the old fellow went at it with his tools
and his nails, till he made us all as neat and as flat as a schoolroom
bench. And see the results of his workmanship! A few rebels, like
Herscher, who, from hatred of the conventional, go for exaggeration and
ugliness, or like myself, who, thanks to that old ass, love roughness
and contortion so much, that my sculpture, they say, is "like a bag of
walnuts." And the rest of them levelled, scraped, and empty!'

'And pray, what of me?' said Freydet, with an affected despair.

'Oh, as for you, Nature has preserved you so far; but look out for
yourself if you let Crocodilus clip you again. And to think that we have
public schools to provide us with this sort of pedagogue, and that we
reward him with endowments, and honours, and a place (save the mark) in
the National Institute!'

Stretched at his ease in the long grass, with his head on his arm and
waving a fern, which he used as a sun-screen, Vedrine calmly uttered
these strong remarks, without the slightest play of feature in his broad
face, pale and puffy like that of an Indian idol. Only the tiny laughing
eyes broke the general expression of dreamy indolence.

His companion was shocked at such treatment of what he was accustomed to
respect 'But,' he said, 'if you are such an enemy of the father, how do
you manage to be such a friend of the son?'

'I am no more one than the other. I look upon Paul Astier, with his
imperturbable _sang-froid_ and his pretty-miss complexion, as a problem.
I should like to live long enough to see what becomes of him.'

'Ah, Monsieur de Freydet,' said Madame Vedrine, joining in the
conversation from the place where she sat, 'if you only knew what a
tool he makes of my husband! All the restorations at Mousseaux, the new
gallery towards the river, the concert-room, the chapel, all were done
by Vedrine. And the Rosen tomb too. He will only be paid for the statue;
but the whole thing is really his--conception, arrangement, everything.'

'There, there, that will do,' said the artist quietly. 'As for
Mousseaux, the young fellow would certainly have been hard put to it to
rediscover a fragment of the design under the layers of rubbish that the
architects have been depositing there for the last thirty years. But the
neighbourhood was charming, the Duchess amiable and not at all tiresome,
and there was friend Freydet, whom I had found out at Clos-Jallanges.
Besides, the truth is I have too many ideas, and