rush, so frightful were the yells, that several
house shutters were hastily closed. As the Rue Bonaparte was, at last,
being reached, one tall, fair fellow thought it a good joke to catch
hold of a little servant girl who stood bewildered on the pavement, and
drag her along with them, like a wisp of straw caught in a torrent.

'Well,' said Claude, 'good-bye, then; I'll see you to-night.'

'Yes, to-night.'

The painter, out of breath, had stopped at the corner of the Rue des
Beaux Arts. The court gates of the Art School stood wide open in front
of him, and the procession plunged into the yard.

After drawing breath, Claude retraced his steps to the Rue de Seine. His
bad luck was increasing; it seemed ordained that he should not be able
to beguile a chum from work that morning. So he went up the street, and
slowly walked on as far as the Place du Pantheon, without any definite
aim. Then it occurred to him that he might just look into the Municipal
Offices, if only to shake hands with Sandoz. That would, at any rate,
mean ten minutes well spent. But he positively gasped when he was told
by an attendant that M. Sandoz had asked for a day off to attend a
funeral. However, he knew the trick of old. His friend always found the
same pretext whenever he wanted to do a good day's work at home. He had
already made up his mind to join him there, when a feeling of artistic
brotherliness, the scruple of an honest worker, made him pause; yes, it
would be a crime to go and disturb that good fellow, and infect him with
the discouragement born of a difficult task, at the very moment when he
was, no doubt, manfully accomplishing his own work.

So Claude had to resign himself to his fate. He dragged his black
melancholy along the quays until mid-day, his head so heavy, so full
of thoughts of his lack of power, that he only espied the well-loved
horizons of the Seine through a mist. Then he found himself once more
in the Rue de la Femme-sans-Tete, where he breakfasted at Gomard's wine
shop, whose sign 'The Dog of Montargis,' inspired him with interest.
Some stonemasons, in their working blouses, bespattered with mortar,
were there at table, and, like them, and with them, he ate his eight
sous' 'ordinary'--some beef broth in a bowl, in which he soaked some
bread, followed by a slice of boiled soup-beef, garnished with haricot
beans, and served up on a plate damp with dish-water. However, it
was still too good, he thought, for a brute un