“It is an insolent parvenu,” he said; “a Philistine double damned for grinding the faces of the poor. Permit me the privilege to look, monsieur. An artist is known by his performance. There is a severity here that entirely commends itself to me.” CHAPTER XIII. Ned’s chance meeting with the painter, whose art was then much exciting, in a characteristic freak of perversity, the enthusiasm of his fellow-citizens, was the prelude to a strange little _camaraderie_ between the two that, so long as it held, was full of positive and negative instruction to the younger man. It came about in this way, that, absorbed in the discussion of a topic of common interest, the gentlemen left the Thuilleries gardens together, M. David accompanying Ned eventually to the Rue Beautreillis. At the door of the fruiterer’s shop the famous artist held out his hand bluntly. “You have the right religion,” he said: “in an artificial world the cleanest art shall prevail. We can have no standard of truth but what we set ourselves. Strip the model, then, of all meretricious adornments. Monsieur, I shall take the liberty to call upon you.” He came, indeed--not once but often, walking over from his studio in the Louvre; dropping in at unexpected times; criticising the methods, the actual performance of the Englishman, and even condescending now and again to add to a sketch or canvas a few touches--technical mastery without imagination--that resolved in a moment a difficulty long contended with. Through all he would never cease to expound his views on right art and government--to him inseparable words in the condition of national sanity, and both drawn in their purity from the fountain-head of the S.P.Q.R. at its strictest period. Most often he would discourse, gazing, his hands behind his back, from the window, and sometimes quite aptly illustrating his homilies with types drawn from the human mosaic of the St Antoine below him. M. David was at this time some forty years of age, an Academician, the acknowledged and popular leader of classic revivalism. He was fashionable, moreover, and had just completed (“_mettant la main sur sa conscience_”) a royal commission for a “Brutus”! Courted, prosperous, and respected, some moral myosis must still distort to his inner vision all the admiration he evoked. He would make his profit of patronage, secretly raging over the opulent condescension that his cupidity would not let him be without. He would see _double entendre_ in the applause of the social _élite_, yet hunger for it, cursing himself that the vital flame of his self-confidence must be dependent on such fuel for its warmth. For in truth he was the tumid bug of vanity, bursting with the very scarlet adulation that his instinct told him was inimical to the artistic life and other than its natural food.