_CATHERINE LESCAULT_
Three months after Poussin and Porbus met, the latter went to see
Master Frenhofer. The old man had fallen a victim to one of those
profound and spontaneous fits of discouragement that are caused,
according to medical logicians, by indigestion, flatulence, fever,
or enlargement of the spleen; or, if you take the opinion of the
Spiritualists, by the imperfections of our mortal nature. The good man
had simply overworked himself in putting the finishing touches to his
mysterious picture. He was lounging in a huge carved oak chair, covered
with black leather, and did not change his listless attitude, but
glanced at Porbus like a man who has settled down into low spirits.
“Well, master,” said Porbus, “was the ultramarine bad that you sent for
to Bruges? Is the new white difficult to grind? Is the oil poor, or are
the brushes recalcitrant?”
“Alas!” cried the old man, “for a moment I thought that my work was
finished, but I am sure that I am mistaken in certain details, and
I can not rest until I have cleared my doubts. I am thinking of
traveling. I am going to Turkey, to Greece, to Asia, in quest of a
model, so as to compare my picture with the different living forms
of Nature. Perhaps,” and a smile of contentment stole over his face,
“perhaps I have Nature herself up there. At times I am half afraid that
a breath may waken her, and that she will escape me.”
He rose to his feet as if to set out at once.
“Aha!” said Porbus, “I have come just in time to save you the trouble
and expense of a journey.”
“What?” asked Frenhofer in amazement.
“Young Poussin is loved by a woman of incomparable and flawless beauty.
But, dear master, if he consents to lend her to you, at the least you
ought to let us see your work.”
The old man stood motionless and completely dazed.
“What!” he cried piteously at last, “show you my creation, my bride?
Rend the veil that has kept my happiness sacred? It would be an
infamous profanation. For ten years I have lived with her; she is mine,
mine alone; she loves me. Has she not smiled at me, at each stroke
of the brush upon the canvas? She has a soul--the soul that I have
given her. She would blush if any eyes but mine should rest on her. To
exhibit her! Where is the husband, the lover so vile as to bring the
woman he loves to dishonor? When you paint a picture for the court, you
do not put your whole soul into it; to courtiers you sell lay figures
duly colored. My painting is no painting, it is a sentiment, a passion.
She was born in my studio, there she must dwell in maiden solitude,
and only when clad can she issue thence. Poetry and women only lay the
last veil aside for their lovers. Have we Rafael’s model, Ariosto’s
Angelica, Dante’s Beatrice? Nay, only their form and semblance. But
this picture, locked away above in my studio, is an exception in our
art. It is not a canvas, it is a woman--a woman with whom I talk. I
share her thoughts, her tears, her laughter. Would you have me fling
aside these ten years of happiness like a cloak? Would you have me
cease at once to be father, lover, and creator? She is not a creature,
but a creation.
“Bring your young painter here. I will give him my treasures; I will
give him pictures by Correggio and Michelangelo and Titian; I will kiss
his footprints in the dust; but make him my rival! Shame on me. Ah!
ah! I am a lover first, and then a painter. Yes, with my latest sigh
I could find strength to burn my ‘Belle Noiseuse’; but--compel her to
endure the gaze of a stranger, a young man and a painter!--Ah! no, no!
I would kill him on the morrow who should sully her with a glance! Nay,
you, my friend, I would kill you with my own hands in a moment if you
did not kneel in reverence before her! Now, will you have me submit my
idol to the careless eyes and senseless criticisms of fools? Ah! love
is a mystery; it can only live hidden in the depths of the heart. You
say, even to your friend, ‘Behold her whom I love,’ and there is an end
of love.”
The old man seemed to have grown young again; there was light and life
in his eyes, and a faint flush of red in his pale face. His hands
shook. Porbus was so amazed by the passionate vehemence of Frenhofer’s
words that he knew not what to reply to this utterance of an emotion as
strange as it was profound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Had he fallen a
victim to some freak of the artist’s fancy? or were these ideas of his
produced by the strange light-headedness which comes over us during the
long travail of a work of art. Would it be possible to come to terms
with this singular passion?
Harassed by all these doubts, Porbus spoke--“Is it not woman for
woman?” he said. “Does not Poussin submit his mistress to your gaze?”
“What is she?” retorted the other. “A mistress who will be false to him
sooner or later. Mine will be faithful to me forever.”
“Well, well,” said Porbus, “let us say no more about it. But you may
die before you will find such a flawless beauty as hers, even in Asia,
and then your picture will be left unfinished.
“Oh! it is finished,” said Frenhofer. “Standing before it you would
think that it was a living woman lying on the velvet couch beneath the
shadow of the curtains. Perfumes are burning on a golden tripod by her
side. You would be tempted to lay your hand upon the tassel of the
cord that holds back the curtains; it would seem to you that you saw
her breast rise and fall as she breathed; that you beheld the living
Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtezan whom men called ‘La Belle
Noiseuse,’ And yet--if I could but be sure--”
“Then go to Asia,” returned Porbus, noticing a certain indecision in
Frenhofer’s face. And with that Porbus made a few steps toward the door.
By that time Gillette and Nicolas Poussin had reached Frenhofer’s
house. The girl drew away her arm from her lover’s as she stood on the
threshold, and shrank back as if some presentiment flashed through her
mind.
“Oh! what have I come to do here?” she asked of her lover in low
vibrating tones, with her eyes fixed on his.
“Gillette, I have left you to decide; I am ready to obey you in
everything. You are my conscience and my glory. Go home again; I shall
be happier, perhaps, if you do not--”
“Am I my own when you speak to me like that? No, no; I am like a
child.--Come,” she added, seemingly with a violent effort; “if our
love dies, if I plant a long regret in my heart, your fame will be the
reward of my obedience to your wishes, will it not? Let us go in. I
shall still live on as a memory on your palette; that shall be life for
me afterward.”
The door opened, and the two lovers encountered Porbus, who was
surprised by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were full of tears. He
hurried her, trembling from head to foot, into the presence of the old
painter.
“Here!” he cried, “is she not worth all the masterpieces in the world!”
Frenhofer trembled. There stood Gillette in the artless and childlike
attitude of some timid and innocent Georgian, carried off by brigands,
and confronted with a slave merchant. A shamefaced red flushed her
face, her eyes drooped, her hands hung by her side, her strength
seemed to have failed her, her tears protested against this outrage.
Poussin cursed himself in despair that he should have brought his fair
treasure from its hiding-place. The lover over, came the artist, and
countless doubts assailed Poussin’s heart when he saw youth dawn in
the old man’s eyes, as, like a painter, he discerned every line of the
form hidden beneath the young girl’s vesture. Then the lover’s savage
jealousy awoke.
“Gillette!” he cried, “let us go.”
The girl turned joyously at the cry and the tone in which it was
uttered, raised her eyes to his, looked at him, and fled to his arms.
“Ah! then you love me,” she cried; “you love me!” and she burst into
tears.
She had spirit enough to suffer in silence, but she had no strength to
hide her joy.
“Oh! leave her with me for one moment,” said the old painter, “and you
shall compare her with my Catherine ... yes--I consent.”
Frenhofer’s words likewise came from him like a lover’s cry. His vanity
seemed to be engaged for his semblance of womanhood; he anticipated the
triumph of the beauty of his own creation over the beauty of the living
girl.
“Do not give him time to change his mind!” cried Porbus, striking
Poussin on the shoulder. “The flower of love soon fades, but the flower
of art is immortal.”
“Then am I only a woman now for him?” said Gillette. She was watching
Poussin and Porbus closely.
She raised her head proudly; she glanced at Frenhofer, and her eyes
flashed; then as she saw how her lover had fallen again to gazing at
the portrait which he had taken at first for a Giorgione--
“Ah!” she cried; “let us go up to the studio. He never gave me such a
look.”
The sound of her voice recalled Poussin from his dreams.
“Old man,” he said, “do you see this blade? I will plunge it into your
heart at the first cry from this young girl; I will set fire to your
house, and no one shall leave it alive. Do you understand?”
Nicolas Poussin scowled; every word was a menace. Gillette took comfort
from the young painter’s bearing, and yet more from that gesture, and
almost forgave him for sacrificing her to his art and his glorious
future.
Porbus and Poussin stood at the door of the studio and looked at each
other in silence. At first the painter of the Saint Mary of Egypt
hazarded some exclamations: “Ah! she has taken off her clothes; he told
her to come into the light--he is comparing the two!” but the sight of
the deep distress in Poussin’s face suddenly silenced him; and though
old painters no longer feel these scruples, so petty in the presence of
art, he admired them because they were so natural and gracious in the
lover. The young man kept his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and his
ear was almost glued to the door. The two men standing in the shadow
might have been conspirators waiting for the hour when they might
strike down a tyrant.
“Come in, come in,” cried the old man. He was radiant with delight. “My
work is perfect. I can show her now with pride. Never shall painter,
brushes, colors, light, and canvas produce a rival for ‘Catherine
Lescault,’ the beautiful courtezan!”
Porbus and Poussin, burning with eager curiosity, hurried into a vast
studio. Everything was in disorder and covered with dust, but they saw
a few pictures here and there upon the wall. They stopped first of all
in admiration before the life-size figure of a woman partially draped.
“Oh! never mind that,” said Frenhofer; “that is a rough daub that I
made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. These are my failures,” he went
on, indicating the enchanting compositions upon the walls of the studio.
This scorn for such works of art struck Porbus and Poussin dumb with
amazement. They looked round for the picture of which he had spoken,
and could not discover it.
“Look here!” said the old man. His hair was disordered, his face aglow
with a more than human exaltation, his eyes glittered, he breathed hard
like a young lover frenzied by love.
“Aha!” he cried, “you did not expect to see such perfection! You are
looking for a picture, and you see a woman before you. There is such
depth in that canvas, the atmosphere is so true that you can not
distinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is art? Art has
vanished, it is invisible! It is the form of a living girl that you see
before you. Have I not caught the very hues of life, the spirit of the
living line that defines the figure? Is there not the effect produced
there like that which all natural objects present in the atmosphere
about them, or fishes in the water? Do you see how the figure stands
out against the background? Does it not seem to you that you pass your
hand along the back? But then for seven years I studied and watched how
the daylight blends with the objects on which it falls. And the hair,
the light pours over it like a flood, does it not?... Ah! she breathed,
I am sure that she breathed! Her breast--ah, see! Who would not fall
on his knees before her? Her pulses throb. She will rise to her feet.
Wait!”
“Do you see anything?” Poussin asked of Porbus.
“No ... do you?”
“I see nothing.”
The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and tried to
ascertain whether the light that fell full upon the canvas had in some
way neutralized all the effect for them. They moved to the right and
left of the picture; they came in front, bending down and standing
upright by turns.
“Yes, yes, it is really canvas,” said Frenhofer, who mistook the nature
of this minute investigation.
“Look! the canvas is on a stretcher, here is the easel; indeed, here
are my colors, my brushes,” and he took up a brush and held it out to
them, all unsuspicious of their thought.
“The old _lansquenet_ is laughing at us,” said Poussin, coming
once more toward the supposed picture. “I can see nothing there but
confused masses of color and a multitude of fantastical lines that go
to make a dead wall of paint.”
“We are mistaken, look!” said Porbus.
In a corner of the canvas, as they came nearer, they distinguished
a bare foot emerging from the chaos of color, half-tints and vague
shadows that made up a dim, formless fog. Its living delicate
beauty held them spellbound. This fragment that had escaped an
incomprehensible, slow, and gradual destruction seemed to them like the
Parian marble torso of some Venus emerging from the ashes of a ruined
town.
“There is a woman beneath,” exclaimed Porbus, calling Poussin’s
attention to the coats of paint with which the old artist had overlaid
and concealed his work in the quest of perfection.
Both artists turned involuntarily to Frenhofer. They began to have some
understanding, vague though it was, of the ecstasy in which he lived.
“He believes it in all good faith,” said Porbus.
“Yes, my friend,” said the old man, rousing himself from his dreams,
“it needs faith, faith in art, and you must live for long with your
work to produce such a creation. What toil some of those shadows have
cost me. Look! there is a faint shadow there upon the cheek beneath the
eyes--if you saw that on a human face, it would seem to you that you
could never render it with paint. Do you think that that effect has not
cost unheard-of toil?
“But not only so, dear Porbus. Look closely at my work, and you will
understand more clearly what I was saying as to methods of modeling and
outline. Look at the high lights on the bosom, and see how by touch on
touch, thickly laid on, I have raised the surface so that it catches
the light itself and blends it with the lustrous whiteness of the high
lights, and how by an opposite process, by flattening the surface of
the paint, and leaving no trace of the passage of the brush, I have
succeeded in softening the contours of my figures and enveloping them
in half-tints until the very idea of drawing, of the means by which
the effect is produced, fades away, and the picture has the roundness
and relief of nature. Come closer. You will see the manner of working
better; at a little distance it can not be seen. There! Just there, it
is, I think, very plainly to be seen,” and with the tip of his brush he
pointed out a patch of transparent color to the two painters.
Porbus, laying a hand on the old artist’s shoulder, turned to Poussin
with a “Do you know that in him we see a very great painter?”
“He is even more of a poet than a painter,” Poussin answered gravely.
“There,” Porbus continued, as he touched the canvas, “lies the utmost
limit of our art on earth.”
“Beyond that point it loses itself in the skies,” said Poussin.
“What joys lie there on this piece of canvas!” exclaimed Porbus.
The old man, deep in his own musings, smiled at the woman he alone
beheld, and did not hear.
“But sooner or later he will find out that there is nothing there!”
cried Poussin.
“Nothing on my canvas!” said Frenhofer, looking in turn at either
painter and at his picture.
“What have you done?” muttered Porbus, turning to Poussin.
The old man clutched the young painter’s arm and said, “Do you see
nothing? clodpate! Huguenot! varlet! cullion! What brought you here
into my studio?--My good Porbus,” he went on, as he turned to the
painter, “are you also making a fool of me? Answer! I am your friend.
Tell me, have I ruined my picture after all?”
Porbus hesitated and said nothing, but there was such intolerable
anxiety in the old man’s white face that he pointed to the easel.
“Look!” he said.
Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture, and staggered back.
“Nothing! nothing! After ten years of work....” He sat down and wept.
“So I am a dotard, a madman, I have neither talent nor power! I am only
a rich man, who works for his own pleasure, and makes no progress. I
have done nothing after all!”
He looked through his tears at his picture. Suddenly he rose and stood
proudly before the two painters.
“By the body and blood of Christ,” he cried with flashing eyes, “you
are jealous! You would have me think that my picture is a failure
because you want to steal her from me! Ah! I see her, I see her,” he
cried “she is marvelously beautiful....”
At that moment Poussin heard the sound of weeping; Gillette was
crouching forgotten in a corner. All at once the painter once more
became the lover. “What is it, my angel?” he asked her.
“Kill me!” she sobbed. “I must be a vile thing if I love you still, for
I despise you.... I admire you, and I hate you! I love you, and I feel
that I hate you even now!”
While Gillette’s words sounded in Poussin’s ears, Frenhofer drew a
green serge covering over his “Catherine” with the sober deliberation
of a jeweler who locks his drawers when he suspects his visitors
to be expert thieves. He gave the two painters a profoundly astute
glance that expressed to the full his suspicions and his contempt for
them, saw them out of his studio with impetuous haste and in silence,
until from the threshold of his house he bade them “Good-by, my young
friends!”
That farewell struck a chill of dread into the two painters. Porbus, in
anxiety, went again on the morrow to see Frenhofer, and learned that he
had died in the night after burning his canvases.
PARIS, _February, 1832_.