Getting no answer from Claude, he fancied he could hear him crying. Was it with the same infinite sadness, the despair by which he himself had been stirred just now? He waited for a moment, then repeated his question, and at last the painter, after choking down a sob, stammered: ‘Thanks, the picture will remain here; I sha’n’t send it.’ ‘What? Why, you had made up your mind?’ ‘Yes, yes, I had made up my mind; but I had not seen it as I saw it just now in the waning daylight. I have failed with it, failed with it again--it struck my eyes like a blow, it went to my very heart.’ His tears now flowed slow and scalding in the gloom that hid him from sight. He had been restraining himself, and now the silent anguish which had consumed him burst forth despite all his efforts. ‘My poor friend,’ said Sandoz, quite upset; ‘it is hard to tell you so, but all the same you are right, perhaps, in delaying matters to finish certain parts rather more. Still I am angry with myself, for I shall imagine that it was I who discouraged you by my everlasting stupid discontent with things.’ Claude simply answered: ‘You! what an idea! I was not even listening to you. No; I was looking, and I saw everything go helter-skelter in that confounded canvas. The light was dying away, and all at once, in the greyish dusk, the scales suddenly dropped from my eyes. The background alone is pretty; the nude woman is altogether too loud; what’s more, she’s out of the perpendicular, and her legs are badly drawn. When I noticed that, ah! it was enough to kill me there and then; I felt life departing from me. Then the gloom kept rising and rising, bringing a whirling sensation, a foundering of everything, the earth rolling into chaos, the end of the world. And soon I only saw the trunk waning like a sickly moon. And look, look! there now remains nothing of her, not a glimpse; she is dead, quite black!’ In fact, the picture had at last entirely disappeared. But the painter had risen and could be heard swearing in the dense obscurity. ‘D--n it all, it doesn’t matter, I’ll set to work at it again--’ Then Christine, who had also risen from her chair, against which he stumbled, interrupted him, saying: ‘Take care, I’ll light the lamp.’ She lighted it and came back looking very pale, casting a glance of hatred and fear at the picture. It was not to go then? The abomination was to begin once more! ‘I’ll set to work at it again,’ repeated Claude, ‘and it shall kill me, it shall kill my wife, my child, the whole lot; but, by heaven, it shall be a masterpiece!’