33 ...

Degas had been carrying his box of sketching materials since Donatello and I first met the two earlier in the day at the Santa Maria Novella train station. Measuring roughly 18 x 14 inches and 4 inches deep, its wooden surfaces were randomly stained and polished smooth through years of use. Now he rested the box on the flat concrete railing that overlooked the Arno, unsnapped its two latches and raised the lid. Inside were a variety of drawing materials: sticks of pastel, charcoal and conté crayons, all of which looked to be of a much older vintage than my own.

"I've seen conté listed as a drawing material for work of the Impressionist period; but I suppose I've never really thought about when it came into common use," I said.

"Pah!" spat Degas, "that label – impressionism. I don't like it at all. Idiot art critics. As if all of us who worked in Paris between such and such dates were either too drunk or too drugged to record anything more than hazy impressions of what we saw. It's ridiculous." He wasn't finished."And lumping us all together under one name," he continued angrily, "they do it for themselves, you know. They want to fit us into neat categories, so that they can explain their vaunted insights to the rest of the world, whom they must consider to be morons."  He took a breath and calmed himself. "Sorry David, I know that you have been delivered this label as a fait accompli." He shook his head, and paused. "Instead, let me answer your question.

"Conté came out of the Napoleonic era. The British fleet had blockaded France, and one result was a shortage of graphite. So, a smart fellow named Nicholas-Jacques Conté devised a method for combining charcoal or graphite with clay, et voila, this wonderful drawing material was born and has been in use now for more than two hundred years. Marvellous stuff, non? But I have something here ... something for you."

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With that, he reached into the slot inside the box's top and withdrew a single piece of paper.