amonds in his waistcoat pocket, and
didn't steal them either."

The three inseparables (for one day at any rate) now crossed the Place
de la Bourse in a way to intercept a man about forty years of age,
wearing the Legion of honor, who was coming from the boulevard by way of
the rue Neuve-Vivienne.

"Hey!" said Leon, "what are you pondering over, my dear Dubourdieu?
Some fine symbolic composition? My dear cousin, I have the pleasure to
present to you our illustrious painter Dubourdieu, not less celebrated
for his humanitarian convictions than for his talents in art.
Dubourdieu, my cousin Palafox."

Dubourdieu, a small, pale man with melancholy blue eyes, bowed slightly
to Gazonal, who bent low as before a man of genius.

"So you have elected Stidmann in place of--" he began.

"How could I help it? I wasn't there," replied Lora.

"You bring the Academy into disrepute," continued the painter. "To
choose such a man as that! I don't wish to say ill of him, but he works
at a trade. Where are you dragging the first of arts,--the art those
works are the most lasting; bringing nations to light of which the world
has long lost even the memory; an art which crowns and consecrates great
men? Yes, sculpture is priesthood; it preserves the ideas of an
epoch, and you give its chair to a maker of toys and mantelpieces, an
ornamentationist, a seller of bric-a-brac! Ah! as Chamfort said, one has
to swallow a viper every morning to endure the life of Paris. Well,
at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; they can't prevent us from
cultivating it--"

"And besides, my dear fellow, you have a consolation which few artists
possess; the future is yours," said Bixiou. "When the world is converted
to our doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; for you are
putting into it ideas which people will understand--_when_ they are
generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the world what you
are to a few of us at this moment,--a great man. The only question is
how to get along till then."

"I have just finished," resumed the great artist, his face expanding
like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of
Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it
should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At
the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds
a shepherd's crook in her hand,--symbolical of the advancement of the
races useful to mankind; she wea