pite all his efforts.

'My poor friend,' said Sandoz, quite upset; 'it is hard to tell you so,
but all the same you are right, perhaps, in delaying matters to finish
certain parts rather more. Still I am angry with myself, for I shall
imagine that it was I who discouraged you by my everlasting stupid
discontent with things.'

Claude simply answered:

'You! what an idea! I was not even listening to you. No; I was looking,
and I saw everything go helter-skelter in that confounded canvas. The
light was dying away, and all at once, in the greyish dusk, the scales
suddenly dropped from my eyes. The background alone is pretty; the
nude woman is altogether too loud; what's more, she's out of the
perpendicular, and her legs are badly drawn. When I noticed that, ah!
it was enough to kill me there and then; I felt life departing from me.
Then the gloom kept rising and rising, bringing a whirling sensation, a
foundering of everything, the earth rolling into chaos, the end of the
world. And soon I only saw the trunk waning like a sickly moon. And
look, look! there now remains nothing of her, not a glimpse; she is
dead, quite black!'

In fact, the picture had at last entirely disappeared. But the painter
had risen and could be heard swearing in the dense obscurity.

'D--n it all, it doesn't matter, I'll set to work at it again--'

Then Christine, who had also risen from her chair, against which he
stumbled, interrupted him, saying: 'Take care, I'll light the lamp.'

She lighted it and came back looking very pale, casting a glance of
hatred and fear at the picture. It was not to go then? The abomination
was to begin once more!

'I'll set to work at it again,' repeated Claude, 'and it shall kill me,
it shall kill my wife, my child, the whole lot; but, by heaven, it shall
be a masterpiece!'

Christine sat down again; they approached Jacques, who had thrown the
clothes off once more with his feverish little hands. He was still
breathing heavily, lying quite inert, his head buried in the pillow like
a weight, with which the bed seemed to creak. When Sandoz was on
the point of going, he expressed his uneasiness. The mother appeared
stupefied; while the father was already returning to his picture, the
masterpiece which awaited creation, and the thought of which filled him
with such passionate illusions that he gave less heed to the painful
reality of the sufferings of his child, the true living flesh of his
flesh.

On the foll