oilt his original draught.
It was the old story over again. He spent himself in one effort, one
magnificent dash; he failed to bring out all the rest; he did not know
how to finish. He fell into his former impotence; for two years he lived
before that picture only, having no feeling for anything else. At times
he was in a seventh heaven of exuberant joy; at others flung to earth,
so wretched, so distracted by doubt, that dying men gasping in their
beds in a hospital were happier than himself. Twice already had he
failed to be ready for the Salon, for invariably, at the last moment,
when he hoped to have finished in a few sittings, he found some void,
felt his composition crack and crumble beneath his fingers. When the
third Salon drew nigh, there came a terrible crisis; he remained for a
fortnight without going to his studio in the Rue Tourlaque, and when
he did so, it was as to a house desolated by death. He turned the huge
canvas to the wall and rolled his steps into a corner; he would have
smashed and burned everything if his faltering hands had found strength
enough. Nothing more existed; amid a blast of anger he swept the floor
clean, and spoke of setting to work at little things, since he was
incapable of perfecting paintings of any size.

In spite of himself, his first idea of a picture on a smaller scale
took him back to the Cite. Why should not he paint a simple view, on
a moderate sized canvas? But a kind of shame, mingled with strange
jealousy, prevented him from settling himself in his old spot under the
Pont des Saints-Peres. It seemed to him as if that spot were sacred now;
that he ought not to offer any outrage to his great work, dead as it
was. So he stationed himself at the end of the bank, above the bridge.
This time, at any rate, he would work directly from nature; and he felt
happy at not having to resort to any trickery, as was unavoidable with
works of a large size. The small picture, very carefully painted, more
highly finished than usual, met, however, with the same fate as the
others before the hanging committee, who were indignant with this style
of painting, executed with a tipsy brush, as was said at the time in
the studios. The slap in the face which Claude thus received was all the
more severe, as a report had spread of concessions, of advances made by
him to the School of Arts, in order that his work might be received.
And when the picture came back to him, he, deeply wounded, weeping with