THE QUARTIER LATIN ON THE BEACH.
The beach, one morning, we found suddenly peopled with artists. It was
a little city of tents. Beneath striped awnings and white umbrellas a
multitude of flat-capped heads sat immovably still on their
three-legged stools, or darted hither and thither. Paris was evidently
beginning to empty its studios; the Normandy beaches now furnished the
better model.
One morning we were in luck. A certain blonde beard had counted early
in the day on having the beach to himself. He had posed his model in
the open daylight, that he might paint her in the sun. He had placed
her, seated on an edge of seawall; for a background there was the curve
of the yellow sands and the flat breadth of the sea, with the droop of
the sky meeting the sea miles away. The girl was a slim, fair shape,
with long, thin legs and delicately moulded arms; she was dressed in
the fillet and chiton of Greece. During her long poses she was as
immovable as an antique marble; her natural grace and prettiness were
transfigured into positive beauty by the flowing lines and the pink
draperies of her Attic costume. Seated thus, she was a breathing
embodiment of the best Greek period. When the rests came, her jump from
the wall landed her square on her feet and at the latter end of the
nineteenth century. Once free, she bounded from her perch on the high
sea-wall. In an instant she had tucked her tinted draperies within the
slender girdle; her sandalled feet must be untrammelled, she was about
to take her run on the beach. Soon she was pelting, irreverently, her
painter with a shower of loose pebbles. Next she had challenged him to
a race; when she reached the goal, her thin, bare arms were uplifted as
she clapped and shouted for glee; the Quartier Latin in her blood was
having its moment of high revelry in the morning sun.
This little grisette, running about free and unshackled in her loose
draperies, quite unabashed in her state of semi-nudity--gay, reckless,
wooing pleasure on the wing, surely she might have posed as the
embodied archetype of France itself. So has this pagan among modern
nations borrowed something of the antique spirit of wantonness. Along
with its theft of the Attic charm and grace, it has captured, also,
something of its sublime indifference; in the very teeth of the dull
modern world, France has laughed opinion to scorn.
At noon the tents were all deserted. It was at this hour that the inn
garden was full. The gayety and laughter overflowed the walls. Everyone
talked at once; the orders were like a rattle of artillery--painting
for hours in the open air gives a fine edge to appetite, and patience
is never the true twin of hunger. Everything but the _potage_ was
certain to be on time.
Colinette, released from her Greek draperies, with her Parisian bodice
had recovered the _blague_ of the studios.
"_Sacré nom de--on reste donc claquemuré ainsi toute la matinée!_ And
all for an _omelette_--a puny, good-for-nothing _omelette_. And
you--you've lost your tongue, it seems?" And a shrill voice pierced the
air as Colinette gave her painter the hint of her prodding elbow. With
the appearance of the _omelette_ the reign of good humor would return.
Everything then went as merrily as that marriage-bell which,
apparently, is the only one absent in Bohemia's gay chimes.
These arbors had obviously been built out of pure charity: they
appeared to have been constructed on the principle that since man,
painting man, is often forced to live alone, from economic necessity,
it is therefore only the commonest charity to provide him with the
proper surroundings for eating _à deux._ The little tables beneath the
kiosks were strictly _tête-à-tête_ tables; even the chairs, like the
visitors, appeared to come only in couples.
The Frenchman has been reproached with the sin of ingratitude; has been
convicted, indeed, as possessed of more of that pride that comes
late--the day after the gift of bounty has been given--than some other
of his fellow-mortals. Yet here were a company of Frenchmen--and
Frenchwomen--proving in no ordinary fashion their equipment in this
rare virtue. It was early in May; up yonder, where the Seine flows
beneath the Parisian bridges, the pulse of the gay Paris world was
beating in time to the spring in the air. Yet these artists had
deserted the asphalt of the boulevards for the cobbles of a village
street, the delights of the _café chantant_ had been exchanged for the
miracle of the moon rising over the sea, and for the song of the thrush
in the bush.
The Frenchman, more easily and with simpler art than any of his modern
brethren, can change the prose of our dull, practical life into poetry;
he can turn lyrical at a moment's notice. He possesses the power of
transmuting the commonplace into the idyllic, by merely clapping on his
cap and turning his back on the haunts of men. He has retained a
singular--an almost ideal sensitiveness, of mental cuticle--such
acuteness of sensation, that a journey to a field will oftentimes yield
him all the flavor of a long voyage, and a sudden introduction to a
forest, the rapture that commonly comes only with some unwonted aspect
of nature. Perhaps it is because of this natural poet indwelling in a
Frenchman, that makes him content to remain so much at home. Surely the
extraordinary is the costly necessity for barren minds; the
richly-endowed can see the beauty that lies the other side of their own
door-step.