That morning was the dawn of a glorious day for the sculptor Guillardin.
Elected on the previous day a member of the _Institut_, he was about
to inaugurate before the five Academies gathered together in solemn
concourse, his academic coat, a magnificent garment ornamented with
green palm-leaves, resplendent in its new cloth and silken embroidery,
colour of hope. The blessed coat, opened ready to slip on, lay spread on
an arm-chair, and Guillardin contemplated it tenderly as he arranged the
bow of his white tie.
"Above all no hurry," thought the good fellow. "I have plenty of time."
The fact is that in his feverish impatience he had dressed a couple of
hours too soon; and the beautiful Madame Guillardin--always very slow
over her dressing--had positively declared that on this day she would
only be ready at the precise moment--not a minute earlier, do you hear!
Unfortunate Guillardin! What could he do to kill the time?
"Well, all the same, I will try on my coat," he said, and gently as
though he were handling tulle and lace, he lifted the precious frippery,
and having donned it with infinite precaution, he placed himself in
front of his looking-glass. Oh! what a charming picture the
mirror disclosed to him! What an amiable little Academician, freshly
hatched, happy, smiling, grizzled, and protuberant, with arms too short
in proportion to his figure, which in the new sleeves acquired a stiff
and automatic dignity!
[Illustration: p213-224]
Thoroughly satisfied with his appearance, Guillardin marched up and
down, bowed as though entering the Academy, smiled to his colleagues of
the fine arts, and assumed academical attitudes. Nevertheless, whatever
pride one may feel at one's personal appearance, it is impossible to
remain two hours in full dress, before a looking-glass. At last our
Academician felt somewhat fatigued, and fearful lest he should rumple
his coat, made up his mind to take it off and lay it back very carefully
on the arm-chair. Then seating himself opposite on the other side of the
fireplace, with his legs stretched out and his two hands crossed over
his dress waistcoat, he began to indulge in sweet dreams as he gazed at
the green coat.
Like the traveller who, arrived at the end of his journey, likes
to remember the dangers and difficulties that have beset his path,
Guillardin retraced his life, year by year, from the day when he began
to learn modelling in Jouffroy's studio. Ah! the outset is hard in that
confounded profession. He remembered the fireless winters, the sleepless
nights, the endless walks in search of work, the desperate rage
experienced at feeling so small, so lost, and unknown in the immense
crowd that pushes, hustles, upsets, and crushes. And yet all alone,
without patronage or money, he had managed to rise. By sheer talent,
sir! And his head thrown back, and eyes half-shut, the worthy man kept
repeating out loud to himself: "By sheer talent. Nothing but talent."
[Illustration: p215-226]
A long burst of laughter, dry and creaky like an old man's laugh,
suddenly interrupted him. Slightly startled, Guillardin glanced around
the room. He was alone, quite alone, _tête-à-tête_ with his green coat,
the ghost of an Academician solemnly spread out opposite him, on the
other side of the fire. And still the insolent laugh rang on. Then as
he looked at it more intently, the sculptor almost fancied that his coat
was no longer in the place where he had put it, but really seated in the
arm-chair, with tails turned up, and sleeves resting on the arms of the
chair, the fronts puffed out with an appearance of life. Incredible as
it may seem, it was this thing that was laughing. Yes, it was from this
singular green coat that arose the uncontrollable fits of laughter by
which it was agitated, shaken and convulsed, causing it to jerk its
tails, throw itself back in the chair, and at moments place its two
sleeves against its sides, as though to check this supernatural and
inextinguishable excess of mirth. At the same time, a feeble voice, sly
and mischievous, could be heard saying between two hiccups: "Oh dear,
oh dear, how it hurts one to laugh like this! How it hurts one to laugh
like this!" "Who the devil is there, for mercy's sake?" asked the poor
Academician with wide staring eyes.
The voice continued still more slyly and mischievously:
"But it's I, Monsieur Guillardin, I, your palm-embroidered coat, waiting
for you to start for the reception. I must crave pardon for having so
unseasonably interrupted your musing; but really it is too funny to hear
you talk of your talent! I could not restrain myself. Come, you can't be
serious? Can you conscientiously believe that your talent has sufficed
to raise you so rapidly to the point you have attained in life; that it
has given you all you possess: honours, position, fame, fortune? Do
you really think that possible, Guillardin? Examine yourself, my dear
friend, before answering; go down, far, far down, into your inmost
conscience. Now, answer me? Don't you see you dare not?"
"And yet," stammered Guillardin, with comical hesitation, "I've.... I've
worked a great deal."
"Oh yes, a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler,
a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the
hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden
bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings
both light and music, when has it ever visited you? Not once, and you
are well aware of it. It has always frightened you, that divine little
bee! And yet it is this only that gives real talent. Ah! I know many who
also work, but very differently from you, with all the anxiety and fever
of sincere research, and yet who will never reach the point you have
attained. Look here, acknowledge this much, now we are alone. Your one
talent has been marrying a pretty woman."
"Monsieur!" interrupted Guillardin, turning purple. The voice proceeded
unchanged: "Ah well! This burst of indignation is a good sign. It proves
to me what all the world knows indeed; that you are certainly more fool
than knave. Come, come, you need not roll such furious eyes at me. In
the first place, if you touch me, if you make the least crease or tear
in me, it will be impossible to go to the reception to-day, and then,
what will Madame Guillardin say? For after all, it is to her that all
the glory of this great day is due.
[Illustration: p219-230]
It is she whom the five Academies are about to receive, and I can assure
you that if I appeared at the _Institut_ on her pretty person, still
so elegant and slender notwithstanding her age, I should cut a very
different figure than with you. Confound it, Monsieur Guillardin,
we must look facts in the face! You owe everything to that woman;
everything, your house, your forty thousand francs (sixteen hundred
pounds) a year, your cross of the Legion of Honour, your laurels, your
medals."
And with the gesture of a one-armed man, the green coat, with its empty
embroidered sleeve, pointed out to the unfortunate sculptor the glorious
insignia hung up on the walls of his alcove. Then, as though wishing
the better to torment his victim, to assume every aspect, and every
attitude, the cruel coat drew nearer the fire, and leaning forward on
his arm-chair with a little old-fashioned and confidential air, he spoke
familiarly, in the tone of a long-established intimacy:
"Come, old boy, what I've said seems to upset you. Yet it is better you
should know what everybody is aware of. And who could tell you better
than your own coat? Let us reason a little. What had you when you
married? Nothing. What did your wife bring you? Nothing. Then how do
you explain your present fortune? You are going to repeat again that you
have, worked very hard. But my poor friend, working day and night, with
all the patronage and the orders from government which have certainly
not been wanting to you since your marriage, you have never made more
than fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year. Can you for
one moment suppose that was sufficient to keep up an establishment like
yours? Remember that the beautiful Madame Guillardin has always been
cited as a model of elegance, frequenting the richest society. Of course
I am well aware that shut up as you were from morning till night in your
studio, you never gave a thought to all this. You were satisfied with
saying to your friends: 'I have a wife who is a surprisingly skilful
manager. With what I gain, she not only pays our expenses, but manages
also to put by money.' It was you who were surprising, poor man! The
truth was that you had married one of those pretty little unscrupulous
creatures of which Paris is full, an ambitious flirt, serious in what
concerned your interests and unprejudiced in regard of her own, knowing
how to reconcile your affairs and her pleasures. The life of these
women, my dear fellow, resembles a dance programme in which sums would
be placed side by side with the dancers' names. Yours reasoned in the
following manner: 'My husband has no talent, no fortune, no good looks
either; but he is an excellent man, good-natured, credulous, as little
in the way as possible. Provided he leaves me free to amuse myself as
I choose, I can undertake to give him all he lacks!' And from that day
forth, money, orders, decorations from all countries kept pouring
in upon your studio, with their pretty metallic sound and their
many-coloured ribbons. Look at the row on my lapel. Then one fine
morning, Madame was seized with the fancy--a fancy of beauty on the
wane--to be the wife of an Academician, and it is her delicately
gloved hand that has opened before you one by one all the doors of the
sanctuary. Ah! my poor old fellow, your colleagues alone can tell you
what all these green palms have cost you!"
"You lie, you lie!" screamed Guillardin, half choked by indignation.
"Ah no! my old friend, indeed I do not lie. You need only to look
around you presently, when you enter the reception hall. You will see a
malicious gleam in every eye, a smile at the corner of every lip,
while they will whisper as you pass by: 'Here is the beautiful Madame
Guillardin's husband.' For you will never be anything else in life, my
dear fellow, but the husband of a pretty woman."
This time, Guillardin could bear it no longer. Pale with rage, he
bounded forward, to seize and dash into the fire, after first tearing
from it the pretty green palm wreath, this insolent and raving coat; but
a door opens and a well-known voice, tinged with a mixture of contempt
and mild condescension, opportunely awakes him from his horrible
nightmare:
"Oh! that is just like you, asleep at the corner of the fire on such an
important day!"
And Madame Guillardin stands before him, tall and still handsome,
although rather too imposing with her almost natural pink complexion,
her powdered hair, and the exaggerated brilliancy of her painted eyes.
With the gesture of the superior woman, she takes up the green-palmed
coat, and briskly, with a little smile, helps her husband to don it;
while he, poor man, still trembling with the horrors of his nightmare,
draws a deep sigh of relief and thinks to himself: "Thank goodness! It
was a dream!"
[Illustration: p224-235]