farther ahead than other painters. He has given much profound thought
to the subject of colouring and to the absolute accuracy of lines;
but he has studied so much that he has reached the point where he is
uncertain of the very object of his studies. In his moments of despair
he declares that drawing does not exist and that only geometrical
figures can be made with lines; which is going beyond the truth, for
with lines and with black, which is not a colour, a human figure
maybe drawn; which proves that our art, like nature, is made up of
an infinite number of elements: drawing furnishes a skeleton, colour
gives life; but life without the skeleton is much less complete than
the skeleton without life. In short, there is one thing which is more
true than any of these, and that is that practice and observation are
everything with a painter, and that, if reason and poetic sense quarrel
with the brush, we arrive at doubt, like our excellent friend here,
who is as much madman as painter. A sublime artist, he was unfortunate
enough to be born rich, which permitted him to go astray; do not
imitate him! Work! Painters ought not to meditate, except with brush
in hand."
"We will find our way there!" cried Poussin, no longer listening to
Porbus, and undeterred by doubts.
Porbus smiled at the young stranger's enthusiasm, and, when they
parted, invited him to come to see him.
Nicolas Poussin walked slowly back to Rue de la Harpe, and passed,
unperceiving, the modest house in which he lodged. Ascending his
wretched staircase with anxious haste, he reached a room high up
beneath a roof supported by pillars, a simple and airy style of
architecture found in the houses of old Paris. Beside the single, dark
window of that room sat a girl, who, when she heard the door, sprang at
once to her feet with a loving impulse; she recognised the painter by
the way he raised the latch.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"The matter--the matter----" he cried, choking with joy; "the matter is
that I have come to feel that I am a painter. I have always doubted
myself before, but this morning I believe in myself! I tell you,
Gillette, we shall be rich, happy! There is gold in these brushes."
But suddenly he ceased to speak. His strong and serious face lost its
joyous expression when he compared the vastness of his hopes with the
paucity of his resources. The walls were covered with pieces of common
paper on which were sketches in pencil. He owned no clean canvases.
Paints commanded a high price in those days, and the poor young man's
palette was almost bare. In the depths of his poverty he possessed and
was conscious of an incredible store of courage and a superabundance of
all-consuming genius. Brought to Paris by a gentleman who was a friend
of his, or perhaps by his own talent, he had almost immediately fallen
in with a mistress, one of those noble and devoted souls who suffer
beside a great man, espouse his troubles, and try to understand his
caprices; strong in poverty and love, as other women are fearless in
bearing the burden of luxury and in parading their lack of feeling. The
smile that played about Gillette's lips diffused a golden light through
that garret, and overspread the sky with brightness. The sun did not
always shine, whereas she was always there, sedate in her passion,
clinging to her happiness and her suffering, encouraging the genius
which overflowed in love before seizing upon art.
"Listen, Gillette--come here."
The light-hearted, obedient girl jumped upon the painter's knees. She
was all grace, all beauty, lovely as a spring day, adorned by all
womanly charms, and illumining them with the glow of a lovely soul.
"O God!" he cried, "I shall never dare to tell her."
"A secret?" said she; "I insist upon knowing it."
Poussin seemed lost in thought.
"Speak, I say."
"Gillette--poor, beloved darling!"
"Ah! you want something of me, do you?"
"Yes."
"If you want me to pose for you as I did the other day," she said, with
a little pout, "I shall never consent; for at those times your eyes
have nothing at all to say to me. You forget all about me, and yet you
look at me."
"Would you prefer to see me painting another woman?"
"Perhaps so," she said, "if she was very ugly."
"Well," rejoined Poussin, in a serious tone, "suppose that, for any
future glory, to make me a great painter, it were necessary for you to
pose for another artist?"
"You can test me all you choose," she replied. "You know that I would
not go."
Poussin let his head fall on his breast, like one who surrenders to a
joy or a sorrow that is too great for his heart.
"Listen," said she, plucking at the sleeve of Poussin's threadbare
doublet, "I have told you, Nick, that I would give my life for you; but
I never promised to give up my love while I am alive."
"Give it up?" cried the young artist.
"If I should show myself like that to another man, you would cease to
love me, and I should deem myself unworthy of you. Is it not a most
simple and natural thing to obey your whims? In spite of myself, I am
happy, aye, proud, to do your dear will. But for another man--ah, no!"
"Forgive me, my Gillette," cried the painter, throwing himself at her
feet. "I prefer to be beloved rather than famous. In my eyes you are
fairer than wealth and honours. Go, throw away my brushes, burn these
sketches. I have made a mistake. My vocation is to love you. I am no
painter, I am a lover. Away with art and all its secrets!"
She gazed admiringly at him, happy, overjoyed. She was queen; she felt
instinctively that art was forgotten for her, and cast at her feet
like a grain of incense.
"And yet it is only an old man," continued Poussin. "He could see only
the woman in you--you are so perfect!"
"One must needs love," she cried, ready to sacrifice the scruples of
her love to repay her lover for all the sacrifices that he made for
her. "But," she added, "it would be my ruin. Ah! ruin for you--yes,
that would be very lovely! But you will forget me! Oh! what a wicked
idea this is of yours!"
"I conceived the idea, and I love you," he said with a sort of
contrition; "but am I for that reason a villain?"
"Let us consult Father Hardouin," she said.
"Oh, no! let it be a secret between us."
"Very good, I will go. But do not be there," she cried. "Stay at the
door, with your dagger drawn; if I cry out, come in and kill the
painter."
With no eyes for aught but his art, Poussin threw his arms about
Gillette.
"He no longer loves me!" thought Gillette, when she was alone.
Already she repented her decision. But she was soon seized by a terror
more painful than her regret; she strove to drive away a shocking
thought that stole into her mind. She fancied that she already loved
the painter less, because she suspected that he was less estimable than
she had hitherto believed.
II
CATHERINE LESCAULT
Three months after the meeting of Poussin and Porbus, the latter went
to see Master Frenhofer. The old man was then in the depths of one
of those periods of profound and sudden discouragement, the cause of
which, if we are to believe the mathematicians of medicine, consists
in bad digestion, the wind, the heat, or some disturbance in the
hypochondriac region; and, according to the spiritualists, in the
imperfection of our moral nature. The good man had simply tired himself
out in finishing his mysterious picture. He was languidly reclining
in an enormous chair of carved oak, upholstered in black leather; and
without changing his depressed attitude, he darted at Porbus the glance
of a man who had determined to make the best of his ennui.
"Well, master," said Porbus, "was the ultramarine, that you went to
Bruges for, very bad? Haven't you been able to grind our new white? Is
your oil poor, or are your brushes unmanageable?"
"Alas!" cried the old man, "I thought for a moment that my work was
finished; but I certainly have gone astray in some details, and
my mind will not be at rest until I have solved my doubts. I have
almost decided to travel, to go to Turkey, to Greece, and to Asia, in
search of a model, and to compare my picture with nature in different
climes. It may be that I have up-stairs," he continued with a smile
of satisfaction, "Nature herself. Sometimes I am almost afraid that a
breath will awaken that woman and that she will disappear."
Then he rose abruptly, as if to go.
"Ah!" replied Porbus; "I have come just in time to save you the expense
and the fatigue of the journey."
"How so?" asked Frenhofer in amazement.
"Young Poussin is loved by a woman whose incomparable beauty is
absolutely without a flaw. But, my dear master, if he consents to lend
her to you, you must at least let us see your picture."
The old man stood, perfectly motionless, in a state of utter
stupefaction.
"What!" he cried at last, in a heartrending voice, "show my creation,
my spouse? Tear away the veil with which I have modestly covered my
happiness? Why, that would be the most shocking prostitution! For ten
years I have lived with that woman; she is mine, mine alone, she loves
me. Does she not smile at every stroke of the brush which I give her?
She has a soul, the soul with which I have endowed her. She would blush
if other eyes than mine should rest upon her. Show her! Where is the
husband, the lover, base enough to lend his wife to dishonour? When
you paint a picture for the court, you do not put your whole soul into
it, you sell to the courtiers nothing more than coloured mannikins. My
painting is not a painting; it is a sentiment, a passion! Born in my
studio, it must remain there unsullied, and can not come forth until
it is clothed. Poesy and women never abandon themselves naked to any
but their lovers! Do we possess Raphael's model, Ariosto's Angelica,
or Dante's Beatrice? No! We see only their shapes. Very well; the
work which I have up-stairs under lock and key is an exception in our
art. It is not a canvas, it is a woman; a woman with whom I weep, and
laugh, and talk, and think. Do you expect me suddenly to lay aside a
joy that has lasted ten years, as one lays aside a cloak? Do you expect
me suddenly to cease to be father, lover, and God? That woman is not
a creature, she is a creation. Let your young man come--I will give
him my wealth; I will give him pictures by Correggio, Michelangelo,
or Titian; I will kiss his footprints in the dust; but make him my
rival? Shame! Ah! I am even more lover than painter. Yes, I shall
have the strength to burn my _Belle Noiseuse_ when I breathe my last;
but to force her to endure the glance of a man, of a young man, of a
painter? No, no! I would kill to-morrow the man who should sully her
with a look! I would kill you on the instant, my friend, if you did not
salute her on your knees! Do you expect me now to subject my idol to
the insensible glances and absurd criticisms of fools? Ah! love is a
mystery, it lives only in the deepest recesses of the heart, and all is
lost when a man says, even to his friend: 'This is she whom I love!'"
The old man seemed to have become young again; his eyes gleamed with
life; his pale cheeks flushed a bright red, and his hands shook.
Porbus, surprised by the passionate force with which the words were
spoken, did not know what reply to make to an emotion no less novel
than profound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Was he under the spell of
an artistic caprice, or did the ideas which he had expressed proceed
from that strange fanaticism produced in us by the long gestation of a
great work? Could one hope ever to come to an understanding with that
extraordinary passion?
Engrossed by all these thoughts, Porbus said to the old man:
"But is it not woman for woman? Will not Poussin abandon his mistress
to your eyes?"
"What mistress?" rejoined Frenhofer. "She will betray him sooner or
later. Mine will always be faithful to me!"
"Very well!" said Porbus, "let us say no more about it. But, perhaps,
before you find, even in Asia, a woman so lovely, so perfect as is she
of whom I speak, you will die without finishing your picture."
"Ah! it is finished," said Frenhofer. "Whoever should see it would
think that he was looking at a woman lying upon a velvet couch, behind
a curtain. Beside her is a golden tripod containing perfumes. You would
be tempted to seize the tassel of the cords which hold the curtain,
and you would fancy that you saw the bosom of Catherine Lescault, a
beautiful courtesan called _La Belle Noiseuse_, rise and fall with the
movement of her breath. However, I should like to be certain----"
"Oh! go to Asia," Porbus replied, as he detected a sort of hesitation
in Frenhofer's expression.
And Porbus walked towards the door of the room.
At that moment Gillette and Nicolas Poussin arrived at Frenhofer's
house. When the girl was about to enter, she stepped back, as if she
were oppressed by some sudden presentiment.
"Why have I come here, pray?" she asked her lover in a deep voice,
gazing at him steadfastly.
"Gillette, I left you entirely at liberty, and I mean to obey you in
everything. You are my conscience and my renown. Go back to the house;
I shall be happier perhaps than if you----"
"Do I belong to myself when you speak to me thus? Oh no! I am nothing
more than a child. Come," she added, apparently making a mighty effort;
"if our love dies, and if I plant in my heart a never-ending regret,
will not your fame be the reward of my compliance with your wishes? Let
us go in; it will be like living again to be always present as a memory
on your palette."
As they opened the door of the house, the two lovers met Porbus, who,
startled by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were then filled with
tears, seized her, trembling from head to foot as she was, and said,
leading her into the old man's presence:
"Look! is she not above all the masterpieces on earth?"
Frenhofer started. Gillette stood there in the ingenuous and unaffected
attitude of a young Georgian girl, innocent and timid, abducted by
brigands and offered for sale to a slave-merchant. A modest flush
tinged her cheeks, she lowered her eyes, her hands were hanging at her
side, her strength seemed to abandon her, and tears protested against
the violence done to her modesty. At that moment Poussin, distressed
beyond words because he had taken that lovely pearl from his garret,
cursed himself. He became more lover than artist, and innumerable
scruples tortured his heart when he saw the old man's kindling eye,
as, in accordance with the habit of painters, he mentally disrobed the
girl, so to speak, divining her most secret forms. Thereupon the young
man reverted to the savage jealousy of true love.
"Let us go, Gillette," he cried.
At that tone, at that outcry, his mistress looked up at him in
rapture, saw his face and ran into his arms.
"Ah! you do love me then?" she replied, melting into tears.
Although she had mustered energy to impose silence upon her suffering,
she lacked strength to conceal her joy.
"Oh! leave her with me for a moment," said the old painter, "and you
may compare her to my _Catherine_. Yes, I consent."
There was love in Frenhofer's cry, too. He seemed to be acting the part
of a coquette for his counterfeit woman, and to enjoy in advance the
triumph which the beauty of his creation would certainly win over that
of a girl of flesh and blood.
"Do not let him retract!" cried Porbus, bringing his hand down on
Poussin's shoulder. "The fruits of love soon pass away, those of art
are immortal."
"In his eyes," retorted Gillette, looking earnestly at Poussin and
Porbus, "in his eyes am I nothing more than a woman?"
She tossed her head proudly; but when, after a flashing glance at
Frenhofer, she saw her lover gazing at the portrait which he had
formerly mistaken for a Giorgione, she said:
"Ah! let us go up! He never looked at me like that."
"Old man," said Poussin, roused from his meditation by Gillette's
voice, "look at this sword: I will bury it in your heart at the first
word of complaint that this girl utters; I will set fire to your house
and no one shall leave it! Do you understand?"
Nicolas Poussin's face was dark, and his voice was terrible. The young
painter's attitude, and above all his gesture, comforted Gillette, who
almost forgave him for sacrificing her to painting and to his glorious
future. Porbus and Poussin remained at the door of the studio, looking
at each other in silence. Although, at first, the painter of _Mary the
Egyptian_ indulged in an exclamation or two: "Ah! she is undressing; he
is telling her to stand in the light; now he is comparing her with the
other!" he soon held his peace at the aspect of Poussin, whose face was
profoundly wretched; and although the old painters had none of those
scruples which seem so trivial in the presence of art, he admired them,
they were so attractive and so innocent. The young man had his hand on
the hilt of his dagger and his ear almost glued to the door. The two
men, standing thus in the darkness, resembled two conspirators awaiting
the moment to strike down a tyrant.
"Come in, come in," cried the old man, radiant with joy. "My work is
perfect, and now I can show it with pride. Never will painter, brushes,
colours, canvas, and light produce a rival to Catherine Lescault, the
beautiful courtesan!"
Impelled by the most intense curiosity, Porbus and Poussin hurried to
the centre of an enormous studio covered with dust, where everything
was in disorder, and where they saw pictures hanging on the walls here
and there. They paused at first in front of a life-size figure of a
woman, half nude, which aroused their admiration.
"Oh, don't pay any attention to that," said Frenhofer; "that is a
sketch that I dashed off to study a pose; it is worth nothing as a
picture. There are some of my mistakes," he continued, pointing to a
number of fascinating compositions hanging on the walls about them.
At those words, Porbus and Poussin, thunderstruck by his contempt
for such works, looked about for the famous portrait, but could not
discover it.
"Well, there it is!" said the old man, whose hair was dishevelled,
whose face was inflamed by superhuman excitement, whose eyes sparkled,
and who panted like a young man drunk with love. "Aha!" he cried, "you
did not expect such absolute perfection! You are before a woman, and
you are looking for a picture. There is so much depth on this canvas,
the air is so real, that you cannot distinguish it from the air that
surrounds us. Where is art? Lost, vanished! Behold the actual form
of a young girl. Have I not obtained to perfection the colour, the
sharpness of the line which seems to bound the body? Is it not the same
phenomenon presented by objects in the atmosphere, as well as by fishes
in the water? Observe how the outlines stand out from the background!
Does it not seem to you that you could pass your hand over that back?
Why, for seven years I studied the effects of the conjunction of light
and of objects. And that hair, does not the light fairly inundate it?
Why, she actually breathed, I believe!--Look at that bosom! Ah! who
would not adore her on his knees? The flesh quivers. She is going to
rise--wait!"
"Can you see anything?" Poussin asked Porbus.
"No. And you?"
"Nothing."
The two painters left the old man to his dreams, and looked to see
whether the light, falling straight upon the canvas to which he was
pointing, did not efface all the lines. They examined the picture from
the right, from the left, and in front, alternately stooping and rising.
"Yes, yes, it's really canvas," said Frenhofer, mistaking the purpose
of that careful scrutiny. "See, here is the frame and the easel, and
here are my colours and my brushes."
And he seized a brush and handed it to them with an artless gesture.
"The old villain is making sport of us," said Poussin, returning to
his position in front of the alleged picture. "I can see nothing but a
confused mass of colours, surrounded by a multitude of curious lines
which form a wall of painting."
"We were mistaken; look!" replied Porbus.
On going nearer, they saw in the corner of the canvas the end of a
bare foot emerging from that chaos of vague colours and shades, that
sort of shapeless mist; but a most lovely, a living foot! They stood
speechless with admiration before that fragment, which had escaped a
slow, relentless, incomprehensible destruction. That foot was like a
bust of Venus in Parian marble, rising amid the ruins of a burned city.
"There is a woman underneath!" cried Porbus, calling Poussin's
attention to the coats of paint which the old painter had laid on one
after another, thinking that he was perfecting his work.
The two artists turned impulsively towards Frenhofer, beginning to
understand, although but vaguely, the state of ecstasy in which he
lived.
"He acts in perfect good faith," said Porbus.
"Yes, my friend," said the old man, rousing himself, "one must have
faith, faith in art, and must live a long while with his work, to
produce such a creation. Some of those shadows have cost me many hours
of toil. See, on the cheek, just below the eye, there is a faint
penumbra, which, if you notice it in nature, will seem to you almost
beyond reproduction. Well, do you think that that effect did not cost
me unheard-of trouble? But look closely at my work, my dear Porbus,
and you will understand better what I said to you as to the method of
treating modelling and outlines. Look at the light on the breast, and
see how, by a succession of strongly emphasised touches and retouches,
I have succeeded in reproducing the real light, and in combining it
with the polished whiteness of the light tones; and how by the opposite
means, by effacing the lumps and the roughness of the colours, I have
been able, by softly retouching the outline of my figure, drowned
in the half-tint, to take away even a suggestion of drawing and of
artificial means, and to give it the aspect and the roundness of nature
itself. Go nearer, and you will see the work better. At a distance it
is imperceptible. Look, just here it is very remarkable, I think."
And with the end of his brush he pointed out to the two painters a
layer of light paint.
Porbus laid his hand on the old man's shoulder and said, turning to
Poussin:
"Do you know that we have before us a very great painter?"
"He is even more poet than painter," replied Poussin, gravely.
"Here," rejoined Porbus, pointing to the canvas, "here ends our art on
earth."
"And from here it soars upwards and disappears in the skies," said
Poussin.
"How much pleasure is concentrated on this piece of canvas!" cried
Porbus.
The old man, completely distraught, did not listen to them; he was
smiling at that ideal woman.
"But sooner or later he will discover that there is nothing on his
canvas!" exclaimed Poussin.
"Nothing on my canvas!" cried Frenhofer, gazing at the two painters and
at his alleged picture in turn.
"What have you done?" whispered Porbus to Poussin.
The old man grasped the young man's arm violently, and said to him:
"You see nothing, you clown! you boor! you idiot! you villain! Then why
did you come up here?--My dear Porbus," he continued, turning towards
the painter; "is it possible that you too would mock at me? I am your
friend; tell me, have I spoiled my picture?"
Porbus hesitated, not daring to say anything; but the anxiety depicted
on the old man's pale face was so heartrending that he pointed to the
canvas, saying:
"Look!"
Frenhofer gazed at his picture for a moment, and staggered.
"Nothing! nothing! and after working ten years!"
He sat down and wept.
"So I am an idiot, a madman! I have neither talent nor capacity! I am
nothing more than a rich man, who, when I walk, do nothing but walk!
So I have produced nothing!"
He gazed at his canvas through his tears; suddenly he rose with a
gesture of pride and cast a flashing glance at the two painters.
"By the blood, by the body, by the head of the Christ! you are jealous
hounds who wish to make me believe that it is spoiled, in order to
steal it from me! But I can see her!" he cried, "and she is wonderfully
lovely!"
At that moment, Poussin heard Gillette crying in a corner where she was
cowering, entirely forgotten.
"What is the matter, my angel?" asked the painter, suddenly become the
lover once more.
"Kill me!" she said. "I should be a shameless creature to love you
still, for I despise you. I admire you and I have a horror of you! I
love you, and I believe that I hate you already."