eaked with all the colours of the rainbow. The dealers
fled from him. M. Hue alone now and then made a pilgrimage to the Rue
Tourlaque, and remained in ecstasy before the exaggerated bits, those
which blazed in unexpected pyrotechnical fashion, in despair at being
unable to cover them with gold. And though the painter wanted to make
him a present of them, implored him to accept them, the old fellow
displayed extraordinary delicacy of feeling. He pinched himself to amass
a small sum of money from time to time, and then religiously took away
the seemingly delirious picture, to hang it beside his masterpieces.
Such windfalls came too seldom, and Claude was obliged to descend to
'trade art,' repugnant as it was to him. Such, indeed, was his despair
at having fallen into that poison house, where he had sworn never to set
foot, that he would have preferred starving to death, but for the two
poor beings who were dependent on him and who suffered like himself. He
became familiar with 'viae dolorosae' painted at reduced prices, with
male and female saints at so much per gross, even with 'pounced' shop
blinds--in short, all the ignoble jobs that degrade painting and make it
so much idiotic delineation, lacking even the charm of naivete. He even
suffered the humiliation of having portraits at five-and-twenty francs
a-piece refused, because he failed to produce a likeness; and he reached
the lowest degree of distress--he worked according to size for the petty
dealers who sell daubs on the bridges, and export them to semi-civilised
countries. They bought his pictures at two and three francs a-piece,
according to the regulation dimensions. This was like physical decay, it
made him waste away; he rose from such tasks feeling ill, incapable of
serious work, looking at his large picture in distress, and leaving it
sometimes untouched for a week, as if he had felt his hands befouled and
unworthy of working at it.

They scarcely had bread to eat, and the huge shanty, which Christine had
shown herself so proud of, on settling in it, became uninhabitable in
the winter. She, once such an active housewife, now dragged herself
about the place, without courage even to sweep the floor, and thus
everything lapsed into abandonment. In the disaster little Jacques was
sadly weakened by unwholesome and insufficient food, for their meals
often consisted of a mere crust, eaten standing. With their lives thus
ill-regulated, uncared for, they were driftin