sleeping-cars, overcoats, eyeglasses and red dress-coats, balls, _soirées_, sport, Monte Carlo and Trouville, the lecture-rooms of universities and the fascination of the crowded streets in the evening, the whole of humanity in all classes of society and following every occupation, at home and in the hospitals, at the theatre, upon the squares, in poverty-stricken slums and upon the broad boulevards lit with electric light. Thus the new art flung aside the blouse, and soon displayed itself in the most various costumes, down to the frock-coat and the smoking-jacket. The rude and remorseless traits which it had at first, and which found expression in numbers of peasant, artisan, and hospital pictures, were subdued and softened until they even became idyllic. Moreover, the scale of painting over life-size, favoured in the early years of the movement, could be abandoned, since it arose essentially from competition with the works of the historical school. So long as those huge pictures covered the walls at exhibitions, artists who obeyed a new tendency were forced from the beginning--if they wished to prevail--to produce pictures of the same size. But since historical painting was finally dead and buried, there was no need to set up such a standard any longer, and a transition could be made to a smaller scale, better fitted for works of an intimate character. The dazzling tones in which the Impressionists revelled were replaced by those which were dim and soft, energy and force by subdued and tender treatment, largeness of size by a scale which was small and intimate. That was more or less the course of evolution run through in all European countries in a similar way between the years 1875 and 1885. Just in the same way from this time onwards the Decorative-Stylists' tendency set in universally. Hitherto everything was focused on the "picture as such." Tasteless novelty or methodless imitation held sway over the applied arts. The endeavours of the next decade aimed at freeing the picture from its isolation and making the room itself a harmonious work of art. A long line of eminent artists took in hand the hitherto neglected subject of art in decoration; and as thereby new blood was infused into the applied arts, so on the other hand pictorial art in one way renounced its freedom to fit itself into its new frame. Colour, which formerly was determined principally by the lighting, now became subordinate to a decorative scheme. Truth is no longer the end and aim of art, but fitness, harmony of form and colour values. It is, however, obviously impossible to give verse and chapter to the history of this development, just as it would be impossible to fix a boundary line between the two roads, the Impressionistic on the one hand and the Decorative on the other. We will wander free from one country to another, and try to assign to each its proper place in the general chart of modern painting. CHAPTER XXXIV FRANCE