WHEREIN WE ARE SHOWN THE INTERIOR OF A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP, AND
SEE HOW PÈRE GUINARDON'S GUILTY HAPPINESS IS MARRED BY THE
JEALOUSY OF A LOVE-LORN DAME
Père Guinardon (as Zéphyrine had faithfully reported to Monsieur
Sariette) smuggled out the pictures, furniture, and curios stored in his
attic in the rue Princesse--his studio he called it--and used them to
stock a shop he had taken in the rue de Courcelles. Thither he went to
take up his abode, leaving Zéphyrine, with whom he had lived for fifty
years, without a bed or a saucepan or a penny to call her own, except
eighteenpence the poor creature had in her purse. Père Guinardon opened
an old picture and curiosity shop, and in it he installed the fair
Octavie.
The shop-front presented an attractive appearance: there were Flemish
angels in green copes, after the manner of Gérard David, a Salomé of the
Luini school, a Saint Barbara in painted wood of French workmanship,
Limoges enamel-work, Bohemian and Venetian glass, dishes from Urbino.
There were specimens of English point-lace which, if her tale was true,
had been presented to Zéphyrine, in the days of her radiant girlhood, by
the Emperor Napoleon III. Within, there were golden articles that
glinted in the shadows, while pictures of Christ, the Apostles,
high-bred dames, and nymphs also presented themselves to the gaze. There
was one canvas that was turned face to the wall so that it should only
be looked at by connoisseurs; and connoisseurs are scarce. It was a
replica of Fragonard's _Gimblette_, a brilliant painting that looked as
if it had barely had time to dry. Papa Guinardon himself remarked on the
fact. At the far end of the shop was a king-wood cabinet, the drawers of
which were full of all manner of treasures: water-colours by Baudouin,
eighteenth-century books of illustrations, miniatures, and so forth.
But the real masterpiece, the marvel, the gem, the pearl of great price,
stood upon an easel veiled from public view. It was a _Coronation of the
Virgin_ by Fra Angelico, an exquisitely delicate thing in gold and blue
and pink. Père Guinardon was asking a hundred thousand francs for it.
Upon a Louis XV chair beside an Empire work-table on which stood a vase
of flowers, sat the fair Octavie, broidery in hand. She, having left her
glistering rags behind her in the garret in the rue Princesse, no longer
presented the appearance of a touched-up Rembrandt, but shone, rather,
with the soft radiance and limpidity of a Vermeer of Delft, for the
delectation of the connoisseurs who frequented the shop of Papa
Guinardon. Tranquil and demure, she remained alone in the shop all day,
while the old fellow himself was up aloft working away at the deuce
knows what picture. About five o'clock he used to come downstairs and
have a chat with the habitués of the establishment.
The most regular caller was the Comte Desmaisons, a thin, cadaverous
man. A strand of hair issued from the deep hollow under each cheek-bone,
and, broadening as it descended, shed upon his chin and chest torrents
of snow in which he was for ever trailing his long, fleshless,
gold-ringed fingers. For twenty years he had been mourning the loss of
his wife, who had been carried off by consumption in the flower of her
youth and beauty. Since then he had spent his whole life in endeavouring
to hold converse with the dead and in filling his lonely mansion with
second-rate paintings. His confidence in Guinardon knew no bounds.
Another client who was a scarcely less frequent visitor to the shop was
Monsieur Blancmesnil, a director of a large financial establishment. He
was a florid, prosperous-looking man of fifty. He took no great interest
in matters of art, and was perhaps an indifferent connoisseur, but, in
his case, it was the fair Octavie, seated in the middle of the shop,
like a song-bird in its cage, that offered the attraction.
Monsieur Blancmesnil soon established relations with her, a fact which
Père Guinardon alone failed to perceive, for the old fellow was still
young in his love-affair with Octavie. Monsieur Gaétan d'Esparvieu used
to pay occasional visits to Père Guinardon's shop out of mere curiosity,
for he strongly suspected the old man of being a first-rate "faker."
And then that doughty swordsman, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec, also came
to see the old antiquary on one occasion, and acquainted him with a plan
he had on foot. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was getting up a little
historical exhibition of small arms at the Petit Palais in aid of the
fund for the education of the native children in Morocco and wanted Père
Guinardon to lend him a few of the most valuable articles in his
collection.
"Our first idea," he said, "was to organise an exhibition to be called
'The Cross and the Sword.' The juxtaposition of the two words will make
the idea which has prompted our undertaking sufficiently clear to you.
It was an idea pre-eminently patriotic and Christian which led us to
associate the Sword, which is the symbol of Honour, with the Cross,
which is the symbol of Salvation. It was hoped that our work would be
graced by the distinguished patronage of the Minister of War and
Monseigneur Cachepot. Unfortunately there were difficulties in the way,
and the full realisation of the project had to be deferred. In the
meantime we are limiting our exhibition to 'The Sword.' I have drawn up
an explanatory note indicating the significance of the demonstration."
Having delivered himself of these remarks, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec
produced a pocket-case stuffed full of papers. Picking out from a medley
of judgment summonses and other odds and ends a little piece of very
crumpled paper, he exclaimed, "Ah, here it is," and proceeded to read as
follows: "'The Sword is a fierce Virgin; it is _par excellence_ the
Frenchman's weapon. And now, when patriotic sentiment, after suffering
an all too protracted eclipse, is beginning to shine forth again more
ardently than ever ...' and so forth; you see?"
And he repeated his request for some really fine specimen to be placed
in the most conspicuous position in the exhibition to be held on behalf
of the little native children of Morocco, of which General d'Esparvieu
was to be honorary President.
Arms and armour were by no means Père Guinardon's strong point. He dealt
principally in pictures, drawings, and books. But he was never to be
taken unawares. He took down a rapier with a gilt colander-shaped hilt,
a highly typical piece of workmanship of the Louis XIII-Napoleon III
period, and presented it to the exhibition promoter, who, while
contemplating it with respect, maintained a diplomatic silence.
"I have something better still in here," said the antiquary, and he
produced from his inner shop--where it had been lying among the
walking-sticks and umbrellas--a real demon of a sword, adorned with
fleurs-de-lys, a genuine royal relic. It was the sword of
Philippe-Auguste as worn by an actor at the _Odéon_ when _Agnès de
Méranie_ was being performed in 1846. Guinardon held it point downwards,
as though it were a cross, clasping his hands piously on the cross-bar.
He looked as loyal as the sword itself.
"Have her for your exhibition," said he. "The damsel is well worth it.
Bouvines is her name."
"If I find a buyer for it," said Monsieur Le True de Ruffec, twirling
his enormous moustachios, "I suppose you will allow me a little
commission?"
Some days later, Père Guinardon was mysteriously displaying a picture to
the Comte Desmaisons and Monsieur Blancmesnil. It was a newly discovered
work of El Greco, an amazingly fine example of the Master's later style.
It represented a Saint Francis of Assisi standing erect upon Mont
Alverno. He was mounting heavenward like a column of smoke, and was
plunging into the regions of the clouds a monstrously narrow head that
the distance rendered smaller still. In fine it was a real, very real,
nay, too real El Greco. The two collectors were attentively
scrutinizing the work, while Père Guinardon was belauding the depth of
the shadows and the sublimity of the expression. He was raising his arms
aloft to convey an idea of the greatness of Theotocopuli, who derived
from Tintoretto, whom, however, he surpassed in loftiness by a hundred
cubits.
"He was chaste and pure and strong; a mystic, a visionary."
Comte Desmaisons declared that El Greco was his favourite painter. In
his inmost heart Blancmesnil was not so entirely struck with it.
The door opened, and Monsieur Gaétan quite unexpectedly appeared on the
scene.
He gave a glance at the Saint Francis, and said:
"Bless my soul!"
Monsieur Blancmesnil, anxious to improve his knowledge, asked him what
he thought of this artist who was now so much in vogue. Gaétan replied,
glibly enough, that he did not regard El Greco as the eccentric, the
madman that people used to take him for. It was rather his opinion that
a defect of vision from which Theotocopuli suffered compelled him to
deform his figures.
"Being afflicted with astigmatism and strabismus," Gaétan went on, "he
painted the things he saw exactly as he used to see them."
Comte Desmaisons was not readily disposed to accept so natural an
explanation, which, however, by its very simplicity, highly commended
itself to Monsieur Blancmesnil.
Père Guinardon, quite beside himself, exclaimed:
"Are you going to tell me, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, that Saint John was
astigmatic because he beheld a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with
stars, with the moon about her feet; the Beast with seven heads and ten
horns, and the seven angels robed in white linen that bore the seven
cups filled with the wrath of the Living God?"
"After all," said Monsieur Gaétan, by way of conclusion, "people are
right in admiring El Greco if he had genius enough to impose his
morbidity of vision upon them. By the same token, the contortions to
which he subjects the human countenance may give satisfaction to those
who love suffering,--a class more numerous than is generally supposed."
"Monsieur," replied the Comte Desmaisons, stroking his luxuriant beard
with his long, thin hand, "we must love those that love us. Suffering
loves us and attaches itself to us. We must love it if life is to be
supportable to us. In the knowledge of this truth lies the strength and
value of Christianity. Alas! I do not possess the gift of Faith. It is
that which drives me to despair."
The old man thought of her for whom he had been mourning twenty years,
and forthwith his reason left him, and his thoughts abandoned
themselves unresistingly to the morbid imaginings of gentle and
melancholy madness.
Having, he said, made a study of psychic matters, and having, with the
co-operation of a favourable medium, carried out experiments concerning
the nature and duration of the soul, he had obtained some remarkable
results, which, however, did not afford him complete satisfaction. He
had succeeded in viewing the soul of his dead wife under the appearance
of a transparent and gelatinous mass which bore not the slightest
resemblance to his adored one. The most painful part about the whole
experiment--which he had repeated over and over again--was that the
gelatinous mass, which was furnished with a number of extremely slender
tentacles, maintained them in constant motion in time to a rhythm
apparently intended to make certain signs, but of what these movements
were supposed to convey there was not the slightest clue.
During the whole of this narrative Monsieur Blancmesnil had been
whispering in a corner with the youthful Octavie, who sat mute and
still, with her eyes on the ground.
Now Zéphyrine had by no means made up her mind to resign her lover into
the hands of an unworthy rival. She would often go round of a morning,
with her shopping-basket on her arm, and prowl about outside the curio
shop. Torn betwixt grief and rage, tormented by warring ideas, she
sometimes thought she would empty a saucepanful of vitriol on the head
of the faithless one; at others that she would fling herself at his
feet, and shower tears and kisses on his precious hands. One day, as she
was thus eyeing her Michel--her beloved but guilty Michel--she noticed
through the window the fair and youthful Octavie, who was sitting with
her embroidery at a table upon which, in a vase of crystal, a rose was
swooning to death. Zéphyrine, in a transport of fury, brought down her
umbrella on her rival's fair head, and called her a bitch and a trollop.
Octavie fled in terror, and ran for the police, while Zéphyrine, beside
herself with grief and love, kept digging away with her old gamp at the
_Gimblette_ of Fragonard, the fuliginous Saint Francis of El Greco, the
virgins, the nymphs, and the apostles, and knocked the gilt off the Fra
Angelico, shrieking all the while:
"All those pictures there, the El Greco, the Beato Angelico, the
Fragonard, the Gérard David, and the Baudouins--Guinardon painted the
whole lot of them himself, the wretch, the scoundrel! That Fra Angelico
there, why I saw him painting it on my ironing-board, and that Gérard
David he executed on an old midwife's sign-board. You and that bitch of
yours, why, I'll do for the pair of you just as I'm doing for these
pictures."
And tugging away at the coat of an aged collector who, trembling all
over, had hidden himself in the darkest corner of the shop, she called
him to witness to the crimes of Guinardon, perjurer and impostor. The
police had simply to tear her out of the ruined shop. As she was being
taken off to the station, followed by a great crowd of people, she
raised her fiery eyes to Heaven, crying in a voice choked with sobs:
"But don't you know Michel? If you knew him, you would understand that
it is impossible to live without him. Michel! He is handsome and good
and charming. He is a very god. He is Love itself. I love him! I love
him! I love him! I have known men high up in the world--Dukes, Ministers
of State, and higher still. Not one of them was worthy to clean the mud
off Michel's boots. My good, kind sirs, give him back to me again."