ike the careful man he was.

It was highly amusing to hear him speak of the famous Naudet, full of
disdain for the millions turned over by that speculator, 'millions
that would some day fall upon his nose,' said Malgras. Claude, having
casually met him, only succeeded in selling him a last picture, one of
his sketches from the nude made at the Boutin studio, that superb study
of a woman's trunk which the erstwhile dealer had not been able to see
afresh without feeling a revival of his old passion for it. So misery
was imminent; outlets were closing instead of new ones opening;
disquieting rumours were beginning to circulate concerning the young
painter's works, so constantly rejected at the Salon; and besides,
Claude's style of art, so revolutionary and imperfect, in which the
startled eye found nought of admitted conventionality, would of itself
have sufficed to drive away wealthy buyers. One evening, being unable
to settle his bill at his colour shop, the painter had exclaimed that he
would live upon the capital of his income rather than lower himself to
the degrading production of trade pictures. But Christine had violently
opposed such an extreme measure; she would retrench still further;
in short, she preferred anything to such madness, which would end by
throwing them into the streets without even bread to eat.

After the rejection of Claude's third picture, the summer proved so
wonderfully fine that the painter seemed to derive new strength from
it. There was not a cloud; limpid light streamed day after day upon the
giant activity of Paris. Claude had resumed his peregrinations through
the city, determined to find a masterstroke, as he expressed it,
something huge, something decisive, he did not exactly know what.
September came, and still he had found nothing that satisfied him;
he simply went mad for a week about one or another subject, and then
declared that it was not the thing after all. His life was spent in
constant excitement; he was ever on the watch, on the point of setting
his hand on the realisation of his dream, which always flew away. In
reality, beneath his intractable realism lay the superstition of a
nervous woman; he believed in occult and complex influences; everything,
luck or ill-luck, must depend upon the view selected.

One afternoon--it was one of the last fine days of the season--Claude
took Christine out with him, leaving little Jacques in the charge of the
doorkeeper, a kind old woman