with infinite skill to
satisfy the low ideal of the public. Fagerolles had not made the mistake
of stripping his three women; but, clad in the audacious toilets of
women of society, they showed no little of their persons. As for the two
gallant gentlemen in summer jackets beside them, they realised the ideal
of everything most _distingue_; while afar off a footman was pulling a
hamper off the box of a landau drawn up behind the trees. The whole
of it, the figures, the drapery, the bits of still life of the repast,
stood out gaily in full sunlight against the darkened foliage of the
background; and the supreme skill of the painter lay in his pretended
audacity, in a mendacious semblance of forcible treatment which just
sufficed to send the multitude into ecstasies. It was like a storm in a
cream-jug!

Claude, being unable to approach, listened to the remarks around him.
At last there was a man who depicted real truth! He did not press
his points like those fools of the new school; he knew how to convey
everything without showing anything. Ah! the art of knowing where to
draw the line, the art of letting things be guessed, the respect due to
the public, the approval of good society! And withal such delicacy, such
charm and art! He did not unseasonably deliver himself of passionate
things of exuberant design; no, when he had taken three notes from
nature, he gave those three notes, nothing more. A newspaper man who
arrived went into raptures over the 'Picnic,' and coined the expression
'a very Parisian style of painting.' It was repeated, and people no
longer passed without declaring that the picture was 'very Parisian'
indeed.

All those bent shoulders, all those admiring remarks rising from a sea
of spines, ended by exasperating Claude; and seized with a longing to
see the faces of the folk who created success, he manoeuvred in such a
way as to lean his back against the handrail hard by. From that point,
he had the public in front of him in the grey light filtering through
the linen awning which kept the centre of the gallery in shade; whilst
the brighter light, gliding from the edges of the blinds, illumined the
paintings on the walls with a white flow, in which the gilding of the
frames acquired a warm sunshiny tint. Claude at once recognised the
people who had formerly derided him--if these were not the same, they
were at least their relatives--serious, however, and enraptured, their
appearance greatly improved by