all give them the go-by. Let's go down to the buffet; we shall
pick up our spirits there, eh, old fellow?'

And then Sandoz led him away, holding his arm, pressing it, warming it,
and trying to draw him from his mournful silence.

'Come, dash it all! you mustn't give way like that. Although they
have hung your picture badly, it is all the same superb, a real bit of
genuine painting. Oh! I know that you dreamt of something else! But you
are not dead yet, it will be for later on. And, just look, you ought
to be proud, for it's you who really triumph at the Salon this year.
Fagerolles isn't the only one who pillages you; they all imitate you
now; you have revolutionised them since your "Open Air," which they
laughed so much about. Look, look! there's an "open air" effect, and
there's another, and here and there--they all do it.'

He waved his hand towards the pictures as he and Claude passed along
the galleries. In point of fact, the dash of clear light, introduced by
degrees into contemporary painting, had fully burst forth at last. The
dingy Salons of yore, with their pitchy canvases, had made way for
a Salon full of sunshine, gay as spring itself. It was the dawn, the
aurora which had first gleamed at the Salon of the Rejected, and which
was now rising and rejuvenating art with a fine, diffuse light, full of
infinite shades. On all sides you found Claude's famous 'bluey tinge,'
even in the portraits and the _genre_ scenes, which had acquired the
dimensions and the serious character of historical paintings. The old
academical subjects had disappeared with the cooked juices of tradition,
as if the condemned doctrine had carried its people of shadows away with
it; rare were the works of pure imagination, the cadaverous nudities of
mythology and catholicism, the legendary subjects painted without faith,
the anecdotic bits destitute of life--in fact, all the bric-a-brac of
the School of Arts used up by generations of tricksters and fools; and
the influence of the new principle was evident even among those artists
who lingered over the antique recipes, even among the former masters
who had now grown old. The flash of sunlight had penetrated to
their studios. From afar, at every step you took, you saw a painting
transpierce the wall and form, as it were, a window open upon Nature.
Soon the walls themselves would fall, and Nature would walk in; for the
breach was a broad one, and the assault had driven routine away in that
ga