‘Well, fish it out again, and put it among the admitted pictures. It isn’t so surprising, there was an intolerable noise yesterday. How can one judge anything like that at a gallop, when one can’t even obtain silence?’
He rang his bell furiously, and added:
‘Come, gentlemen, everything is ready—a little good will, if you please.’
Unluckily, a fresh misfortune occurred as soon as the first paintings were set on the trestle. One canvas among others attracted Mazel’s attention, so bad did he consider it, so sharp in tone as to make one’s very teeth grate. As his sight was failing him, he leant forward to look at the signature, muttering the while: ‘Who’s the pig—’
But he quickly drew himself up, quite shocked at having read the name of one of his friends, an artist who, like himself, was a rampart of healthy principles. Hoping that he had not been overheard, he thereupon called out:
‘Superb! No. 1, eh, gentlemen?’
No. 1 was granted—the formula of admission which entitled the picture to be hung on the line. Only, some of the committee-men laughed and nudged each other, at which Mazel felt very hurt, and became very fierce.
Moreover, they all made such blunders at times. A great many of them eased their feelings at the first glance, and then recalled their words as soon as they had deciphered the signature. This ended by making them cautious, and so with furtive glances they made sure of the artist’s name before expressing any opinion. Besides, whenever a colleague’s work, some fellow committee-man’s suspicious-looking canvas, was brought forward, they took the precaution to warn each other by making signs behind the painter’s back, as if to say, ‘Take care, no mistake, mind; it’s his picture.’
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. To achieve this he had taken Mazel on one side in order to try to move him with a sentimental story about an unfortunate father with three daughters, who were starving. But the president let himself be entreated for a long while, saying that a man shouldn’t waste his time painting when he was dying for lack of food, and that he ought to have a little more consideration for his three daughters! However, in the result, Mazel raised his hand, alone, with Fagerolles. Some of the others then angrily protested, and even two members of the Institute seemed disgusted, whereupon Fagerolles whispered to them in a low key:
‘It’s for Mazel! He begged me to vote. The painter’s a relative of his, I think; at all events, he greatly wants the picture to be accepted.’