systematically strangling an original artist. He,
after his first burst of passion, vented all his anger upon his work,
which he stigmatised as false, dishonest, and execrable. It was a
well-deserved lesson, which he should remember: ought he to have
relapsed into that cellar-like studio light? Was he going to revert to
the filthy cooking of imaginary figures? When the picture came back, he
took a knife and ripped it from top to bottom.

And so during the third year he obstinately toiled on a work of revolt.
He wanted the blazing sun, that Paris sun which, on certain days, turns
the pavement to a white heat in the dazzling reflection from the house
frontages. Nowhere is it hotter; even people from burning climes mop
their faces; you would say you were in some region of Africa beneath the
heavily raining glow of a sky on fire. The subject Claude chose was a
corner of the Place du Carrousel, at one o'clock in the afternoon, when
the sunrays fall vertically. A cab was jolting along, its driver half
asleep, its horse steaming, with drooping head, vague amid the throbbing
heat. The passers-by seemed, as it were, intoxicated, with the one
exception of a young woman, who, rosy and gay under her parasol, walked
on with an easy queen-like step, as if the fiery element were her proper
sphere. But what especially rendered this picture terrible was a new
interpretation of the effects of light, a very accurate decomposition
of the sunrays, which ran counter to all the habits of eyesight, by
emphasising blues, yellows and reds, where nobody had been accustomed to
see any. In the background the Tuileries vanished in a golden shimmer;
the paving-stones bled, so to say; the figures were only so many
indications, sombre patches eaten into by the vivid glare. This time his
comrades, while still praising, looked embarrassed, all seized with
the same apprehensions. Such painting could only lead to martyrdom. He,
amidst their praises, understood well enough the rupture that was taking
place, and when the hanging committee had once more closed the Salon
against him, he dolorously exclaimed, in a moment of lucidity:

'All right; it's an understood thing--I'll die at the task.'

However, although his obstinate courage seemed to increase, he now and
then gradually relapsed into his former doubts, consumed by the struggle
he was waging with nature. Every canvas that came back to him seemed bad
to him--above all incomplete, not realising what he