was correspondingly keen at the disturbing appearance, in the
afternoon reception before the new portrait, of the late professor's aunt,
"an entirely insignificant old country woman," he hastily assured M.
Falleres after she had been half forced, half persuaded to retire, "whose
criticisms were as negligible as her personality."

The tall, Jove-like artist concealed a smile by stroking his great brown
beard. When it came to insignificant country people, he told himself, it
was hard to draw lines in his present company. He was wondering whether he
might not escape by an earlier train.

To the president's remark he answered that no portrait-painter escaped
unreasonable relatives of his sitters. "It is an axiom with our guild," he
went on, not, perhaps, averse to giving his provincial hosts a new
sensation, "that the family is never satisfied, and also that the family
has no rights. A sitter is a subject only, like a slice of fish. The only
question is how it's done. What difference does it make a century from
now, if the likeness is good? It's a work of art or it's nothing." He
announced this principle with a regal absence of explanation and turned
away; but his thesis was taken up by another guest, a New York art-critic.

"By Jove, it's inconceivable, the ignorance of art in America!" he told
the little group before the portrait. "You find everyone so incurably
personal in his point of view ... always objecting to a masterpiece
because the watch-chain isn't the kind usually worn by the dear departed."

Someone else chimed in. "Yes, it's incredible that anyone, even an old
village granny, should be able to look at that canvas and not be struck
speechless by its quality."

The critic was in Middletown to report on the portrait and he now began
marshaling his adjectives for that purpose. "I never saw such use of
pigment in my life ... it makes the Whistler 'Carlyle' look like burnt-out
ashes ... the luminous richness of the blacks in the academic gown, the
masterly generalization in the treatment of the hair, the placing of those
great talons of hands on the canvas carrying out the vigorous lines of the
composition, and the unforgettable felicity of those brutally red lips as
the one ringing note of color. As for life-likeness, what's the old dame
talking about! I never saw such eyes! Not a hint of meretricious emphasis
on their luster and yet they fairly flame."

The conversation spread to a less technical discussion