demand the
vote.'

Since the discussion had become envenomed, Mazel had been ringing his
bell, extremely flushed at finding his authority ignored.

'Gentlemen--come, gentlemen; it's extraordinary that one can't settle
matters without shouting--I beg of you, gentlemen--'

At last he obtained a little silence. In reality, he was not a
bad-hearted man. Why should not they admit that little picture, although
he himself thought it execrable? They admitted so many others!

'Come, gentlemen, the vote is asked for.'

He himself was, perhaps, about to raise his hand, when Bongrand, who
had hitherto remained silent, with the blood rising to his cheeks in the
anger he was trying to restrain, abruptly went off like a pop-gun,
most unseasonably giving vent to the protestations of his rebellious
conscience.

'But, curse it all! there are not four among us capable of turning out
such a piece of work!'

Some grunts sped around; but the sledge-hammer blow had come upon them
with such force that nobody answered.

'Gentlemen, the vote is asked for,' curtly repeated Mazel, who had
turned pale.

His tone sufficed to explain everything: it expressed all his latent
hatred of Bongrand, the fierce rivalry that lay hidden under their
seemingly good-natured handshakes.

Things rarely came to such a pass as this. They almost always arranged
matters. But in the depths of their ravaged pride there were wounds
which always bled; they secretly waged duels which tortured them with
agony, despite the smile upon their lips.

Bongrand and Fagerolles alone raised their hands, and 'The Dead Child,'
being rejected, could only perhaps be rescued at the general revision.

This general revision was the terrible part of the task. Although, after
twenty days' continuous toil, the committee allowed itself forty-eight
hours' rest, so as to enable the keepers to prepare the final work,
it could not help shuddering on the afternoon when it came upon the
assemblage of three thousand rejected paintings, from among which it
had to rescue as many canvases as were necessary for the then regulation
total of two thousand five hundred admitted works to be complete. Ah!
those three thousand pictures, placed one after the other alongside the
walls of all the galleries, including the outer one, deposited also even
on the floors, and lying there like stagnant pools, between which the
attendants devised little paths--they were like an inundation, a deluge,
which