ject of their wrath. They
demanded reforms; every one had a solution of the problem ready--from
universal suffrage, applied to the election of a hanging committee,
liberal in the widest sense of the word, down to unrestricted liberty, a
Salon open to all exhibitors.*

* The reader will bear in mind that all these complaints made by
Claude and his friends apply to the old Salons, as organized
under Government control, at the time of the Second Empire.--ED.

While the others went on discussing the subject, Gagniere drew Mahoudeau
to the open window, where, in a low voice, his eyes the while staring
into space, he murmured:

'Oh, it's nothing at all, only four bars; a simple impression jotted
down there and then. But what a deal there is in it! To me it's first
of all a landscape, dwindling away in the distance; a bit of melancholy
road, with the shadow of a tree that one cannot see; and then a woman
passes along, scarcely a silhouette; on she goes and you never meet her
again, no, never more again.'

Just at that moment, however, Fagerolles exclaimed, 'I say, Gagniere,
what are you going to send to the Salon this year?'

Gagniere did not hear, but continued talking, enraptured, as it were.

'In Schumann one finds everything--the infinite. And Wagner, too, whom
they hissed again last Sunday!'

But a fresh call from Fagerolles made him start.

'Eh! what? What am I going to send to the Salon? A small landscape,
perhaps; a little bit of the Seine. It is so difficult to decide; first
of all I must feel pleased with it myself.'

He had suddenly become timid and anxious again. His artistic scruples,
his conscientiousness, kept him working for months on a canvas the size
of one's hand. Following the track of the French landscape painters,
those masters who were the first to conquer nature, he worried about
correctness of tone, pondering and pondering over the precise value of
tints, till theoretical scruples ended by making his touch heavy. And he
often did not dare to chance a bright dash of colour, but painted in
a greyish gloomy key which was astonishing, when one remembered his
revolutionary passions.

'For my part,' said Mahoudeau, 'I feel delighted at the prospect of
making them squint with my woman.'

Claude shrugged his shoulders. 'Oh! you'll get in, the sculptors have
broader minds than the painters. And, besides, you know very well what
you are about; you have something at your fingers' ends that