toiled. Within these walls, where thought abides, struggles, and becomes
exhausted in its violent efforts, everything appears weary and overcome
as soon as the energy of action is abated; all seems dead after the
great crises of life, and the furniture, the hangings, and the portraits
of great personages still unfinished on the canvases, all seem to rest
as if the whole place had suffered the master's fatigue and had toiled
with him, taking part in the daily renewal of his struggle. A vague,
heavy odor of paint, turpentine, and tobacco was in the air, clinging to
the rugs and chairs; and no sound broke the deep silence save the sharp
short cries of the swallows that flitted above the open skylight, and
the dull, ceaseless roar of Paris, hardly heard above the roofs. Nothing
moved except a little cloud of smoke that rose intermittently toward the
ceiling with every puff that Olivier Bertin, lying upon his divan, blew
slowly from a cigarette between his lips.

With gaze lost in the distant sky, he tried to think of a new subject
for a painting. What should he do? As yet he did not know. He was by
no means resolute and sure of himself as an artist, but was of an
uncertain, uneasy spirit, whose undecided inspiration ever hesitated
among all the manifestations of art. Rich, illustrious, the gainer of
all honors, he nevertheless remained, in these his later years, a man
who did not know exactly toward what ideal he had been aiming. He had
won the _Prix_ of Rome, had been the defender of traditions, and
had evoked, like so many others, the great scenes of history; then,
modernizing his tendencies, he had painted living men, but in a way that
showed the influence of classic memories. Intelligent, enthusiastic, a
worker that clung to his changing dreams, in love with his art, which
he knew to perfection, he had acquired, by reason of the delicacy of his
mind, remarkable executive ability and great versatility, due in some
degree to his hesitations and his experiments in all styles of his art.