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Updated: July 13, 2025
Then Claude turned round to Fagerolles, and surprised him by this tardy reply: 'A fellow can only be an idiot according to his own lights, my dear chap, and it looks as if I am going to remain one. So much the better for you if you are clever! Fagerolles at once patted him on the shoulder, like a chum who had only been in fun, and Claude allowed Sandoz to take his arm. They led him off at last.
And while the old men drew back in alarm, the younger ones scoffed at the child's big head, which was plainly that of a monkey who had died from trying to swallow a gourd. Fagerolles at once understood that the game was lost. At first he tried to spirit the vote away by a joke, in accordance with his skilful tactics: 'Come, gentlemen, an old combatant But furious exclamations cut him short.
'Hallo! said Sandoz, surprised, 'here she is with Gagniere now! 'Oh, just a fancy of hers! exclaimed Fagerolles quietly. 'She has a very swell place now. Yes, it was given her by that young idiot of a marquis, whom the papers are always talking about. She's a girl who'll make her way; I've always said so!
And Jory had been trying to get into the good graces of Irma Becot again, ever since she had secured that little house in the Rue de Moscou! Christine knew those two; two jades who well went together, weren't they? But the most cunning of the whole lot was Fagerolles, to whom he, Claude, would tell a few plain truths and no mistake, when he met him.
Staggering, and as if pursued by the tempest upstairs, Claude disappeared behind the clumps of shrubbery in the garden. But two hours later Sandoz, who after losing Mahoudeau had just found him again with Jory and Fagerolles, perceived the unhappy painter again standing in front of his picture, at the same spot where he had met him the first time.
'And that gust of wind among the corn, added Gagniere, 'and the pretty bit of the boy and girl skylarking in the distance. Bongrand sat listening with an embarrassed air, and a smile of inward suffering; and when Fagerolles asked him what he was doing just then, he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders: 'Well, nothing; some little things. But I sha'n't exhibit this time.
Fagerolles, despite his colleagues' fidgety nerves, carried the day on a first occasion. It was a question of admitting a frightful portrait painted by one of his pupils, whose family, a very wealthy one, received him on a footing of intimacy.
There was a chorus of protestations; Fagerolles objected, in a shrill voice: 'Well, if the painter of "The Village Wedding" does not count But Bongrand was getting angry; he had risen, his cheeks afire. 'Eh? Don't pester me with "The Wedding"; I warn you I am getting sick of that picture. It is becoming a perfect nightmare to me ever since it has been hung in the Luxembourg Museum.
It was, so people said, the work of an erstwhile veterinary surgeon, and showed a number of life-size horses in a meadow, fantastic horses, blue, violet, and pink, whose astonishing anatomy transpierced their sides. 'I say, don't you humbug us, exclaimed Claude, suspiciously. But Fagerolles pretended to be enthusiastic. 'What do you mean? The picture's full of talent.
As Claude could never do anything without throwing passion into it, he waxed excited, became despondent whenever a voting-paper did not bear Fagerolles' name, and grew happy as soon as he had to shout out that name once more.
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