Gagniere:

'What would you have? It isn't my fault--I warned him that the public
would not understand him. It's improper; yes, you may say what you like,
it's improper.'

'They hissed Delacroix,' broke in Sandoz, white with rage, and clenching
his fists. 'They hissed Courbet. Oh, the race of enemies! Oh, the born
idiots!'

Gagniere, who now shared this artistic vindictiveness, grew angry at the
recollection of his Sunday battles at the Pasdeloup Concerts in favour
of real music.

'And they hiss Wagner too; they are the same crew. I recognise them. You
see that fat fellow over there--'

Jory had to hold him back. The journalist for his part would rather have
urged on the crowd. He kept on repeating that it was famous, that there
was a hundred thousand francs' worth of advertisements in it. And Irma,
left to her own devices once more, went up to two of her friends, young
Bourse men who were among the most persistent scoffers, but whom she
began to indoctrinate, forcing them, as it were, into admiration, by
rap