The Countess started and turned. Annette, the Duchess, and the Marquis had just rejoined them.
“It is four o'clock,” said the Duchess. “I am very tired and I wish to go now.”
“I will go, too; I have had enough of it,” said the Countess.
They reached the interior stairway which divides the galleries where the drawings and water-colors are hung, overlooking the immense garden inclosed in glass, where the works of sculpture are exhibited.
From the platform of this stairway they could see from one end to the other of this great conservatory, filled with statues set up along the pathway around large green shrubs, and below was the crowd which covered the paths like a moving black wave. The marbles rose from this mass of dark hats and shoulders, piercing it in a thousand places, and seeming almost luminous in their dazzling whiteness.
As Bertin took leave of the ladies at the door of exit, Madame de Guilleroy whispered:
“Then—will you come this evening?”
“Yes, certainly.”
Bertin reentered the Exposition, to talk with the artists over the impressions of the day.
Painters and sculptors stood talking in groups around the statues and in front of the buffet, upholding or attacking the same ideas that were discussed every year, using the same arguments over works almost exactly similar. Olivier, who usually took a lively share in these disputes, being quick in repartee and clever in disconcerting attacks, besides having a reputation as an ingenious theorist of which he was proud, tried to urge himself to take an active part in the debates, but the things he said interested him no more than those he heard, and he longed to go away, to listen no more, to understand no more, knowing beforehand as he did all that anyone could say on those ancient questions of art, of which he knew all sides.