as, and began to paint a study
of the dead child. For the first few minutes his tears dimmed his
sight, wrapping everything in a mist; but he kept wiping them away, and
persevered with his work, even though his brush shook. Then the passion
for art dried his tears and steadied his hand, and in a little while it
was no longer his icy son that lay there, but merely a model, a subject,
the strange interest of which stirred him. That huge head, that waxy
flesh, those eyes which looked like holes staring into space--all
excited and thrilled him. He stepped back, seemed to take pleasure in
his work, and vaguely smiled at it.

When Christine rose from her knees, she found him thus occupied. Then,
bursting into tears again, she merely said:

'Ah! you can paint him now, he'll never stir again.'

For five hours Claude kept at it, and on the second day, when Sandoz
came back with him from the cemetery, after the funeral, he shuddered
with pity and admiration at the sight of the small canvas. It was one of
the fine bits of former days, a masterpiece of limpidity and power,
to which was added a note of boundless melancholy, the end of
everything--all life ebbing away with the death of that child.

But Sandoz, who had burst out into exclamations fall of praise, was
quite taken aback on hearing Claude say to him:

'You are sure you like it? In that case, as the other machine isn't
ready, I'll send this to the Salon.'

X

ONE morning, as Claude, who had taken 'The Dead Child' to the Palais de
l'Industrie the previous day, was roaming round about the Parc Monceau,
he suddenly came upon Fagerolles.

'What!' said the latter, cordially, 'is it you, old fellow? What's
becoming of you? What are you doing? We see so little of each other
now.'

Then, Claude having mentioned what he had sent to the Salon--that little
canvas which his mind was full of--Fagerolles added:

'Ah! you've sent something; then I'll get it "hung" for you. You know
that I'm a candidate for the hanging committee this year.'

Indeed, amid the tumult and everlasting discontent of the artists, after
attempts at reform, repeated a score of times and then abandoned, the
authorities had just invested the exhibitors with the privilege of
electing the members of the hanging committee; and this had quite upset
the world of painters and sculptors, a perfect electoral fever had
set in, with all sorts of ambitious cabals and intrigues--all the low
jobbery, indeed,