“Did you come here unaccompanied?” “No, Monsieur. Dr. Bretton brought me here.” “Dr. Bretton and Madame his mother, of course?” “No; only Dr. Bretton.” “And he told you to look at _that_ picture?” “By no means; I found it out for myself.” M. Paul’s hair was shorn close as raven down, or I think it would have bristled on his head. Beginning now to perceive his drift, I had a certain pleasure in keeping cool, and working him up. “Astounding insular audacity!” cried the Professor. “Singulières femmes que ces Anglaises!” “What is the matter, Monsieur?” “Matter! How dare you, a young person, sit coolly down, with the self-possession of a garçon, and look at _that_ picture?” “It is a very ugly picture, but I cannot at all see why I should not look at it.” “Bon! bon! Speak no more of it. But you ought not to be here alone.” “If, however, I have no society—no _party_, as you say? And then, what does it signify whether I am alone, or accompanied? nobody meddles with me.” “Taisez-vous, et asseyez-vous là—là!”—setting down a chair with emphasis in a particularly dull corner, before a series of most specially dreary “cadres.” “Mais, Monsieur?” “Mais, Mademoiselle, asseyez-vous, et ne bougez pas—entendez-vous?—jusqu’à ce qu’on vienne vous chercher, ou que je vous donne la permission.” “Quel triste coin!” cried I, “et quelles laids tableaux!” And “laids,” indeed, they were; being a set of four, denominated in the catalogue “La vie d’une femme.” They were painted rather in a remarkable style—flat, dead, pale, and formal. The first represented a “Jeune Fille,” coming out of a church-door, a missal in her hand, her dress very prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed up—the image of a most villanous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a “Mariée,” with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her chamber, holding her hands plastered together, finger to finger, and showing the whites of her eyes in a most exasperating manner. The third, a “Jeune Mère,” hanging disconsolate over a clayey and puffy baby with a face like an unwholesome full moon. The fourth, a “Veuve,” being a black woman, holding by the hand a black little girl, and the twain studiously surveying an elegant French monument, set up in a corner of some Père la Chaise. All these four “Anges” were grim and grey as burglars, and cold and vapid as ghosts. What women to live with! insincere, ill-humoured, bloodless, brainless nonentities! As bad in their way as the indolent gipsy-giantess, the Cleopatra, in hers. It was impossible to keep one’s attention long confined to these master-pieces, and so, by degrees, I veered round, and surveyed the gallery.