1845
I
_GILLETTE_
On a cold December morning in the year 1612, a young man, whose
clothing was somewhat of the thinnest, was walking to and fro before
a gateway in the Rue des Grands-Augustins in Paris. He went up and
down the street before this house with the irresolution of a gallant
who dares not venture into the presence of the mistress whom he loves
for the first time, easy of access though she may be; but after a
sufficiently long interval of hesitation, he at last crossed the
threshold and inquired of an old woman, who was sweeping out a large
room on the ground floor, whether Master Porbus was within. Receiving a
reply in the affirmative, the young man went slowly up the staircase,
like a gentleman but newly come to court, and doubtful as to his
reception by the king. He came to a stand once more on the landing at
the head of the stairs, and again he hesitated before raising his hand
to the grotesque knocker on the door of the studio, where doubtless
the painter was at work--Master Porbus, sometime painter in ordinary to
Henri IV till Mary de’ Medici took Rubens into favor.
The young man felt deeply stirred by an emotion that must thrill the
hearts of all great artists when, in the pride of their youth and
their first love of art, they come into the presence of a master or
stand before a masterpiece. For all human sentiments there is a time
of early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that gradually fades
until nothing is left of happiness but a memory, and glory is known
for a delusion. Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none
so resemble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he
is about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of glory and
disaster, of vague expectations and real disappointments.
Those who have missed this experience in the early days of light
purses; who have not, in the dawn of their genius, stood in the
presence of a master and felt the throbbing of their hearts, will
always carry in their inmost souls a chord that has never been touched,
and in their work an indefinable quality will be lacking, a something
in the stroke of the brush, a mysterious element that we call poetry.
The swaggerers, so puffed up by self-conceit that they are confident
oversoon of their success, can never be taken for men of talent save
by fools. From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure
of youthful genius, the stranger on the staircase might be allowed to
have something in him; for he seemed to possess the indescribable
diffidence, the early timidity that artists are bound to lose in the
course of a great career, even as pretty women lose it as they make
progress in the arts of coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes as triumph
succeeds to triumph, and modesty is, perhaps, distrust of itself.
The poor neophyte was so overcome by the consciousness of his own
presumption and insignificance, that it began to look as if he was
hardly likely to penetrate into the studio of the painter, to whom we
owe the wonderful portrait of Henri IV. But fate was propitious; an old
man came up the staircase. From the quaint costume of this newcomer,
his collar of magnificent lace, and a certain serene gravity in his
bearing, the first arrival thought that this personage must be either a
patron or a friend of the court painter. He stood aside therefore upon
the landing to allow the visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously
the while. Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist
or to receive the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the
arts; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the face that
met his gaze, there was that indescribable something which has an
irresistible attraction for artists.
Picture that face. A bald high forehead and rugged jutting brows above
a small flat nose turned up at the end, as in the portraits of Socrates
and Rabelais; deep lines about the mocking mouth; a short chin, carried
proudly, covered with a grizzled pointed beard; sea-green eyes that
age might seem to have dimmed were it not for the contrast between the
iris and the surrounding mother-of-pearl tints, so that it seemed as
if under the stress of anger or enthusiasm there would be a magnetic
power to quell or kindle in their glances. The face was withered beyond
wont by the fatigue of years, yet it seemed aged still more by the
thoughts that had worn away both soul and body. There were no lashes
to the deep-set eyes, and scarcely a trace of the arching lines of the
eyebrows above them. Set this head on a spare and feeble frame, place
it in a frame of lace wrought like an engraved silver fish-slice,
imagine a heavy gold chain over the old man’s black doublet, and
you will have some dim idea of this strange personage, who seemed
still more fantastic in the sombre twilight of the staircase. One of
Rembrandt’s portraits might have stepped down from its frame to walk in
an appropriate atmosphere of gloom, such as the great painter loved.
The older man gave the younger a shrewd glance, and knocked thrice at
the door. It was opened by a man of forty or thereabout, who seemed to
be an invalid.
“Good day, Master.”
Porbus bowed respectfully, and held the door open for the younger man
to enter, thinking that the latter accompanied his visitor; and when he
saw that the neophyte stood a while as if spellbound, feeling, as every
artist-nature must feel, the fascinating influence of the first sight
of a studio in which the material processes of art are revealed, Porbus
troubled himself no more about this second comer.
All the light in the studio came from a window in the roof, and was
concentrated upon an easel, where a canvas stood untouched as yet
save for three or four outlines in chalk. The daylight scarcely
reached the remoter angles and corners of the vast room; they were as
dark as night, but the silver ornamented breastplate of a Reiter’s
corselet, that hung upon the wall, attracted a stray gleam to its dim
abiding-place among the brown shadows; or a shaft of light shot across
the carved and glistening surface of an antique sideboard covered with
curious silver-plate, or struck out a line of glittering dots among the
raised threads of the golden warp of some old brocaded curtains, where
the lines of the stiff, heavy folds were broken, as the stuff had been
flung carelessly down to serve as a model.
Plaster _écorchés_ stood about the room; and here and there, on
shelves and tables, lay fragments of classical sculpture--torsos of
antique goddesses, worn smooth as though all the years of the centuries
that had passed over them had been lovers’ kisses. The walls were
covered, from floor to ceiling, with countless sketches in charcoal,
red chalk, or pen and ink. Amid the litter and confusion of color
boxes, overturned stools, flasks of oil, and essences, there was just
room to move so as to reach the illuminated circular space where the
easel stood. The light from the window in the roof fell full upon
Porbus’s pale face and on the ivory-tinted forehead of his strange
visitor. But in another moment the younger man heeded nothing but a
picture that had already become famous even in those stormy days of
political and religious revolution, a picture that a few of the zealous
worshipers, who have so often kept the sacred fire of art alive in
evil days, were wont to go on pilgrimage to see. The beautiful panel
represented a Saint Mary of Egypt about to pay her passage across the
seas. It was a masterpiece destined for Mary de’ Medici, who sold it in
later years of poverty.
“I like your saint,” the old man remarked, addressing Porbus. “I would
give you ten golden crowns for her over and above the price the Queen
is paying; but as for putting a spoke in that wheel--the devil take it!”
“It is good then?”
“Hey! hey!” said the old man; “good, say you?--Yes and no. Your good
woman is not badly done, but she is not alive. You artists fancy that
when a figure is correctly drawn, and everything in its place according
to the rules of anatomy, there is nothing more to be done. You make up
the flesh tints beforehand on your palettes according to your formulæ,
and fill in the outlines with due care that one side of the face shall
be darker than the other; and because you look from time to time at a
naked woman who stands on the platform before you, you fondly imagine
that you have copied nature, think yourselves to be painters, believe
that you have wrested His secret from God. Pshaw! You may know your
syntax thoroughly and make no blunders in your grammar, but it takes
that and something more to make a great poet. Look at your saint,
Porbus! At a first glance she is admirable; look at her again, and you
see at once that she is glued to the background, and that you could
not walk round her. She is a silhouette that turns but one side of her
face to all beholders, a figure cut out of canvas, an image with no
power to move nor change her position. I feel as if there were no air
between that arm and the background, no space, no sense of distance in
your canvas. The perspective is perfectly correct, the strength of the
coloring is accurately diminished with the distance; but, in spite of
these praiseworthy efforts, I could never bring myself to believe that
the warm breath of life comes and goes in that beautiful body. It seems
to me that if I laid my hand on the firm, rounded throat, it would be
cold as marble to the touch. No, my friend, the blood does not flow
beneath that ivory skin, the tide of life does not flush those delicate
fibres, the purple veins that trace a network beneath the transparent
amber of her brow and breast. Here the pulse seems to beat, there it
is motionless, life and death are at strife in every detail; here you
see a woman, there a statue, there again a corpse. Your creation is
incomplete. You had only power to breathe a portion of your soul into
your beloved work. The fire of Prometheus died out again and again in
your hands; many a spot in your picture has not been touched by the
divine flame.”
“But how is it, dear master?” Porbus asked respectfully, while the
young man with difficulty repressed his strong desire to beat the
critic.
“Ah!” said the old man, “it is this! You have halted between two
manners. You have hesitated between drawing and color, between the
dogged attention to detail, the stiff precision of the German masters
and the dazzling glow, the joyous exuberance of Italian painters. You
have set yourself to imitate Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht Dürer
and Paul Veronese in a single picture. A magnificent ambition truly,
but what has come of it? Your work has neither the severe charm of a
dry execution nor the magical illusion of Italian _chiaroscuro_.
Titian’s rich golden coloring poured into Albrecht Dürer’s austere
outlines has shattered them, like molten bronze bursting through the
mold that is not strong enough to hold it. In other places the outlines
have held firm, imprisoning and obscuring the magnificent, glowing
flood of Venetian color. The drawing of the face is not perfect, the
coloring is not perfect; traces of that unlucky indecision are to be
seen everywhere. Unless you felt strong enough to fuse the two opposed
manners in the fire of your own genius, you should have cast in your
lot boldly with the one or the other, and so have obtained the unity
which simulates one of the conditions of life itself. Your work is only
true in the centres; your outlines are false, they project nothing,
there is no hint of anything behind them. There is truth here,” said
the old man, pointing to the breast of the Saint, “and again here,”
he went on, indicating the rounded shoulder. “But there,” once more
returning to the column of the throat, “everything is false. Let us go
no further into detail; you would be disheartened.”
The old man sat down on a stool, and remained a while without speaking,
with his face buried in his hands.
“Yet I studied that throat from the life, dear master,” Porbus began;
“it happens sometimes, for our misfortune, that real effects in nature
look improbable when transferred to canvas--”
“The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. You are not
a servile copyist, but a poet!” cried the old man sharply, cutting
Porbus short with an imperious gesture. “Otherwise a sculptor might
make a plaster cast of a living woman and save himself all further
trouble. Well, try to make a cast of your mistress’s hand, and set up
the thing before you. You will see a monstrosity, a dead mass, bearing
no resemblance to the living hand; you would be compelled to have
recourse to the chisel of a sculptor who, without making an exact copy,
would represent for you its movement and its life. We must detect the
spirit, the informing soul in the appearances of things and beings.
Effects! What are effects but the accidents of life, not life itself?
A hand, since I have taken that example, is not only a part of a body,
it is the expression and extension of a thought that must be grasped
and rendered. Neither painter nor poet nor sculptor may separate the
effect from the cause, which are inevitably contained the one in the
other. There begins the real struggle! Many a painter achieves success
instinctively, unconscious of the task that is set before art. You draw
a woman, yet you do not see her! Not so do you succeed in wresting
Nature’s secrets from her! You are reproducing mechanically the model
that you copied in your master’s studio. You do not penetrate far
enough into the inmost secrets of the mystery of form; you do not seek
with love enough and perseverance enough after the form that baffles
and eludes you. Beauty is a thing severe and unapproachable, never to
be won by a languid lover. You must lie in wait for her coming and
take her unawares, press her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace,
and force her to yield. Form is a Proteus more intangible and more
manifold than the Proteus of the legend; compelled, only after long
wrestling, to stand forth manifest in his true aspect. Some of you are
satisfied with the first shape, or at most by the second or the third
that appears. Not thus wrestle the victors, the unvanquished painters
who never suffer themselves to be deluded by all those treacherous
shadow-shapes; they persevere till Nature at the last stands bare to
their gaze, and her very soul is revealed.
“In this manner worked Rafael,” said the old man, taking off his cap to
express his reverence for the King of Art. “His transcendent greatness
came of the intimate sense that, in him, seems as if it would shatter
external form. Form in his figures (as with us) is a symbol, a means of
communicating sensations, ideas, the vast imaginings of a poet. Every
face is a whole world. The subject of the portrait appeared for him
bathed in the light of a divine vision; it was revealed by an inner
voice, the finger of God laid bare the sources of expression in the
past of a whole life.
“You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in gracious veiling
of hair; but where is the blood, the source of passion and of calm,
the cause of the particular effect? Why, this brown Egyptian of yours,
my good Porbus, is a colorless creature! These figures that you set
before us are painted bloodless fantoms; and you call that painting,
you call that art!
“Because you have made something more like a woman than a house,
you think that you have set your fingers on the goal; you are quite
proud that you need not to write _currus venustus_ or _pulcher
homo_ beside your figures, as early painters were wont to do and you
fancy that you have done wonders. Ah! my good friend, there is still
something more to learn, and you will use up a great deal of chalk
and cover many a canvas before you will learn it. Yes, truly, a woman
carries her head in just such a way, so she holds her garments gathered
into her hand; her eyes grow dreamy and soft with that expression of
meek sweetness, and even so the quivering shadow of the lashes hovers
upon her cheeks. It is all there, and yet it is not there. What is
lacking? A nothing, but that nothing is everything.
“There you have the semblance of life, but you do not express its
fulness and effluence, that indescribable something, perhaps the soul
itself, that envelopes the outlines of the body like a haze; that
flower of life, in short, that Titian and Rafael caught. Your utmost
achievement hitherto has only brought you to the starting-point. You
might now perhaps begin to do excellent work, but you grow weary all
too soon; and the crowd admires, and those who know smile.”
“Oh, Mabuse! oh, my master!” cried the strange speaker, “thou art a
thief! Thou hast carried away the secret of life with thee!”
“Nevertheless,” he began again, “this picture of yours is worth more
than all the paintings of that rascal Rubens, with his mountains
of Flemish flesh raddled with vermilion, his torrents of red hair,
his riot of color. You, at least have color there, and feeling and
drawing--the three essentials in art.”
The young man roused himself from his deep musings.
“Why, my good man, the Saint is sublime!” he cried. “There is a
subtlety of imagination about those two figures, the Saint Mary and the
Shipman, that can not be found among Italian masters; I do not know a
single one of them capable of imagining the Shipman’s hesitation.”
“Did that little malapert come with you?” asked Porbus of the older man.
“Alas! master, pardon my boldness,” cried the neophyte, and the color
mounted to his face. “I am unknown--a dauber by instinct, and but
lately come to this city--the fountain-head of all learning.”
“Set to work,” said Porbus, handing him a bit of red chalk and a sheet
of paper.
The newcomer quickly sketched the Saint Mary line for line.
“Aha!” exclaimed the old man. “Your name?” he added.
The young man wrote “Nicolas Poussin” below the sketch.
“Not bad that for a beginning,” said the strange speaker, who had
discoursed so wildly. “I see that we can talk of art in your presence.
I do not blame you for admiring Porbus’s saint. In the eyes of the
world she is a masterpiece, and those alone who have been initiated
into the inmost mysteries of art can discover her shortcomings. But it
is worth while to give you the lesson, for you are able to understand
it, so I will show you how little it needs to complete this picture.
You must be all eyes, all attention, for it may be that such a chance
of learning will never come in your way again.--Porbus! your palette.”
Porbus went in search of palette and brushes. The little old man
turned back his sleeves with impatient energy, seized the palette,
covered with many hues, that Porbus handed to him, and snatched rather
than took a handful of brushes of various sizes from the hands of his
acquaintance. His pointed beard suddenly bristled--a menacing movement
that expressed the prick of a lover’s fancy. As he loaded his brush, he
muttered between his teeth, “These paints are only fit to fling out of
the window, together with the fellow who ground them, their crudeness
and falseness are disgusting! How can one paint with this?”
He dipped the tip of the brush with feverish eagerness in the different
pigments, making the circuit of the palette several times more quickly
than the organist of a cathedral sweeps the octaves on the keyboard of
his clavier for the “O Filii” at Easter.
Porbus and Poussin, on either side of the easel, stood stock-still,
watching with intense interest.
“Look, young man,” he began again, “see how three or four strokes of
the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in the free air to play about
the head of the poor Saint, who must have felt stifled and oppressed by
the close atmosphere! See how the drapery begins to flutter; you feel
that it is lifted by the breeze! A moment ago it hung as heavily and
stiffly as if it were held out by pins. Do you see how the satin sheen
that I have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness
of a young girl’s skin, and how the brown-red, blended with burnt
ochre, brings warmth into the cold gray of the deep shadow where the
blood lay congealed instead of coursing through the veins? Young man,
young man, no master could teach you how to do this that I am doing
before your eyes. Mabuse alone possessed the secret of giving life to
his figures; Mabuse had but one pupil--that was I. I have had none, and
I am old. You have sufficient intelligence to imagine the rest from the
glimpses that I am giving you.”
While the old man was speaking, he gave a touch here and there;
sometimes two strokes of the brush, sometimes a single one; but every
stroke told so well, that the whole picture seemed transfigured--the
painting was flooded with light. He worked with such passionate fervor
that beads of sweat gathered upon his bare forehead; he worked so
quickly, in brief, impatient jerks, that it seemed to young Poussin as
if some familiar spirit inhabiting the body of this strange being took
a grotesque pleasure in making use of the man’s hands against his own
will. The unearthly glitter of his eyes, the convulsive movements that
seemed like struggles, gave to this fancy a semblance of truth which
could not but stir a young imagination. The old man continued, saying
as he did so--
“Paf! paf! that is how to lay it on, young man!--Little touches! come
and bring a glow into those icy cold tones for me! Just so! Pon! pon!
pon!” and those parts of the picture that he had pointed out as cold
and lifeless flushed with warmer hues, a few bold strokes of color
brought all the tones of the picture into the required harmony with
the glowing tints of the Egyptian, and the differences in temperament
vanished.
“Look you, youngster, the last touches make the picture. Porbus has
given it a hundred strokes for every one of mine. No one thanks us for
what lies beneath. Bear that in mind.”
At last the restless spirit stopped, and turning to Porbus and Poussin,
who were speechless with admiration, he spoke--
“This is not as good as my ‘Belle Noiseuse’; still one might put
one’s name to such a thing as this.--Yes, I would put my name to it,”
he added, rising to reach for a mirror, in which he looked at the
picture.--“And now,” he said, “will you both come and breakfast with
me? I have a smoked ham and some very fair wine!... Eh! eh! the times
may be bad, but we can still have some talk about art! We can talk like
equals.... Here is a little fellow who has aptitude,” he added, laying
a hand on Nicolas Poussin’s shoulder.
In this way the stranger became aware of the threadbare condition of
the Norman’s doublet. He drew a leather purse from his girdle, felt in
it, found two gold coins, and held them out.
“I will buy your sketch,” he said.
“Take it,” said Porbus, as he saw the other start and flush with
embarrassment, for Poussin had the pride of poverty. “Pray, take it; he
has a couple of king’s ransoms in his pouch!”
The three came down together from the studio, and, talking of art
by the way, reached a picturesque wooden house hard by the Pont
Saint-Michel. Poussin wondered a moment at its ornament, at the
knocker, at the frames of the casements, at the scroll-work designs,
and in the next he stood in a vast low-ceiled room. A table, covered
with tempting dishes, stood near the blazing fire, and (luck unhoped
for) he was in the company of two great artists full of genial good
humor.
“Do not look too long at that canvas, young man,” said Porbus, when he
saw that Poussin was standing, struck with wonder, before a painting.
“You would fall a victim to despair.”
It was the “Adam” painted by Mabuse to purchase his release from the
prison where his creditors had so long kept him. And, as a matter of
fact, the figure stood out so boldly and convincingly, that Nicolas
Poussin began to understand the real meaning of the words poured out by
the old artist, who was himself looking at the picture with apparent
satisfaction, but without enthusiasm. “I have done better than that!”
he seemed to be saying to himself.
“There is life in it,” he said aloud; “in that respect my poor
master here surpassed himself, but there is some lack of truth in
the background. The man lives indeed; he is rising, and will come
toward us; but the atmosphere, the sky, the air, the breath of the
breeze--you look and feel for them, but they are not there. And then
the man himself is, after all, only a man! Ah! but the one man in the
world who came direct from the hands of God must have had a something
divine about him that is wanting here. Mabuse himself would grind his
teeth and say so when he was not drunk.”
Poussin looked from the speaker to Porbus, and from Porbus to the
speaker, with restless curiosity. He went up to the latter to ask for
the name of their host; but the painter laid a finger on his lips
with an air of mystery. The young man’s interest was excited; he kept
silence, but hoped that sooner or later some word might be let fall
that would reveal the name of his entertainer. It was evident that
he was a man of talent and very wealthy, for Porbus listened to him
respectfully, and the vast room was crowded with marvels of art.
A magnificent portrait of a woman, hung against the dark oak panels of
the wall, next caught Poussin’s attention.
“What a glorious Giorgione!” he cried.
“No,” said his host, “it is an early daub of mine--”
“Gramercy! I am in the abode of the god of painting, it seems!” cried
Poussin ingenuously.
The old man smiled as if he had long grown familiar with such praise.
“Master Frenhofer!” said Porbus, “do you think you could spare me a
little of your capital Rhine wine?”
“A couple of pipes!” answered his host; “one to discharge a debt, for
the pleasure of seeing your pretty sinner, the other as a present from
a friend.”
“Ah! if I had my health,” returned Porbus, “and if you would but let
me see your ‘Belle Noiseuse,’ I would paint some great picture, with
breadth in it and depth; the figures should be life-size.”
“Let you see my work!” cried the painter in agitation. “No, no! it
is not perfect yet; something still remains for me to do. Yesterday,
in the dusk,” he said, “I thought I had reached the end. Her eyes
seemed moist, the flesh quivered, something stirred the tresses of
her hair. She breathed! But though I have succeeded in reproducing
Nature’s roundness and relief on the flat surface of the canvas, this
morning, by daylight, I found out my mistake. Ah! to achieve that
glorious result I have studied the works of the great masters of color,
stripping off coat after coat of color from Titian’s canvas, analyzing
the pigments of the king of light. Like that sovereign painter, I began
the face in a slight tone with a supple and fat paste--for shadow is
but an accident; bear that in mind, youngster!--Then I began afresh,
and by half-tones and thin glazes of color less and less transparent,
I gradually deepened the tints to the deepest black of the strongest
shadows. An ordinary painter makes his shadows something entirely
different in nature from the high lights; they are wood or brass, or
what you will, anything but flesh in shadow. You feel that even if
those figures were to alter their position, those shadow stains would
never be cleansed away, those parts of the picture would never glow
with light.
“I have escaped one mistake, into which the most famous painters have
sometimes fallen; in my canvas the whiteness shines through the densest
and most persistent shadow. I have not marked out the limits of my
figure in hard, dry outlines, and brought every least anatomical detail
into prominence (like a host of dunces, who fancy that they can draw
because they can trace a line elaborately smooth and clean), for the
human body is not contained within the limits of line. In this the
sculptor can approach the truth more nearly than we painters. Nature’s
way is a complicated succession of curve within curve. Strictly
speaking, there is no such thing as drawing.--Do not laugh, young man;
strange as that speech may seem to you, you will understand the truth
in it some day.--A line is a method of expressing the effect of light
upon an object; but there are no lines in Nature, everything is solid.
We draw by modeling, that is to say, that we disengage an object from
its setting; the distribution of the light alone gives to a body the
appearance by which we know it. So I have not defined the outlines;
I have suffused them with a haze of half-tints warm or golden, in
such a sort that you can not lay your finger on the exact spot where
background and contours meet. Seen from near, the picture looks a blur;
it seems to lack definition; but step back two paces, and the whole
thing becomes clear, distinct, and solid; the body stands out; the
rounded form comes into relief; you feel that the air plays round it.
And yet--I am not satisfied; I have misgivings. Perhaps one ought not
to draw a single line; perhaps it would be better to attack the face
from the centre, taking the highest prominences first, proceeding from
them through the whole range of shadows to the heaviest of all. Is
not this the method of the sun, the divine painter of the world? Oh,
Nature, Nature! who has surprised thee, fugitive? But, after all, too
much knowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a negation. I have doubts
about my work.”
There was a pause. Then the old man spoke again. “I have been at work
upon it for ten years, young man; but what are ten short years in a
struggle with Nature? Do we know how long Sir Pygmalion wrought at the
one statue that came to life?”
The old man fell into deep musings, and gazed before him with wide
unseeing eyes, while he played unheedingly with his knife.
“Look, he is in conversation with his _dæmon_!” murmured Porbus.
At the word, Nicolas Poussin felt himself carried away by an
unaccountable accession of artist’s curiosity. For him the old man,
at once intent and inert, the seer with the unseeing eyes, became
something more than a man--a fantastic spirit living in a mysterious
world, and countless vague thoughts awoke within his soul. The effect
of this species of fascination upon his mind can no more be described
in words than the passionate longing awakened in an exile’s heart by
the song that recalls his home. He thought of the scorn that the old
man affected to display for the noblest efforts of art, of his wealth,
his manners, of the deference paid to him by Porbus. The mysterious
picture, the work of patience on which he had wrought so long in
secret, was doubtless a work of genius, for the head of the Virgin
which young Poussin had admired so frankly was beautiful even beside
Mabuse’s “Adam”--there was no mistaking the imperial manner of one of
the princes of art. Everything combined to set the old man beyond the
limits of human nature.
Out of the wealth of fancies in Nicolas Poussin’s brain an idea grew,
and gathered shape and clearness. He saw in this supernatural being
a complete type of the artist nature, a nature mocking and kindly,
barren and prolific, an erratic spirit intrusted with great and
manifold powers which she too often abuses, leading sober reason,
the Philistine, and sometimes even the amateur forth into a stony
wilderness where they see nothing; but the white-winged maiden
herself, wild as her fancies may be, finds epics there and castles and
works of art. For Poussin, the enthusiast, the old man, was suddenly
transfigured, and became Art incarnate, Art with its mysteries, its
vehement passion and its dreams.
“Yes, my dear Porbus,” Frenhofer continued, “hitherto I have never
found a flawless model, a body with outlines of perfect beauty, the
carnations--Ah! where does she live?” he cried, breaking in upon
himself, “the undiscoverable Venus of the older time, for whom we have
sought so often, only to find the scattered gleams of her beauty here
and there? Oh! to behold once and for one moment, Nature grown perfect
and divine, the Ideal at last, I would give all that I possess.... Nay,
Beauty divine, I would go to seek thee in the dim land of the dead;
like Orpheus, I would go down into the Hades of Art to bring back the
life of art from among the shadows of death.”
“We can go now,” said Porbus to Poussin. “He neither hears nor sees us
any longer.”
“Let us go to his studio,” said young Poussin, wondering greatly.
“Oh! the old fox takes care that no one shall enter it. His treasures
are so carefully guarded that it is impossible for us to come at them.
I have not waited for your suggestion and your fancy to attempt to lay
hands on this mystery by force.”
“So there is a mystery?”
“Yes,” answered Porbus. “Old Frenhofer is the only pupil Mabuse would
take. Frenhofer became the painter’s friend, deliverer, and father; he
sacrificed the greater part of his fortune to enable Mabuse to indulge
in riotous extravagance, and in return Mabuse bequeathed to him the
secret of relief, the power of giving to his figures the wonderful
life, the flower of Nature, the eternal despair of art, the secret
which Mabuse knew so well that one day when he had sold the flowered
brocade suit in which he should have appeared at the Entry of Charles
V, he accompanied his master in a suit of paper painted to resemble
the brocade. The peculiar richness and splendor of the stuff struck
the Emperor; he complimented the old drunkard’s patron on the artist’s
appearance, and so the trick was brought to light. Frenhofer is a
passionate enthusiast, who sees above and beyond other painters. He
has meditated profoundly on color, and the absolute truth of line; but
by the way of much research he has come to doubt the very existence
of the objects of his search. He says, in moments of despondency,
that there is no such thing as drawing, and that by means of lines we
can only reproduce geometrical figures; but that is overshooting the
mark, for by outline and shadow you can reproduce form without any
color at all, which shows that our art, like Nature, is composed of
an infinite number of elements. Drawing gives you the skeleton, the
anatomical framework, and color puts the life into it; but life without
the skeleton is even more incomplete than a skeleton without life. But
there is something else truer still, and it is this--for painters,
practise and observation are everything; and when theories and poetical
ideas begin to quarrel with the brushes, the end is doubt, as has
happened with our good friend, who is half crack-brained enthusiast,
half painter. A sublime painter! but unluckily for him, he was born to
riches, and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. Do not you follow
his example! Work! painters have no business to think, except brush in
hand.”
“We will find a way into his studio!” cried Poussin confidently. He
had ceased to heed Porbus’s remarks. The other smiled at the young
painter’s enthusiasm, asked him to come to see him again, and they
parted. Nicholas Poussin went slowly back to the Rue de la Harpe, and
passed the modest hostelry where he was lodging without noticing it.
A feeling of uneasiness prompted him to hurry up the crazy staircase
till he reached a room at the top, a quaint, airy recess under the
steep, high-pitched roof common among houses in old Paris. In the one
dingy window of the place sat a young girl, who sprang up at once when
she heard some one at the door; it was the prompting of love; she had
recognized the painter’s touch on the latch.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked.
“The matter is ... is.... Oh! I have felt that I am a painter! Until
to-day I have had doubts, but now I believe in myself! There is the
making of a great man in me! Never mind, Gillette, we shall be rich and
happy! There is gold at the tips of those brushes--”
He broke off suddenly. The joy faded from his powerful and earnest
face as he compared his vast hopes with his slender resources. The
walls were covered with sketches in chalk on sheets of common paper.
There were but four canvases in the room. Colors were very costly,
and the young painter’s palette was almost bare. Yet in the midst
of his poverty he possessed and was conscious of the possession of
inexhaustible treasures of the heart, of a devouring genius equal to
all the tasks that lay before him.
He had been brought to Paris by a nobleman among his friends, or
perchance by the consciousness of his powers; and in Paris he had
found a mistress, one of those noble and generous souls who choose to
suffer by a great man’s side, who share his struggles and strive to
understand his fancies, accepting their lot of poverty and love as
bravely and dauntlessly as other women will set themselves to bear the
burden of riches and make a parade of their insensibility. The smile
that stole over Gillette’s lips filled the garret with golden light,
and rivaled the brightness of the sun in heaven. The sun, moreover,
does not always shine in heaven, whereas Gillette was always in the
garret, absorbed in her passion, occupied by Poussin’s happiness and
sorrow, consoling the genius which found an outlet in love before art
engrossed it.
“Listen, Gillette. Come here.”
The girl obeyed joyously, and sprang upon the painter’s knee. Hers was
perfect grace and beauty, and the loveliness of spring; she was adorned
with all luxuriant fairness of outward form, lighted up by the glow of
a fair soul within.
“Oh! God,” he cried; “I shall never dare to tell her--”
“A secret?” she cried; “I must know it!”
Poussin was absorbed in his dreams.
“Do tell it me!”
“Gillette ... poor beloved heart!...”
“Oh! do you want something of me?”
“Yes.”
“If you wish me to sit once more for you as I did the other day,” she
continued with playful petulance, “I will never consent to do such a
thing again, for your eyes say nothing all the while. You do not think
of me at all, and yet you look at me--”
“Would you rather have me draw another woman?”
“Perhaps--if she were very ugly,” she said.
“Well,” said Poussin gravely, “and if, for the sake of my fame to come,
if to make me a great painter, you must sit to some one else?”
“You may try me,” she said; “you know quite well that I would not.”
Poussin’s head sank on her breast; he seemed to be overpowered by some
intolerable joy or sorrow.
“Listen,” she cried, plucking at the sleeve of Poussin’s threadbare
doublet. “I told you, Nick, that I would lay down my life for you; but
I never promised you that I in my lifetime would lay down my love.”
“Your love?” cried the young artist.
“If I showed myself thus to another, you would love me no longer, and
I should feel myself unworthy of you. Obedience to your fancies was a
natural and simple thing, was it not? Even against my own will, I am
glad and even proud to do thy dear will. But for another, out upon it!”
“Forgive me, my Gillette,” said the painter, falling upon his knees; “I
would rather be beloved than famous. You are fairer than success and
honors. There, fling the pencils away, and burn these sketches! I have
made a mistake. I was meant to love and not to paint. Perish art and
all its secrets!”
Gillette looked admiringly at him, in an ecstasy of happiness! She was
triumphant; she felt instinctively that art was laid aside for her
sake, and flung like a grain of incense at her feet.
“Yet he is only an old man,” Poussin continued; “for him you would be a
woman, and nothing more. You--so perfect!”
“I must love you indeed!” she cried, ready to sacrifice even love’s
scruples to the lover who had given up so much for her sake; “but I
should bring about my own ruin. Ah! to ruin myself, to lose everything
for you!... It is a very glorious thought! Ah! but you will forget me.
Oh! what evil thought is this that has come to you?”
“I love you, and yet I thought of it,” he said, with something like
remorse. “Am I so base a wretch?”
“Let us consult Père Hardouin,” she said.
“No, no! Let it be a secret between us.”
“Very well; I will do it. But you must not be there,” she said. “Stay
at the door with your dagger in your hand; and if I call, rush in and
kill the painter.”
Poussin forgot everything but art. He held Gillette tightly in his arms.
“He loves me no longer!” thought Gillette when she was alone. She
repented of her resolution already.
But to these misgivings there soon succeeded a sharper pain, and she
strove to banish a hideous thought that arose in her own heart. It
seemed to her that her own love had grown less already, with a vague
suspicion that the painter had fallen somewhat in her eyes.