there came a ten minutes' quarrel,
and some picture which caused a dispute was reserved for the evening
revision. Two men, holding a cord some thirty feet long, kept it
stretched at a distance of four paces from the line of pictures, so as
to restrain the committee-men, who kept on pushing each other in the
heat of their dispute, and whose stomachs, despite everything, were
ever pressing against the cord. Behind the committee marched seventy
museum-keepers in white blouses, executing evolutions under the
orders of a brigadier. At each decision communicated to them by the
secretaries, they sorted the pictures, the accepted paintings being
separated from the rejected ones, which were carried off like corpses
after a battle. And the round lasted during two long hours, without a
moment's respite, and without there being a single chair to sit upon.
The committee-men had to remain on their legs, tramping on in a tired
way amid icy draughts, which compelled even the least chilly among them
to bury their noses in the depths of their fur-lined overcoats.

Then the three o'clock snack proved very welcome: there was half an
hour's rest at a buffet, where claret, chocolate, and sandwiches could
be obtained. It was there that the market of mutual concessions was
held, that the bartering of influence and votes was carried on. In order
that nobody might be forgotten amid the hailstorm of applications which
fell upon the committee-men, most of them carried little note-books,
which they consulted; and they promised to vote for certain exhibitors
whom a colleague protected on condition that this colleague voted for
the ones in whom they were interested. Others, however, taking no part
in these intrigues, either from austerity or indifference, finished the
interval in smoking a cigarette and gazing vacantly about them.

Then the work began again, but more agreeably, in a gallery where
there were chairs, and even tables with pens and paper and ink. All the
pictures whose height did not reach four feet ten inches were judged
there--'passed on the easel,' as the expression goes--being ranged, ten
or twelve together, on a kind of trestle covered with green baize. A
good many committee-men then grew absent-minded, several wrote their
letters, and the president had to get angry to obtain presentable
majorities. Sometimes a gust of passion swept by; they all jostled each
other; the votes, usually given by raising the hand, took place amid
such