ing left but to die. And yet you still
cling on, you won't admit that it's all up with you, you obstinately
persist in trying to produce--just as old men cling to love with
painful, ignoble efforts. Ah! a man ought to have the courage and the
pride to strangle himself before his last masterpiece!'

While he spoke he seemed to have increased in stature, reaching to the
elevated ceiling of the studio, and shaken by such keen emotion that
the tears started to his eyes. And he dropped into a chair before his
picture, asking with the anxious look of a beginner who has need of
encouragement:

'Then this really seems to you all right? I myself no longer dare to
believe anything. My unhappiness springs from the possession of both too
much and not enough critical acumen. The moment I begin a sketch I exalt
it, then, if it's not successful, I torture myself. It would be better
not to know anything at all about it, like that brute Chambouvard, or
else to see very clearly into the business and then give up painting....
Really now, you like this little canvas?'

Claude and Jory remained motionless, astonished and embarrassed by those
tokens of the intense anguish of art in its travail. Had they come at a
moment of crisis, that this master thus groaned with pain, and consulted
them like comrades? The worst was that they had been unable to disguise
some hesitation when they found themselves under the gaze of the ardent,
dilated eyes with which he implored them--eyes in which one could read
the hidden fear of decline. They knew current rumours well enough; they
agreed with the opinion that since his 'Village Wedding' the painter had
produced nothing equal to that famous picture. Indeed, after maintaining
something of that standard of excellence in a few works, he was now
gliding into a more scientific, drier manner. Brightness of colour
was vanishing; each work seemed to show a decline. However, these were
things not to be said; so Claude, when he had recovered his composure,
exclaimed:

'You never painted anything so powerful!'

Bongrand looked at him again, straight in the eyes. Then he turned
to his work, in which he became absorbed, making a movement with his
herculean arms, as if he were breaking every bone of them to lift that
little canvas which was so very light. And he muttered to himself:
'Confound it! how heavy it is! Never mind, I'll die at it rather than
show a falling-off.'

He took up his palette and grew calm at