He had always been sensitive to either criticism or praise, but, at the bottom of his heart, in spite of his legitimate vanity, he suffered more from being criticised than he enjoyed being praised, because of the uneasiness concerning himself which his hesitations had always encouraged.  Formerly, however, at the time of his triumphs, the incense offered was so frequent that it made him forget the pin-pricks.  To-day, before the ceaseless influx of new artists and new admirers, congratulations were more rare and criticism was more marked.  He felt that he had been enrolled in the battalion of old painters of talent, whom the younger ones do not treat as masters; and as he was as intelligent as he was perspicacious he suffered now from the least insinuations as much as from direct attacks.

But never had any wound to his pride as an artist hurt him like this.  He remained gasping, and reread the article in order to grasp its every meaning.  He and his equals were thrown aside with outrageous disrespect; and he arose murmuring those words, which remained on his lips:  “The old-fashioned art of Olivier Bertin.”

Never had such sadness, such discouragement, such a sensation of having reached the end of everything, the end of his mental and physical being, thrown him into such desperate distress of soul.  He sat until two o’clock in his armchair, before the fireplace, his legs extended toward the fire, not having strength to move, or to do anything.  Then the need of being consoled rose within him, the need to clasp devoted hands, to see faithful eyes, to be pitied, succored, caressed with friendly words.  So he went, as usual, to the Countess.

When he entered Annette was alone in the drawing-room, standing with her back toward him, hastily writing the address on a letter.  On a table beside her lay a copy of Figaro.  Bertin saw the journal at the moment that he saw the young girl and was bewildered, not daring to advance!  Oh, if she had read it!  She turned, and in a preoccupied, hurried way, her mind haunted with feminine cares, she said to him: 

“Ah, good-morning, sir painter!  You will excuse me if I leave you?  I have a dressmaker upstairs who claims me.  You understand that a dressmaker, at the time of a wedding, is very important.  I will lend you mamma, who is talking and arguing with my artist.  If I need her I will call her for a few minutes.”

And she hastened away, running a little, to show how much she was hurried.

This abrupt departure, without a word of affection, without a tender look for him who loved her so much—­so much!—­quite upset him.  His eyes rested again on the Figaro, and he thought:  “She has read it!  They laugh at me, they deny me.  She no longer believes in me.  I am nothing to her any more.”

He took two steps toward the journal, as one walks toward a man to strike him.  Then he said to himself:  “Perhaps she has not read it, after all.  She is so preoccupied to-day.  But someone will undoubtedly speak of it before her, perhaps this evening, at dinner, and that will make her curious to read it.”