e he is; excuse me!' cried the dealer, making off.

It was Fagerolles showing himself at the entrance of the gallery. He
discreetly stood there without entering, carrying his good fortune with
the ease of a man who knows what he is about. Besides, he was looking
for somebody; he made a sign to a young man, and gave him an answer,
a favourable one, no doubt, for the other brimmed over with gratitude.
Then two other persons sprang forward to congratulate him; a woman
detained him, showing him, with a martyr's gesture, a bit of still life
hung in a dark corner. And finally he disappeared, after casting but one
glance at the people in raptures before his picture.

Claude, who had looked and listened, was overwhelmed with sadness.
The crush was still increasing, he now had nought before him but faces
gaping and sweating in the heat, which had become intolerable. Above the
nearer shoulders rose others, and so on and so on as far as the door,
whence those who could see nothing pointed out the painting to each
other with the tips of their umbrellas, from which dripped the water
left by the showers outside. And Bongrand remained there out of pride,
erect in defeat, firmly planted on his legs, those of an old combatant,
and gazing with limpid eyes upon ungrateful Paris. He wished to finish
like a brave man, whose kindness of heart is boundless. Claude, who
spoke to him without receiving any answer, saw very well that there was
nothing behind that calm, gay face; the mind was absent, it had flown
away in mourning, bleeding with frightful torture; and thereupon, full
of alarm and respect, he did not insist, but went off. And Bongrand,
with his vacant eyes, did not even notice his departure.

A new idea had just impelled Claude onward through the crowd. He was
lost in wonderment at not having been able to discover his picture. But
nothing could be more simple. Was there not some gallery where people
grinned, some corner full of noise and banter, some gathering of jesting
spectators, insulting a picture? That picture would assuredly be his. He
could still hear the laughter of the bygone Salon of the Rejected. And
now at the door of each gallery he listened to ascertain if it were
there that he was being hissed.

However, as he found himself once more in the eastern gallery, that hall
where great art agonises, that depository where vast, cold, and gloomy
historical and religious compositions are accumulated, he started, and
remaine