Hotel de Ville.

A free man again and with the _citoyennes_ Elodie, Rose, and Julienne
crowding round him, Desmahis looked at Philippe Dubois--he did not like
the man and suspected him of having played him a practical joke--with a
wry smile, and towering above him by a whole head:

"Dubois," he told him, "if you call me Barbaroux again, I shall call you
Brissot; he is a little fat man with a silly face, greasy hair, an oily
skin and damp hands. They'll be perfectly sure you are the infamous
Brissot, the people's enemy; and the good Republicans, filled with
horror and loathing at sight of you, will hang you from the nearest
lamp-post. You hear me?"

The _citoyen_ Blaise, who had been watering his horse, announced that he
had arranged the affair, though it was quite plain to everybody that it
had been arranged without him.

The company got in again, and as they drove on, Desmahis informed the
coachman that in this same plain of Longjumeau several inhabitants of
the Moon had once come down, in shape and colour much like frogs, only
very much bigger. Philippe Dubois and Gamelin talked about their art.
Dubois, a pupil of Regnault, had been to Rome, where he had seen
Raphael's tapestries, which he set above all the masterpieces of the
world. He admired Correggio's colouring, Annibale Caracci's invention,
Domenichino's drawing, but thought nothing comparable in point of style
with the pictures of Pompeio Battoni. He had been in touch at Rome with
Monsieur Menageot and Madame Lebrun, who had both pronounced against the
Revolution; so the less said of them the better. But he spoke highly of
Angelica Kauffmann, who had a pure taste and a fine knowledge of the
Antique.

Gamelin deplored that the apogee of French painting, belated as it was,
for it only dated from Lesueur, Claude and Poussin and corresponded with
the decadence of the Italian and Flemish schools, had been succeeded by
so rapid and profound a decline. This he attributed to the degraded
state of manners and to the Academy, which was the expression of that
state. But the Academy had been happily abolished, and under the
influence of new canons, David and his school were creating an art
worthy of a free people. Among the young painters, Gamelin, without a
trace of envy, gave the first place to Hennequin and Topino-Lebrun.
Philippe Dubois preferred his own master Regnault to David, and founded
his hopes for the future of painting on that rising artist Gerard.

Me