The others protested. Well, what about the hundred thousand francs’ worth of pictures he had sold a year, and his medals and his cross of the Legion of Honour? But Gagnière, still obstinate, smiled with a mysterious air, as if facts could not prevail against his inner conviction. He wagged his head and, full of disdain, replied: ‘Let me be! He never knew anything about chiaroscuro.’ Jory was about to defend the talent of Fagerolles, whom he considered to be his own creation, when Henriette solicited a little attention for the _raviolis_. There was a short slackening of the quarrel amid the crystalline clinking of the glasses and the light clatter of the forks. The table, laid with such fine symmetry, was already in confusion, and seemed to sparkle still more amid the ardent fire of the quarrel. And Sandoz, growing anxious, felt astonished. What was the matter with them all that they attacked Fagerolles so harshly? Hadn’t they all begun together, and were they not all to reach the goal in the same victory? For the first time, a feeling of uneasiness disturbed his dream of eternity, that delight in his Thursdays, which he had pictured following one upon another, all alike, all of them happy ones, into the far distance of the future. But the feeling was as yet only skin deep, and he laughingly exclaimed: ‘Husband your strength, Claude, here are the hazel-hens. Eh! Claude, where are you?’ Since silence had prevailed, Claude had relapsed into his dream, gazing about him vacantly, and taking a second help of _raviolis_ without knowing what he was about; Christine, who said nothing, but sat there looking sad and charming, did not take her eyes off him. He started when Sandoz spoke, and chose a leg from amid the bits of hazel-hen now being served, the strong fumes of which filled the room with a resinous smell. ‘Do you smell that?’ exclaimed Sandoz, amused; ‘one would think one were swallowing all the forests of Russia.’ But Claude returned to the matter which worried him. ‘Then you say that Fagerolles will be entrusted with the paintings for the Municipal Council’s assembly room?’ And this remark sufficed; Mahoudeau and Gagnière, set on the track, at once started off again. Ah! a nice wishy-washy smearing it would be if that assembly room were allotted to him; and he was doing plenty of dirty things to get it. He, who had formerly pretended to spit on orders for work, like a great artist surrounded by amateurs, was basely cringing to the officials, now that his pictures no longer sold. Could anything more despicable be imagined than a painter soliciting a functionary, bowing and scraping, showing all kinds of cowardice and making all kinds of concessions? It was shameful that art should be dependent upon a Minister’s idiotic good pleasure! Fagerolles, at that official dinner he had gone to, was no doubt conscientiously licking the boots of some chief clerk, some idiot who was only fit to be made a guy of.