ng herself, and to dispense with a
servant, as living would be a difficult matter.

During the first months Claude lived in ever-increasing excitement. His
peregrinations through the noisy streets; his feverish discussions on
the occasion of his visits to friends; all the rage and all the burning
ideas he thus brought home from out of doors, made him hold forth aloud
even in his sleep. Paris had seized hold of him again; and in the full
blaze of that furnace, a second youth, enthusiastic ambition to see,
do, and conquer, had come upon him. Never had he felt such a passion for
work, such hope, as if it sufficed for him to stretch out his hand in
order to create masterpieces that should set him in the right rank,
which was the first. While crossing Paris he discovered subjects for
pictures everywhere; the whole city, with its streets, squares, bridges,
and panoramas of life, suggested immense frescoes, which he, however,
always found too small, for he was intoxicated with the thought of doing
something colossal. Thus he returned home quivering, his brain seething
with projects; and of an evening threw off sketches on bits of paper, in
the lamp-light, without being able to decide by what he ought to begin
the series of grand productions that he dreamt about.

One serious obstacle was the smallness of his studio. If he had only had
the old garret of the Quai de Bourbon, or even the huge dining-room of
Bennecourt! But what could he do in that oblong strip of space, that
kind of passage, which the landlord of the house impudently let to
painters for four hundred francs a year, after roofing it in with glass?
The worst was that the sloping glazed roof looked to the north, between
two high walls, and only admitted a greenish cellar-like light. He was
therefore obliged to postpone his ambitious projects, and he decided
to begin with average-sized canvases, wisely saying to himself that the
dimensions of a picture are not a proper test of an artist's genius.

The moment seemed to him favourable for the success of a courageous
artist who, amidst the breaking up of the old schools, would at length
bring some originality and sincerity into his work. The formulas of
recent times were already shaken. Delacroix had died without leaving any
disciples. Courbet had barely a few clumsy imitators behind him; their
best pieces would merely become so many museum pictures, blackened
by age, tokens only of the art of a certain period. It seeme