The annual banquet given by the Alumni and the present students of the Atelier Rousseau, was offered to that distinguished artist, as was usual, just before the opening of the colossal Parisian picture show. It was also, as usual, a very gay affair. The Pere Rousseau himself, affable and stately, appeared punctually on the scene of the festivities and was promptly ensconced in a huge armchair, thoughtfully placed half way down a long vista of coarse, but snowy, tablecloth. Opposite to him, in another similar armchair, sat his best friend—the Master, to whom Randall had so recently gone for advice. He was radiant and happy; a sense of duty well done pervaded his entire personality. The dinner—a truly marvelous production at the price—was eaten with avidity by the younger men, who were not used to such luxury every day, and with a good-natured tolerance by Monsieur Rousseau, the Master, and those few of the guests who had been born with silver spoons in their mouths, or whose feet were, by their own creditable endeavors, firmly planted on the highroad which leads to fame and fortune. Such small formality as existed at the commencement of the feast gradually disappeared and, when the inevitable champagne was finally brought forth, there were not over a hundred individuals with a hundred diverse interests present, but one great human family, presided over by a dearly loved and affectionate father. Then speeches were made, and Lecroix, the most irrepressible, fun-loving man in the school, became bold enough to produce a Punch and Judy booth from a room nearby and proceeded to give an audacious parody on the Atelier and its illustrious chief.
Randall not having heard from his picture, and dying to know its fate, managed, under the pretence of seeing the performance better, to work his way up close to the Master’s chair. The Master saw him and smiled: “It is all right,” he whispered, “you are well placed, nearly on the line in the Salle d’Honneur. Why, however, did you change your picture so much? The distance was fairly good when you showed it to me at my studio, and you ought only to have worked on the foreground. The changes you have made in the composition were so badly done, and ill-advised, that I had to fight hard, I can tell you, against a pack of over-conscientious fellows, before I could get them to vote for it at all. If it hadn’t been lunch time, and so many of them were hungry and wanted to leave, rather than to dispute over pictures, I don’t think that even I could have managed them satisfactorily.”
“But,” interrupted Joe in astonishment, “I didn’t change the composition a bit. I only altered the foreground as you told me to do.”
“Then there must be some mistake,” said the Master uneasily. “But no! Here we are.” He produced his faithful note book from his pocket and fumbled its pages until he came to the one devoted to the R’s, and pointed to the words he had written over a month before, “Randall, J.—landscape;” after which he had scribbled with a blue pencil the words “Accepted” and “John.” “You did not give me your first name when I wrote this here, so I copied it down afterwards from your picture when I saw that it was safely and desirably hung. You see that it’s all right after all: you almost made me feel for the moment as though there were some error.”
“But there is a mistake!” groaned the young man in his agony, “my first name is Joseph, not John, and you have protected some body else whose last name and initial happen to be the same as mine.”
“’Cre nom de nom!” whistled the master profanely.
John Randall—an American from Vermont—returned from the Salon on Varnishing Day. He sat down and wrote to his people across the water, telling them triumphantly the news of his acceptance—the bare fact of which he had cabled to them the week before. He described graphically the memorable opening day, and thus ended up his letter:
“You have heard no doubt long ago that I have passed the difficult test of the Salon jury, and that my very first picture has been accepted. I am all the more pleased and proud over the result because it was received solely on its own merits. I painted it by myself, without any outside advice or criticism, and did not solicit the protection of the professors of the school, as I found, to my disgust, so many of my comrades were engaged in doing. Besides the fact of getting in under these circumstances, I am also pleased to be able to tell you that the hanging committee have seen fit to give me one of the very best places in the whole Salon—in the Gallery of Honor. Having done so well with my first picture, I feel that I am fully justified in anticipating a like measure of success with my second.