agniere had
been the first to speak to him on the subject, being himself equally
inclined to technical speculation. After which Claude, impelled by
the exuberance of his passion, took to exaggerating the scientific
principles whereby, from the three primitive colours, yellow, red, and
blue, one derives the three secondary ones, orange, green, and violet,
and, further, a whole series of complementary and similar hues, whose
composites are obtained mathematically from one another. Thus science
entered into painting, there was a method for logical observation
already. One only had to take the predominating hue of a picture, and
note the complementary or similar colours, to establish experimentally
what variations would occur; for instance, red would turn yellowish if
it were near blue, and a whole landscape would change in tint by the
refractions and the very decomposition of light, according to the clouds
passing over it. Claude then accurately came to this conclusion:
That objects have no real fixed colour; that they assume various hues
according to ambient circumstances; but the misfortune was that when
he took to direct observation, with his brain throbbing with scientific
formulas, his prejudiced vision lent too much force to delicate shades,
and made him render what was theoretically correct in too vivid a
manner: thus his style, once so bright, so full of the palpitation
of sunlight, ended in a reversal of everything to which the eye
was accustomed, giving, for instance, flesh of a violet tinge under
tricoloured skies. Insanity seemed to be at the end of it all.

Poverty finished off Claude. It had gradually increased, while the
family spent money without counting; and, when the last copper of the
twenty thousand francs had gone, it swooped down upon them--horrible and
irreparable. Christine, who wanted to look for work, was incapable of
doing anything, even ordinary needlework. She bewailed her lot, twirling
her fingers and inveighing against the idiotic young lady's education
that she had received, since it had given her no profession, and her
only resource would be to enter into domestic service, should life still
go against them. Claude, on his side, had become a subject of chaff with
the Parisians, and no longer sold a picture. An independent exhibition
at which he and some friends had shown some pictures, had finished him
off as regards amateurs--so merry had the public become at the sight of
his canvases, str