AN INITIATION INTO ART
The next day Phil returned his new friends’ hospitality by taking them
to lunch.
“Where are we going?” Suzanne asked.
“Where you wish,” answered Phil.
“To Mère Michel’s, then.”
Suzanne delighted in this restaurant. The food was bad, but there
was laughter. Sometimes messieurs with high hats invited her to chic
places. Suzanne would refuse the chic restaurants and take them to Mère
Michel’s, where their hats brought out thunders of applause.
Phil had a Derby hat and so received a more modest welcome. For that
matter, few people were there when they arrived. Poufaille did the
honors of the place.
“Do you see those two photos on the wall, Phil? That—hum!—that’s
mine, my two statues—‘Liberty,’ ‘Fraternity.’ Do you see this photo
in the frame? _Salut!_ That means a year’s credit—it’s from Lionsot, a
Prix-de-Rome man; he paid Mère Michel with an autograph dedication at
the base of his ‘Light-Footed Achilles.’”
“_Cours après!_” laughed Suzanne.
Meanwhile the customers kept coming in, some with canvases and
paint-boxes, others with only their long hair and unkempt beards.
“That one’s a painter—that one a sculptor—and that a musician,” said
Poufaille. “The empty place, there in the corner, is the place of
Socrate, a _type épatant_! Musician, sculptor, painter, and poet, and
philosopher—a whole world in himself!”
“Ah!” uttered Phil, respectfully, as he looked at the empty place.
Nothing was heard for a time but the rattle of knives and forks;
then there was a great deal of laughter, with cries that punctuated
conversations on art. Heads were turned for a few entrances. A pretty
model with a cloud of gauze for a scarf was greeted with “Kiss, kiss!”
An old man with a gilt band round his cap only called forth howls.
“Eh! you old Gaul!”
“_Vieux coq!_”
“Your ‘kiss, kiss,’ makes me laugh,” said the old man. “Do you know
to-day what ‘kiss, kiss,’ means? Oh, yes! in the old days women fell in
love—under the Empire!”
“_Ta bouche, bébé!_”
“_Ferme ça_ [shut up]!”
“He is the inspector of the Louvre roofs,” Poufaille said to Phil. “I
am well acquainted with him. I see him every day.”
Phil opened his eyes wide; everything was new to him. From his seat he
had also a view of the bar alongside. While Mère Michel served in the
room of the artistes, Père Michel stretched out his immense bulk behind
the counter.
“That man he’s serving is the lackey of the Duke of Morgania,” observed
Suzanne.
“Does the Duke of Morgania live near here?” Phil interrupted. He had
read the name in the newspapers.
“Almost opposite,” Suzanne answered.
“Ah!” Phil said, with the same shade of respect which he had shown
before the empty seat of Socrate, never dreaming that he would one day
be the friend of both the _grand seigneur_ and the poet-philosopher.
Just then Socrate entered. Poufaille nudged Phil with his elbow.
Phil looked. He saw Socrate seat himself in his corner, call the
_garçon_, order three or four dishes and a liter of wine, hurriedly,
at haphazard, like a man overwhelmed with thought and with no time to
lose.
“He’s begun a work on the Louvre—something tremendous!” Poufaille
informed Phil.
“What is it like?” Phil asked.
“No one knows!”
Phil examined the man who seemed to be carrying the weight of a world.
His skull was nearly bald, his forehead bulging out, his hair about
his ears, while his beard half hid a grimace; his eye was alert and
sagacious.
“He does resemble him, though,” Phil observed.
“Resembles whom?” said Poufaille.
“Socrates the ancient.”
“So there was another?” Poufaille asked.
When his meal was over, Socrate arose, sad-mannered and dignified.
“He’s going over to the Café des Deux Magots,” said Poufaille. “Let’s
go too—you’ll see him nearer.”
The Deux Magots was the rendezvous of different bands—the Band of
Cherche-Midi (look out for twelve o’clock!), made up of rich Americans
playing Bohemia and frequenting the Deux Magots in appropriate costume;
the band of the Red-headed Goat, artists who despised art and occupied
themselves with socialism; and there were others besides.
No one went to the Deux Magots for its coffee—they went there for
Socrate and Caracal. There could be heard Socrate, musician, painter,
and poet, speaking of high art; the new men drank in his words.
One day, in his enthusiasm, Charley, the millionaire Bohemian, proposed
to take him to America to give lectures on “The Artistic Atmosphere”—by
Jove!
“Are there any cafés in America?” Socrate asked.
“_Hélas, non!_”
“Then I stay where I am,” replied Socrate, the man of manly decisions;
“when America has cafés I’ll go over—not before. _Arrangez-vous!_”
“You’re great, by Jove!” cried Charley.
Socrate dazzled the young. He talked of everything, social questions
included.
“The distribution of wealth is badly made,” he said. “You have genius
and no money—and you’ll be obliged to work, to produce and to sell!
To sell, do you understand? To cheapen yourself, to prostitute your
genius! In society as I dream of it, the artist, freed from material
bonds, would soar in serene heights.”
[Illustration: Socrate at Deux Magots]
Socrate cited the example of Lionsot, the Prix-de-Rome man, the
sculptor of “Light-footed Achilles.” “He had the Prix de Rome—he has
turned out badly! Yet there was good in him: to pay a wretched debt for
food with an artistic autograph—that was noble!”
Most of them, in fact, acted like the famous Lionsot—for example,
whenever Mère Michel demanded her money.
Caracal, who was not so deep but more brilliant, enjoyed a different
prestige.
First of all, he lived in the Grands Quartiers, in a house with an
elevator! so it was said. And while the others ate at Mère Michel’s,
Caracal would be supping at Montmartre—_suprême élégance_!
Besides, he wrote in the newspapers. For a little article, for one’s
name cited in the “Tocsin”—how low would not one stoop to obtain such
a favor!
“‘Oysters and Melons,’ still life by X——,” or else “‘Old Tree-trunk,’
landscape by Z——”; and Z—— and X—— would march off together into
immortality.
Caracal, behind his monocle, observed the different bands, in his heart
deriding every one. He cross-questioned the comrades, and composed his
newspaper _chroniques_ on the café table.
“_Eh bien!_ anything for my paper? A nice little scandal? Something
strong?”
“I’ve got something new,” the good-natured Poufaille would say; “at my
house, in the courtyard, a woman has been found dead.”
“Bravo! Young? pretty?”
“No, old.”
“And dead—how?” Caracal asked. “From drink?”
“No, of starvation. She was keeping alive the four children of a
neighbor who was palsied; and she killed herself working.”
“Old and poor! but that’s not interesting; it’s only tiresome!”
And he went on with the conversation, in which music, poetry, love,
sculpture, and crime made a horrible mixture.
Phil, coming up from the province, was made gloomy by all this
noise. These never-ending dissertations made his head turn. It was
the invasion of his brain by a world whose existence he had never
suspected, of whose virtues and vices he had no idea.
When his work was over, the _copains_ took walks with him through Paris
and showed him such “Parisian” places as the Rue Mouffetard and the Rue
Saint-Médard.
Paris proper did not count; you had to cross its whole width and
go as far as Montmartre to become really Parisian. All had a single
ambition—to be the painter of the wretchedly poor, and of street-women,
an easy art brought into fashion by a few noisy successes. They
initiated Phil to _their_ Paris, to the Paris of the _fosses aux
lions_, of leprous quays, of rag-pickers’ alleys, where children played
hide-and-seek behind heaps of refuse. When Phil wished to go and dream
by the banks of the Seine, they led him to the banks of the Bièvre,
stinking like a charnel-house.
“_Hein!_ Don’t you see it’s beautiful in color?” they said to him.
Phil acknowledged, as he sniffed, that the Bièvre diffused an “artistic
atmosphere.”
The truth is, Phil soon had enough of such loafing. Of course, he
wasn’t a genius like the others—nothing came to him easily. An organism
like Socrate, painter-poet-philosopher, was incomprehensible to him.
Such a man, doing a colossal work on the Louvre and studying the
social question in cafés, seemed great to him. As for himself, he was
conscious that he had not such gifts. For him work was necessary, a
great deal of work, and he set himself to it resolutely: studies at
the life-class, sketches in the street, libraries, museums—he went
everywhere and did a little of everything. He prepared ardently for
his admission to the studio; he frequented the schools and appeared but
seldom at the Deux Magots.
Socrate, isolated in pipe-smoke like a god in a cloud, condescended to
take an interest in him.
“You work too much, young man! Look out! Think less of the material
side and trust to inspiration. Work is good. Glory is better. Think of
glory, young man!”
“_Hélas!_” Phil thought; “how can you have glory without work?”
He had it a few days later—the glory which was dear to the heart of
Socrate.
It was the day of his reception to the studio. He had only to give
his family name, first name, and particulars to be asked to get up on
a table—“Step lively _et plus vite que ça_!”—and to see around him a
howling crowd, armed with brushes and palettes, shouting: “Philidor!”
“An American speaking French—where did you come from? _En voilà un
drôle de type!_”
“My—my ancestors were French,” said Phil.
“An American who has ancestors!”
“Philidor de Longueville—” stammered Phil.
“Philidor! Philidor!”
“Sing us something!”
“Take off your clothes!”
Phil began undressing.
“Step lively _et plus vite que ça_!”
Fifty savages were howling, yelling, laughing, and hissing around him.
“Enough! enough!”
“Encore! encore!”
“Paint him blue!”
“No, no!”
“Yes, yes!”
Phil was already stripped to the waist, facing the great window in
full light. At his feet the confused mass of students was hushed—they
stood in a circle around him. He heard their approving murmurs as they
admired his thoroughbred muscles, his broad shoulders, the nervous
slenderness of his waist.
“Bravo, l’Américain! There’s a man who’s built! You’d say he was an
antique—_c’est un costeau_—he’ll be a great boy! I wouldn’t want him
to punch me—he’s a good fellow, too! Enough! enough! Dress yourself,
Philidor! A _Ban_ for Philidor!”
“Pan! pan! pan! pan! pan!
Pan! pan!”
Thus Phil made acquaintance with the intoxication of glory.
Profiting by the moment of silence, a grave voice arose.
“The welcome!”
Phil, over the heads, saw amid the smoke a bearded face under a great
bald forehead.
“Socrate has just come in,” a pupil said to Phil. “Socrate, an
astonishing man—painter-poet!”
[Illustration: “Stripped to the waist”]
“I know Socrate,” Phil said with pride.
“The welcome!” Socrate repeated.
“_C’est ça!_ That’s it, the welcome!” the whole hall cried.
“That means you must pay the drinks for the studio,” the pupil
explained. “It’s the custom here.”
“Messieurs, whenever you wish,” said Phil.
“At the Deux Magots and at once,” Socrate insisted, like a man
accustomed to prompt decisions.
Phil dressed himself, and all went out into the streets, _en route_ for
the Deux Magots. Socrate, the glory of the studio, leader of men, and
genius—Socrate himself gave his arm to Phil.
“Say, young man,” whispered Socrate, who was master of himself in any
crowd, “you couldn’t lend me twenty francs?”
After this glorious day Phil’s existence seemed flat. From his
childhood he had been accustomed to free air, to liberty in great
spaces; and now he had to live a cloistered life, shut up in himself,
but with work, it is true, for distraction. He worked sadly and alone.
In front of his window, on the other side of the Seine, stretched
the Louvre. Beyond, far away, above the smoke of Paris, the church
of the Sacré-Cœur lifted its Oriental dome. To the right was the Pont
Neuf with the point of the island of the Cité and Notre Dame; to the
left was the greenery of the Tuileries, the Grand Palais, the Arc de
Triomphe.
Now and then Suzanne came. But Suzanne was far from being Helia. Her
frivolity made Phil shy, though her babbling talk amused him. She kept
Phil posted, telling him all the important news.
Poufaille, for example, was surely going to give up sculpture and
become a painter—l’Institut would have to look out for itself! They had
rejected his statue. “_Eh bien_, they’ll see! And then, paintings sell
better!” added Suzanne.
“Does he sell his paintings?” Phil asked with astonishment. “What does
he do for a living?”
“He has something to do at the Louvre, I believe,” Suzanne said. But
she immediately became silent and bit her lip.
“A copy, of course—ornaments for a _plafond_?” Phil asked.
“I believe so,” Suzanne answered, fearing to say too much.
“There is some secret,” Phil thought.
But the very day she told him all this his door opened suddenly and
Poufaille entered with a furious air.
“Ah, the pigs!” he cried, shaking his fist toward the Louvre; and he
threw into a corner a tool which Phil took at first for a sculptor’s
instrument. It was a spade.
“What’s that?” asked Phil. “What’s the matter?”
“That’s my spade; and the matter is they are pigs!”
“Have they taken your _plafond_ away from you?” Phil asked on a chance.
“What _plafond_?” Poufaille cried. “They’re trying to keep me from
cultivating my potatoes!”
“Potatoes?” exclaimed Phil.
“Phil doesn’t know about it,” Suzanne said to Poufaille.
[Illustration: “‘They are pigs!’”]
“_Eh bien—tant pis_—it’s a secret,” Poufaille cried; “but I’m going to
tell it. And, besides, a secret chokes me, like your collars!”
“If it’s a secret, I don’t want to know it,” Phil answered.
“_Si, si!_ You must. I’ll tell it to you—under seal of secrecy! See
here,” Poufaille went on; “I’m gardener at the Louvre!”
“Nothing wonderful in that,” Phil said, as he looked across the Seine
at the flower-beds and green turf at the foot of the Louvre façade.
“Not there,” Poufaille explained. “Not down there—but up yonder! I’m
gardener of the Louvre roofs!”
Looking where Poufaille pointed, Phil perceived, high, high up against
the blue sky, tufts of greenery actually growing above that part of the
Louvre Palace. He knew there were a few roof-gardens in Paris; but he
had never noticed this one.
“Now you understand!” Poufaille said, with gesticulation. “There’s no
means of keeping up an understanding with them! It has ended by wearing
me out. Always roses, iris, and gillyflowers, and gillyflowers, iris,
and roses. That sort of stuff won’t fill my stomach! I wanted to plant
potatoes. I could live on them! But they’ve refused permission—and I
tell you, they’re pigs!”
“But they—who are they?”
“Eh! They—when I say ‘they’ I mean _him_!”
“Well, who is he?”
“The old guardian of the Louvre roofs.”
“Ah, yes,” said Phil; “I saw him at Mère Michel’s. And so you’re his
gardener?”
“I am—that is, I was!”
An idea came to Phil. He was stifled in his room; he might have—up
there, close by—a garden to himself.
“_Dis donc_, old Poufaille, what if they gave me the gardener’s place?”
“That could be done easily; but I warn you—you’ll have no right to
cultivate potatoes!”
“I’ll be content with flowers.”
“What eccentricity!” Poufaille exclaimed, in the height of
astonishment. “Ah, you’re very American!”