f the Salon Carre, he held up his hand. "There are only masterpieces
here," he said, in a subdued voice, as though in church. They went all
around the room. Gervaise wanted to know about "The Wedding at Cana."
Coupeau paused to stare at the "Mona Lisa," saying that she reminded him
of one of his aunts. Boche and Bibi-the-Smoker snickered at the nudes,
pointing them out to each other and winking. The Gaudrons looked at the
"Virgin" of Murillo, he with his mouth open, she with her hands folded
on her belly.

When they had been all around the Salon, Monsieur Madinier wished them
to go round it again, it was so worth while. He was very attentive to
Madame Lorilleux, because of her silk dress; and each time that she
questioned him he answered her gravely, with great assurance. She was
curious about "Titian's Mistress" because the yellow hair resembled her
own. He told her it was "La Belle Ferronniere," a mistress of Henry IV.
about whom there had been a play at the Ambigu.

Then the wedding party invaded the long gallery occupied by the Italian
and Flemish schools. More paintings, always paintings, saints, men and
women, with faces which some of them could understand, landscapes that
were all black, animals turned yellow, a medley of people and things,
the great mixture of the colors of which was beginning to give them
all violent headaches. Monsieur Madinier no longer talked as he slowly
headed the procession, which followed him in good order, with stretched
necks and upcast eyes. Centuries of art passed before their bewildered
ignorance, the fine sharpness of the early masters, the splendors of
the Venetians, the vigorous life, beautiful with light, of the Dutch
painters. But what interested them most were the artists who were
copying, with their easels planted amongst the people, painting away
unrestrainedly, an old lady, mounted on a pair of high steps, working a
big brush over the delicate sky of an immense painting, struck them as
something most peculiar.

Slowly the word must have gone around that a wedding party was visiting
the Louvre. Several painters came over with big smiles. Some visitors
were so curious that they went to sit on benches ahead of the group in
order to be comfortable while they watched them pass in review. Museum
guards bit back comments. The wedding party was now quite weary and
beginning to drag their feet.

Monsieur Madinier was reserving himself to give more effect to a
surprise that he ha