in the Impasse des Bourdonnais; but he had moved to the Quai de
Bourbon from motives of economy. He lived there like a savage, with an
absolute contempt for everything that was not painting. He had fallen
out with his relatives, who disgusted him; he had even ceased visiting
his aunt, who kept a pork-butcher's shop near the Central Markets,
because she looked too flourishing and plump.* Respecting the downfall
of his mother, who was being eaten out of doors and driven into the
streets, he nursed a secret grief.

* This aunt is Lisa of 'The Fat and the Thin' (Le Ventre de Paris)
in a few chapters of which Claude figures.--ED.

Suddenly he shouted to Sandoz, 'Will you be kind enough not to tumble
to pieces?' But Sandoz declared that he was getting stiff, and jumped
from the couch to stretch his legs a bit. They took ten minutes' rest,
talking meanwhile about many things. Claude felt condescendingly
good-tempered. When his work went smoothly he brightened up and became
talkative; he, who painted with his teeth set, and raged inwardly
directly he felt that nature was escaping him. Hence his friend had
scarcely resumed his attitude before he went on chattering, without,
however, missing a stroke of his brush.

'It's going on all right, old boy, isn't it? You look all there in it.
Oh, the brutes, I'll just see whether they'll refuse me this time. I
am more severe for myself than they are for themselves, I'm sure of
it; and whenever I pass one of my own pictures, it's more serious than
if it had passed before all the hanging committees on earth. You know
my picture of the markets, with the two urchins tumbling about on a
heap of vegetables? Well, I've scratched it all out, it didn't come
right. I found that I had got hold of a beastly machine,* a deal too