But Claude returned to the matter which worried him.
‘Then you say that Fagerolles will be entrusted with the paintings for the Municipal Council’s assembly room?’
And this remark sufficed; Mahoudeau and Gagnière, set on the track, at once started off again. Ah! a nice wishy-washy smearing it would be if that assembly room were allotted to him; and he was doing plenty of dirty things to get it. He, who had formerly pretended to spit on orders for work, like a great artist surrounded by amateurs, was basely cringing to the officials, now that his pictures no longer sold. Could anything more despicable be imagined than a painter soliciting a functionary, bowing and scraping, showing all kinds of cowardice and making all kinds of concessions? It was shameful that art should be dependent upon a Minister’s idiotic good pleasure! Fagerolles, at that official dinner he had gone to, was no doubt conscientiously licking the boots of some chief clerk, some idiot who was only fit to be made a guy of.
‘Well,’ said Jory, ‘he effects his purpose, and he’s quite right. You won’t pay his debts.’
‘Debts? Have I any debts, I who have always starved?’ answered Mahoudeau in a roughly arrogant tone. ‘Ought a fellow to build himself a palace and spend money on creatures like that Irma Bécot, who’s ruining Fagerolles?’
At this Jory grew angry, while the others jested, and Irma’s name went flying over the table. But Mathilde, who had so far remained reserved and silent by way of making a show of good breeding, became intensely indignant. ‘Oh! gentlemen, oh! gentlemen,’ she exclaimed, ‘to talk before us about that creature. No, not that creature, I implore you!
After that Henriette and Sandoz, who were in consternation, witnessed the rout of their menu. The truffle salad, the ice, the dessert, everything was swallowed without being at all appreciated amidst the rising anger of the quarrel; and the chambertin and sparkling moselle were imbibed as if they had merely been water. In vain did Henriette smile, while Sandoz good-naturedly tried to calm them by making allowances for human weakness. Not one of them retreated from his position; a single word made them spring upon each other. There was none of the vague boredom, the somniferous satiety which at times had saddened their old gatherings; at present there was real ferocity in the struggle, a longing to destroy one another. The tapers of the hanging lamp flared up, the painted flowers of the earthenware on the walls bloomed, the table seemed to have caught fire amid the upsetting of its symmetrical arrangements and the violence of the talk, that demolishing onslaught of chatter which had filled them with fever for a couple of hours past.
And amid the racket, when Henriette made up her mind to rise so as to silence them, Claude at length remarked:
‘Ah! if I only had the Hôtel de Ville work, and if I could! It used to be my dream to cover all the walls of Paris!’
They returned to the drawing-room, where the little chandelier and the bracket-candelabra had just been lighted. It seemed almost cold there in comparison with the kind of hot-house which had just been left; and for a moment the coffee calmed the guests. Nobody beyond Fagerolles was expected. The house was not an open one by any means, the Sandozes did not recruit literary dependents or muzzle the press by dint of invitations. The wife detested society, and the husband said with a laugh that he needed ten years to take a liking to anybody, and then he must like him always. But was not that real happiness, seldom realised? A few sound friendships and a nook full of family affection. No music was ever played there, and nobody had ever read a page of his composition aloud.