across it. The son of a magistrate of Plassans, whom he had driven
half-crazy by his dissolute conduct, he had crowned everything by
running away with a music-hall singer under the pretext of going to
Paris to follow the literary profession. During the six months that
they had been camping together in a shady hotel of the Quartier Latin,
the girl had almost flayed him alive each time she caught him paying
attention to anybody else of her sex. And, as this often happened, he
always had some fresh scar to show--a bloody nose, a torn ear, or a
damaged eye, swollen and blackened.

At last they all began to talk, with the exception of Chaine, who went
on painting with the determined expression of an ox at the plough.
Jory had at once gone into ecstasies over the roughly indicated figure
of the vintaging girl. He worshipped a massive style of beauty. His
first writings in his native town had been some Parnassian sonnets
celebrating the copious charms of a handsome pork-butcheress. In
Paris--where he had fallen in with the whole band of Plassans--he had
taken to art criticism, and, for a livelihood, he wrote articles for
twenty francs apiece in a small, slashing paper called 'The Drummer.'
Indeed, one of these articles, a study on a picture by Claude
exhibited at Papa Malgras's, had just caused a tremendous scandal; for
Jory had therein run down all the painters whom the public appreciated
to extol his friend, whom he set up as the leader of a new school, the
school of the 'open air.' Very practical at heart, he did not care in
reality a rap about anything that did not conduce to his own
pleasures; he simply repeated the theories he heard enunciated by his
friends. 'I say, Mahoudeau,' he now exclaimed, 'you shall have an
article; I'll launch that woman of yours. What limbs, my boys! She's
magnificent!'