Having arranged some cushions, Sandoz settled himself on the couch in
the required attitude. His back was turned, but all the same the
conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very
morning received a letter from Plassans, the little Provencal town
where he and the artist had known each other when they were wearing
out their first pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local
college. However, they left off talking. The one was working with his
mind far away from the world, while the other grew stiff and cramped
with the sleepy weariness of protracted immobility.

It was only when Claude was nine years old that a lucky chance had
enabled him to leave Paris and return to the little place in Provence,
where he had been born. His mother, a hardworking laundress,* whom his
ne'er-do-well father had scandalously deserted, had afterwards married
an honest artisan who was madly in love with her. But in spite of
their endeavours, they failed to make both ends meet. Hence they
gladly accepted the offer of an elderly and well-to-do townsman to
send the lad to school and keep him with him. It was the generous
freak of an eccentric amateur of painting, who had been struck by the
little figures that the urchin had often daubed. And thus for seven
years Claude had remained in the South, at first boarding at the
college, and afterwards living with his protector. The latter,
however, was found dead in his bed one morning. He left the lad a
thousand francs a year, with the faculty of disposing of the principal
when he reached the age of twenty-five. Claude, already seized with a
passion for painting, immediately left school without even attempting
to secure a bachelor's degree, and rushed to Paris whither his friend
Sandoz had preceded him.

* Gervaise of 'The Dram Shop'(L'Assommoir).--ED.