This young
man had been working in the atelier for three years with
marked success almost from the beginning. The first things
he did had a character and an importance that brought
Lucien himself to admit a degree of soundness in the
young fellow's earlier training, which was equal to great
praise. Since then he had found the line in the most
interesting room in the Palais d'Industrie, the _cours_
had twice medalled him, and Albert Wolff was beginning
to talk about his _coloration delicieuse_. Also it was
known that he had condescended for none of these things.
His success in Paris added piquancy to his preposterous
notion that an Englishman should go home and paint England
and hang his work in the Academy, and made it even more
unreasonable than if he had failed.
"For me," remarked Andre Vambery, with a finely curled
lip, "I never see an English landscape without thinking
of what it would bring _par hectare_. It is _trop
arrangee_, that country, all laid out in a pattern of
hedges and clumps, for the pleasure of the milords. And
every milord has the taste of every other milord. He will
go home to perpetuate that!"
"_Si, si! Mais c'est pour sa patrie._"
Nadie defended him.
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