stopped at home,
to weep there, no doubt, as she was now in the habit of doing for
entire days. No matter, she had done right in not coming; 'twas too
mournful--their little Jacques, already cold in his bed, cast on one
side like a pariah, and so brutalised by the dancing light that his face
seemed to be laughing, distorted by an abominable grin.

But Claude suffered still more from the loneliness of his work.
Astonishment and disappointment made him look for the crowd, the rush
which he had anticipated. Why was he not hooted? Ah! the insults of
yore, the mocking, the indignation that had rent his heart, but made
him live! No, nothing more, not even a passing expectoration: this was
death. The visitors filed rapidly through the long gallery, seized with
boredom. There were merely some people in front of the 'Opening of the
Chamber,' where they collected to read the inscriptions, and show each
other the deputies' heads. At last, hearing some laughter behind him, he
turned round; but nobody was jeering, some visitors were simply making
merry over the tipsy monks, the comic success of the Salon, which some
gentlemen explained to some ladies, declaring that it was brilliantly
witty. And all these people passed beneath little Jacques, and not a
head was raised, not a soul even knew that he was up there.

However, the painter had a gleam of hope. On the central settee,
two personages, one of them fat and the other thin, and both of them
decorated with the Legion of Honour, sat talking, reclining against the
velvet, and looking at the pictures in front of them. Claude drew near
them and listened.

'And I followed them,' said the fat fellow. 'They went along the Rue
St. Honore, the Rue St. Roch, the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin, the Rue la
Fayette--'

'And you spoke to them?' asked the thin man, who appeared to be deeply
interested.

'No, I was afraid of getting in a rage.'

Claude went off and returned on three occasions, his heart beating fast
each time that some visitor stopped short and glanced slowly from the
line to the ceiling. He felt an unhealthy longing to hear one word, but
one. Why exhibit? How fathom public opinion? Anything rather than such
torturing silence! And he almost suffocated when he saw a young married
couple approach, the husband a good-looking fellow with little fair
moustaches, the wife, charming, with the delicate slim figure of a
shepherdess in Dresden china. She had perceived the picture, and