II

IT had struck twelve, and Claude was working at his picture when

there was a loud, familiar knock at the door. With an instinctive yet

involuntary impulse, the artist slipped the sketch of Christine’s head,

by the aid of which he was remodelling the principal figure of his

picture, into a portfolio. After which he decided to open the door.

‘You, Pierre!’ he exclaimed, ‘already!’

Pierre Sandoz, a friend of his boyhood, was about twenty-two, very dark,

with a round and determined head, a square nose, and gentle eyes, set in

energetic features, girt round with a sprouting beard.

‘I breakfasted earlier than usual,’ he answered, ‘in order to give you a

long sitting. The devil! you are getting on with it.’

He had stationed himself in front of the picture, and he added almost

immediately: ‘Hallo! you have altered the character of your woman’s

features!’

Then came a long pause; they both kept staring at the canvas. It

measured about sixteen feet by ten, and was entirely painted over,

though little of the work had gone beyond the roughing-out. This

roughing-out, hastily dashed off, was superb in its violence and ardent

vitality of colour. A flood of sunlight streamed into a forest clearing,

with thick walls of verdure; to the left, stretched a dark glade with a

small luminous speck in the far distance. On the grass, amidst all the

summer vegetation, lay a nude woman with one arm supporting her head,

and though her eyes were closed she smiled amidst the golden shower that

fell around her. In the background, two other women, one fair, and the

other dark, wrestled playfully, setting light flesh tints amidst all the

green leaves. And, as the painter had wanted something dark by way of

contrast in the foreground, he had contented himself with seating there

a gentleman, dressed in a black velveteen jacket. This gentleman had

his back turned and the only part of his flesh that one saw was his left

hand, with which he was supporting himself on the grass.

‘The woman promises well,’ said Sandoz, at last; ‘but, dash it, there

will be a lot of work in all this.’

Claude, with his eyes blazing in front of his picture, made a gesture

of confidence. ‘I’ve lots of time from now till the Salon. One can get

through a deal of work in six months. And perhaps this time I’ll be able

to prove that I am not a brute.’

Thereupon he set up a whistle, inwardly pleased at the sketch he had

made of Christine’s head, and buoyed up by one of those flashes of hope

whence he so often dropped into torturing anguish, like an artist whom

passion for nature consumed.

‘Come, no more idling,’ he shouted. ‘As you’re here, let us set to.’

Sandoz, out of pure friendship, and to save Claude the cost of a model,

had offered to pose for the gentleman in the foreground. In four or five

Sundays, the only day of the week on which he was free, the figure would

be finished. He was already donning the velveteen jacket, when a sudden

reflection made him stop.

‘But, I say, you haven’t really lunched, since you were working when I

came in. Just go down and have a cutlet while I wait here.’

The idea of losing time revolted Claude. ‘I tell you I have breakfasted.

Look at the saucepan. Besides, you can see there’s a crust of bread

left. I’ll eat it. Come, to work, to work, lazy-bones.’

And he snatched up his palette and caught his brushes, saying, as he did

so, ‘Dubuche is coming to fetch us this evening, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, about five o’clock.’

‘Well, that’s all right then. We’ll go down to dinner directly he comes.

Are you ready? The hand more to the left, and your head a little more

forward.’

Having arranged some cushions, Sandoz settled himself on the couch

in the required attitude. His back was turned, but all the same the

conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very morning

received a letter from Plassans, the little Provençal town where he and

the artist had known each other when they were wearing out their first

pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local college. However, they

left off talking. The one was working with his mind far away from the

world, while the other grew stiff and cramped with the sleepy weariness

of protracted immobility.

It was only when Claude was nine years old that a lucky chance had

enabled him to leave Paris and return to the little place in Provence,

where he had been born. His mother, a hardworking laundress,* whom his

ne’er-do-well father had scandalously deserted, had afterwards married

an honest artisan who was madly in love with her. But in spite of

their endeavours, they failed to make both ends meet. Hence they gladly

accepted the offer of an elderly and well-to-do townsman to send the

lad to school and keep him with him. It was the generous freak of an

eccentric amateur of painting, who had been struck by the little figures

that the urchin had often daubed. And thus for seven years Claude had

remained in the South, at first boarding at the college, and afterwards

living with his protector. The latter, however, was found dead in his

bed one morning. He left the lad a thousand francs a year, with the

faculty of disposing of the principal when he reached the age of

twenty-five. Claude, already seized with a passion for painting,

immediately left school without even attempting to secure a bachelor’s

degree, and rushed to Paris whither his friend Sandoz had preceded him.

* Gervaise of ‘The Dram Shop’ (L’Assommoir).--ED.

At the College of Plassans, while still in the lowest form, Claude

Lantier, Pierre Sandoz, and another lad named Louis Dubuche, had been

three inseparables. Sprung from three different classes of society, by

no means similar in character, but simply born in the same year at a few

months’ interval, they had become friends at once and for aye, impelled

thereto by certain secret affinities, the still vague promptings of

a common ambition, the dawning consciousness of possessing greater

intelligence than the set of dunces who maltreated them. Sandoz’s

father, a Spaniard, who had taken refuge in France in consequence of

some political disturbances in which he had been mixed up, had started,

near Plassans, a paper mill with new machinery of his own invention.

When he had died, heart-broken by the petty local jealousy that had

sought to hamper him in every way, his widow had found herself in so

involved a position, and burdened with so many tangled law suits, that

the whole of her remaining means were swallowed up. She was a native of

Burgundy. Yielding to her hatred of the Provençals, and laying at their

door even the slow paralysis from which she was suffering, she removed

to Paris with her son, who then supported her out of a meagre clerk’s

salary, he himself haunted by the vision of literary glory. As for

Dubuche, he was the son of a baker of Plassans. Pushed by his mother, a

covetous and ambitious woman, he had joined his friends in Paris later

on. He was attending the courses at the School of Arts as a pupil

architect, living as best he might upon the last five-franc pieces

that his parents staked on his chances, with the obstinacy of usurers

discounting the future at the rate of a hundred per cent.

‘Dash it!’ at last exclaimed Sandoz, breaking the intense silence that

hung upon the room. ‘This position isn’t at all easy; my wrist feels

broken. Can I move for a moment?’

Claude let him stretch himself without answering. He was now working at

the velveteen jacket, laying on the colour with thick strokes, However,

stepping backward and blinking, he suddenly burst into loud laughter at

some reminiscence.

‘I say, do you recollect, when we were in the sixth form, how, one day,

Pouillaud lighted the candles in that idiot Lalubie’s cupboard? And how

frightened Lalubie was when, before going to his desk, he opened the

cupboard to take his books, and found it transformed into a mortuary

chapel? Five hundred lines to every one in the form.’

Sandoz, unable to withstand the contagion of the other’s gaiety, flung

himself back on the couch. As he resumed his pose, he remarked, ‘Ah,

that brute of a Pouillaud. You know that in his letter this morning he

tells me of Lalubie’s forthcoming marriage. The old hack is marrying

a pretty girl. But you know her, she’s the daughter of Gallissard, the

haberdasher--the little fair-haired girl whom we used to serenade!’

Once on the subject of their recollections there was no stopping them,

though Claude went on painting with growing feverishness, while Pierre,

still turned towards the wall, spoke over his shoulders, shaking every

now and then with excitement.

First of all came recollections of the college, the old, dank convent,

that extended as far as the town ramparts; the two courtyards with their

huge plane trees; the slimy sedge-covered pond, where they had learned

to swim, and the class-rooms with dripping plaster walls on the ground

floor; then the refectory, with its atmosphere constantly poisoned by

the fumes of dish-water; the dormitory of the little ones, famous for

its horrors, the linen room, and the infirmary, full of gentle sisters,

nuns in black gowns who looked so sweet beneath their white coifs. What

a to-do there had been when Sister Angela, she whose Madonna-like face

had turned the heads of all the big fellows, disappeared one morning

with Hermeline, a stalwart first-form lad, who, from sheer love,

purposely cut his hands with his penknife so as to get an opportunity of

seeing and speaking to her while she dressed his self-inflicted injuries

with gold-beater’s skin.

Then they passed the whole college staff in review; a pitiful,

grotesque, and terrible procession it was, with such heads as are seen

on meerschaum pipes, and profiles instinct with hatred and suffering.

There was the head master, who ruined himself in giving parties, in

order to marry his daughters--two tall, elegant girls, the butt of

constant and abominable insults, written and sketched on every wall;

there was the comptroller Pifard, whose wonderful nose betrayed his

presence behind every door, when he went eavesdropping; and there were

all the teachers, each befouled with some insulting nickname: the severe

‘Rhadamantus,’ who had never been seen to smile; ‘Filth,’ who by the

constant rubbing of his head had left his mark on the wall behind

every professional seat he occupied; ‘Thou-hast-deceived-me-Adèle,’

the professor of physics, at whom ten generations of schoolboys had

tauntingly flung the name of his unfaithful wife. There were others

still: Spontini, the ferocious usher, with his Corsican knife, rusty

with the blood of three cousins; little Chantecaille, who was so

good-natured that he allowed the pupils to smoke when out walking; and

also a scullion and a scullery maid, two ugly creatures who had been

nicknamed Paraboulomenos and Paralleluca, and who were accused of

kissing one another over the vegetable parings.

Then came comical reminiscences; the sudden recollection of practical

jokes, at which they shook with laughter after all those years. Oh!

the morning when they had burned the shoes of Mimi-la-Mort, _alias_ the

Skeleton Day Boarder, a lank lad, who smuggled snuff into the school for

the whole of the form. And then that winter evening when they had bagged

some matches lying near the lamp in the chapel, in order to smoke dry

chestnut leaves in reed pipes. Sandoz, who had been the ringleader on

that occasion, now frankly avowed his terror; the cold perspiration

that had come upon him when he had scrambled out of the choir, wrapt

in darkness. And again there was the day when Claude had hit upon the

sublime idea of roasting some cockchafers in his desk to see whether

they were good to eat, as people said they were. So terrible had been

the stench, so dense the smoke that poured from the desk, that the usher

had rushed to the water pitcher, under the impression that the place was

on fire. And then their marauding expeditions; the pillaging of onion

beds while they were out walking; the stones thrown at windows,

the correct thing being to make the breakage resemble a well-known

geographical map. Also the Greek exercises, written beforehand in large

characters on the blackboard, so that every dunce might easily read

them though the master remained unaware of it; the wooden seats of the

courtyard sawn off and carried round the basin like so many corpses, the

boys marching in procession and singing funeral dirges. Yes! that had

been a capital prank. Dubuche, who played the priest, had tumbled into

the basin while trying to scoop some water into his cap, which was to

serve as a holy water pot. But the most comical and amusing of all the

pranks had perhaps been that devised by Pouillaud, who one night had

fastened all the unmentionable crockery of the dormitory to one long

string passed under the beds. At dawn--it was the very morning when the

long vacation began--he had pulled the string and skedaddled down the

three flights of stairs with this frightful tail of crockery bounding

and smashing to pieces behind him.

At the recollection of this last incident, Claude remained grinning from

ear to ear, his brush suspended in mid-air. ‘That brute of a Pouillaud!’

he laughed. ‘And so he has written to you. What is he doing now?’

‘Why, nothing at all, old man,’ answered Sandoz, seating himself

more comfortably on the cushions. ‘His letter is idiotic. He is just

finishing his law studies, and he will inherit his father’s practice as

a solicitor. You ought to see the style he has already assumed--all the

idiotic austerity of a philistine, who has turned over a new leaf.’

They were silent once more until Sandoz added, ‘You see, old boy, we

have been protected against that sort of thing.’

Then they relapsed again into reminiscences, but such as made their

hearts thump; the remembrance of the many happy days they had spent far

away from the college, in the open air and the full sunlight. When

still very young, and only in the sixth form, the three inseparables

had become passionately fond of taking long walks. The shortest holidays

were eagerly seized upon to tramp for miles and miles; and, getting

bolder as they grew up, they finished by scouring the whole of the

country-side, by making journeys that sometimes lasted for days. They

slept where they could, in the cleft of a rock, on some threshing-floor,

still burning hot, where the straw of the beaten corn made them a soft

couch, or in some deserted hut, the ground of which they covered with

wild thyme and lavender. Those were flights far from the everyday world,

when they became absorbed in healthy mother Nature herself, adoring

trees and streams and mountains; revelling in the supreme joy of being

alone and free.

Dubuche, who was a boarder, had only joined them on half-holidays and

during the long vacation. Besides, his legs were heavy, and he had the

quiet nature of a studious lad. But Claude and Sandoz never wearied;

they awakened each other every Sunday morning by throwing stones at

their respective shutters. In summer, above all, they were haunted by

the thought of the Viorne, the torrent, whose tiny stream waters the

low-lying pastures of Plassans. When scarcely twelve they already knew

how to swim, and it became a passion with them to potter about in the

holes where the water accumulated; to spend whole days there, stark

naked, drying themselves on the burning sand, and then replunging into

the river, living there as it were, on their backs, on their stomachs,

searching among the reeds on the banks, immersed up to their ears, and

watching the hiding-places of the eels for hours at a stretch. That

constant contact of water beneath a burning sun prolonged their

childhood, as it were, and lent them the joyous laughter of truant

urchins, though they were almost young men, when of an evening they

returned to the town amidst the still oppressive heat of a summer

sunset. Later on they became very fond of shooting, but shooting such

as is carried on in a region devoid of game, where they had to trudge

a score of miles to pick off half a dozen pettychaps, or fig-peckers;

wonderful expeditions, whence they returned with their bags empty, or

with a mere bat, which they had managed to bring down while discharging

their guns at the outskirts of the town. Their eyes moistened at the

recollection of those happy days; they once more beheld the white

endless roads, covered with layers of dust, as if there had been a fall

of snow. They paced them again and again in their imagination, happy to

hear the fancied creaking of their heavy shoes. Then they cut across the

fields, over the reddish-brown ferruginous soil, careering madly on

and on; and there was a sky of molten lead above them, not a shadow

anywhere, nothing but dwarf olive trees and almond trees with scanty

foliage. And then the delicious drowsiness of fatigue on their return,

their triumphant bravado at having covered yet more ground than on the

precious journey, the delight of being no longer conscious of effort,

of advancing solely by dint of strength acquired, spurring themselves on

with some terrible martial strain which helped to make everything like a

dream.

Already at that time Claude, in addition to his powder-flask and

cartridge-belt, took with him an album, in which he sketched little bits

of country, while Sandoz, on his side, always had some favourite poet

in his pocket. They lived in a perfect frenzy of romanticism, winged

strophes alternated with coarse garrison stories, odes were flung upon

the burning, flashing, luminous atmosphere that enwrapt them. And when

perchance they came upon a small rivulet, bordered by half a dozen

willows, casting grey shadows on the soil all ablaze with colour, they

at once went into the seventh heaven. They there by themselves performed

the dramas they knew by heart, inflating their voices when repeating

the speeches of the heroes, and reducing them to the merest whisper when

they replied as queens and love-sick maidens. On such days the sparrows

were left in peace. In that remote province, amidst the sleepy stupidity

of that small town, they had thus lived on from the age of fourteen,

full of enthusiasm, devoured by a passion for literature and art. The

magnificent scenarios devised by Victor Hugo, the gigantic phantasies

which fought therein amidst a ceaseless cross-fire of antithesis, had

at first transported them into the fulness of epic glory; gesticulating,

watching the sun decline behind some ruins, seeing life pass by amidst

all the superb but false glitter of a fifth act. Then Musset had come to

unman them with his passion and his tears; they heard their own hearts

throb in response to his, a new world opened to them--a world more

human--that conquered them by its cries for pity, and of eternal misery,

which henceforth they were to hear rising from all things. Besides,

they were not difficult to please; they showed the voracity of youth,

a furious appetite for all kinds of literature, good and bad alike. So

eager were they to admire something, that often the most execrable works

threw them into a state of exaltation similar to that which the purest

masterpieces produce.

And as Sandoz now remarked, it was their great love of bodily exercise,

their very revels of literature that had protected them against the

numbing influence of their ordinary surroundings. They never entered a

café, they had a horror of the streets, even pretending to moult in

them like caged eagles, whereas their schoolfellows were already rubbing

their elbows over the small marble tables and playing at cards for

drinks. Provincial life, which dragged other lads, when still young,

within its cogged mechanism, that habit of going to one’s club, of

spelling out the local paper from its heading to the last advertisement,

the everlasting game of dominoes no sooner finished than renewed, the

same walk at the self-same hour and ever along the same roads--all that

brutifies the mind, like a grindstone crushing the brain, filled them

with indignation, called forth their protestations. They preferred to

scale the neighbouring hills in search of some unknown solitary spot,

where they declaimed verses even amidst drenching showers, without

dreaming of shelter in their very hatred of town-life. They had even

planned an encampment on the banks of the Viorne, where they were to

live like savages, happy with constant bathing, and the company of five

or six books, which would amply suffice for their wants. Even womankind

was to be strictly banished from that camp. Being very timid and awkward

in the presence of the gentler sex, they pretended to the asceticism

of superior intellects. For two years Claude had been in love with a

‘prentice hat-trimmer, whom every evening he had followed at a distance,

but to whom he had never dared to address a word. Sandoz nursed dreams

of ladies met while travelling, beautiful girls who would suddenly

spring up in some unknown wood, charm him for a whole day, and melt into

air at dusk. The only love adventure which they had ever met with still

evoked their laughter, so silly did it seem to them now. It consisted

of a series of serenades which they had given to two young ladies during

the time when they, the serenaders, had formed part of the college band.

They passed their nights beneath a window playing the clarinet and the

cornet-à-piston, and thus raising a discordant din which frightened all

the folk of the neighbourhood, until one memorable evening the indignant

parents had emptied all the water pitchers of the family over them.

Ah! those were happy days, and how loving was the laughter with

which they recalled them. On the walls of the studio hung a series of

sketches, which Claude, it so happened, had made during a recent trip

southward. Thus it seemed as if they were surrounded by the familiar

vistas of bright blue sky overhanging a tawny country-side. Here

stretched a plain dotted with little greyish olive trees as far as a

rosy network of distant hills. There, between sunburnt russet slopes,

the exhausted Viorne was almost running dry beneath the span of an

old dust-bepowdered bridge, without a bit of green, nothing save a few

bushes, dying for want of moisture. Farther on, the mountain gorge of

the Infernets showed its yawning chasm amidst tumbled rocks, struck down

by lightning, a huge chaos, a wild desert, rolling stony billows as far

as the eye could reach. Then came all sorts of well remembered nooks:

the valley of Repentance, narrow and shady, a refreshing oasis amid

calcined fields; the wood of Les Trois Bons-Dieux, with hard, green,

varnished pines shedding pitchy tears beneath the burning sun; the sheep

walk of Bouffan, showing white, like a mosque, amidst a far-stretching

blood-red plain. And there were yet bits of blinding, sinuous roads;

ravines, where the heat seemed even to wring bubbling perspiration from

the pebbles; stretches of arid, thirsty sand, drinking up rivers drop

by drop; mole hills, goat paths, and hill crests, half lost in the azure

sky.

‘Hallo!’ exclaimed Sandoz, turning towards one sketch, ‘what’s that?’

Claude, indignant, waved his palette. ‘What! don’t you remember? We

were very nigh breaking our necks there. Surely you recollect the day we

clambered from the very bottom of Jaumegarde with Dubuche? The rock was

as smooth as your hand, and we had to cling to it with our nails, so

that at one moment we could neither get up nor go down again. When we

were once atop and about to cook our cutlets, we, you and I, nearly came

to blows.’

Sandoz now remembered. ‘Yes, yes; each had to roast his own cutlet on

rosemary sticks, and, as mine took fire, you exasperated me by chaffing

my cutlet, which was being reduced to cinders.’

They both shook with laughter, until the painter resumed his work,

gravely concluding, ‘That’s all over, old man. There is to be no more

idling at present.’

He spoke the truth. Since the three inseparables had realised

their dream of meeting together in Paris, which they were bent upon

conquering, their life had been terribly hard. They had tried to renew

the long walks of old. On certain Sunday mornings they had started on

foot from the Fontainebleau gate, had scoured the copses of Verrières,

gone as far as the Bièvre, crossed the woods of Meudon and Bellevue,

and returned home by way of Grenelle. But they taxed Paris with spoiling

their legs; they scarcely ever left the pavement now, entirely taken up

as they were with their struggle for fortune and fame.

From Monday morning till Saturday night Sandoz sat fuming and fretting

at the municipal building of the fifth Arrondissement in a dark corner

of the registry office for births, rooted to his stool by the thought of

his mother, whom his salary of a hundred and fifty francs a month

helped in some fashion to keep. Dubuche, anxious to pay his parents the

interest of the money placed on his head, was ever on the look-out for

some petty jobs among architects, outside his studies at the School of

Arts. As for Claude, thanks to his thousand francs a year, he had his

full liberty; but the latter days of each month were terrible enough,

especially if he had to share the fag-end of his allowance. Luckily he

was beginning to sell a little; disposing of tiny canvases, at the

rate of ten and twelve francs a-piece, to Papa Malgras, a wary picture

dealer. After all, he preferred starvation to turning his art into

mere commerce by manufacturing portraits of tradesmen and their wives;

concocting conventional religious pictures or daubing blinds for

restaurants or sign-boards for accoucheuses. When first he had

returned to Paris, he had rented a very large studio in the Impasse des

Bourdonnais; but he had moved to the Quai de Bourbon from motives of

economy. He lived there like a savage, with an absolute contempt for

everything that was not painting. He had fallen out with his relatives,

who disgusted him; he had even ceased visiting his aunt, who kept a

pork-butcher’s shop near the Central Markets, because she looked too

flourishing and plump.* Respecting the downfall of his mother, who was

being eaten out of doors and driven into the streets, he nursed a secret

grief.

* This aunt is Lisa of ‘The Fat and the Thin’ (Le Ventre de Paris)

in a few chapters of which Claude figures.--ED.

Suddenly he shouted to Sandoz, ‘Will you be kind enough not to tumble to

pieces?’ But Sandoz declared that he was getting stiff, and jumped

from the couch to stretch his legs a bit. They took ten minutes’

rest, talking meanwhile about many things. Claude felt condescendingly

good-tempered. When his work went smoothly he brightened up and became

talkative; he, who painted with his teeth set, and raged inwardly

directly he felt that nature was escaping him. Hence his friend had

scarcely resumed his attitude before he went on chattering, without,

however, missing a stroke of his brush.

‘It’s going on all right, old boy, isn’t it? You look all there in it.

Oh, the brutes, I’ll just see whether they’ll refuse me this time. I am

more severe for myself than they are for themselves, I’m sure of it; and

whenever I pass one of my own pictures, it’s more serious than if it had

passed before all the hanging committees on earth. You know my picture

of the markets, with the two urchins tumbling about on a heap of

vegetables? Well, I’ve scratched it all out, it didn’t come right. I

found that I had got hold of a beastly machine,* a deal too heavy for my

strength. But, never you fear, I’ll take the subject up again some day,

when I know better, and I’ll take up others, machines which will knock

them all cock-a-hoop with surprise.’

* In familiar conversation, French artists, playwrights, and

novelists invariably call their productions by the slang

term ‘machines.’--ED.

He made a magnificent gesture, as if to sweep a whole crowd away;

emptied a tube of cobalt on his palette; and then began to jeer, asking

what his first master would say to a picture like this? His first master

indeed, Papa Belloque, a retired infantry captain, with one arm, who for

a quarter of a century had taught drawing to the youth of Plassans

in one of the galleries of the Museum! Then, in Paris, hadn’t the

celebrated Berthou, the painter of ‘Nero in the Circus’--Berthou, whose

lessons he had attended for six long months--told him a score of times

that he would never be able to do anything? How he now regretted those

six months wasted in idiotic efforts, absurd ‘studies,’ under the iron

rule of a man whose ideas differed so much from his own. He at last

began to hold forth against working at the Louvre. He would, he said,

sooner chop his hand off than return there to spoil his perception of

nature by undertaking one of those copies which for ever dim the vision

of the world in which one lives.

Was there aught else in art than the rendering of what one felt within

oneself? Was not the whole of art reduced to placing a woman in front

of one--and then portraying her according to the feelings that she

inspired? Was not a bunch of carrots--yes, a bunch of carrots--studied

from nature, and painted unaffectedly, in a personal style, worth all

the ever-lasting smudges of the School of Arts, all that tobacco-juice

painting, cooked up according to certain given recipes? The day would

come when one carrot, originally rendered, would lead to a revolution.

It was because of this that he now contented himself with going to the

Boutin studio, a free studio, kept by a former model, in the Rue de la

Huchette. When he had paid his twenty francs he was put in front of as

many men and women as he cared for, and set about his work with a will,

never thinking of eating or drinking, but struggling unrestingly with

nature, mad almost with the excitement of work, by the side of a pack

of dandies who accused him of ignorant laziness, and arrogantly prated

about their ‘studies,’ because they copied noses and mouths, under the

eye of a master.

‘Listen to this, old man: when one of those whipper-snappers can build

up a torso like that one over yonder, he may come up and tell me, and

we’ll have a talk together.’

With the end of his brush he pointed to a study of the nude, suspended

from the wall near the door. It was really magnificent, full of masterly

breadth of colouring. By its side were some other admirable bits, a

girl’s feet exquisite in their delicate truthfulness, and a woman’s

trunk with quivering satin-like skin. In his rare moments of content

he felt proud of those few studies, the only ones which satisfied him,

which, as it were, foretold a great painter, admirably gifted, but

hampered by sudden and inexplicable fits of impotency.

Dealing sabre-like strokes at the velveteen jacket, he continued lashing

himself into excitement with his uncompromising theories which respected

nobody:

‘They are all so many daubers of penny prints, who have stolen their

reputations; a set of idiots or knaves on their knees before public

imbecility! Not one among them dares to give the philistines a slap in

the face. And, while we are about it, you know that old Ingres turns me

sick with his glairy painting. Nevertheless, he’s a brick, and a plucky

fellow, and I take off my hat to him, for he did not care a curse for

anybody, and he used to draw like the very devil. He ended by making the

idiots, who nowadays believe they understand him, swallow that drawing

of his. After him there are only two worth speaking of, Delacroix and

Courbet. The others are only numskulls. Oh, that old romantic lion, the

carriage of him! He was a decorator who knew how to make the colours

blaze. And what a grasp he had! He would have covered every wall in

Paris if they had let him; his palette boiled, and boiled over. I know

very well that it was only so much phantasmagoria. Never mind, I like it

for all that, as it was needed to set the School on fire. Then came the

other, a stout workman--that one, the truest painter of the century,

and altogether classical besides, a fact which not one of the dullards

understood. They yelled, of course; they shouted about profanation

and realism, when, after all, the realism was only in the subject. The

perception remained that of the old masters, and the execution

resumed and continued the best bits of work one can find in our public

galleries. Both Delacroix and Courbet came at the proper time. Each made

a stride forward. And now--ah, now!’

He ceased speaking and drew back a few steps to judge of the effect of

his picture, becoming absorbed in contemplation for a moment, and then

resuming:

‘Yes, nowadays we want something different--what, I don’t exactly know.

If I did, and could do it, I should be clever indeed. No one else would

be in the race with me. All I do know and feel is that Delacroix’s

grand romantic scenes are foundering and splitting, that Courbet’s black

painting already reeks of the mustiness of a studio which the sun never

penetrates. You understand me, don’t you? We, perhaps, want the sun, the

open air, a clear, youthful style of painting, men and things such as

they appear in the real light. In short, I myself am unable to say what

our painting should be; the painting that our eyes of to-day should

execute and behold.’

His voice again fell; he stammered and found himself unable to explain

the formulas of the future that were rising within him. Deep silence

came while he continued working at the velveteen jacket, quivering all

the time.

Sandoz had been listening to him without stirring from his position. His

back was still turned, and he said slowly, as if speaking to the wall in

a kind of dream:

‘No; one does not know, and still we ought to know. But each time a

professor has wanted to impress a truth upon me, I have mistrustfully

revolted, thinking: “He is either deceiving himself or deceiving me.”

Their ideas exasperate me. It seems to me that truth is larger, more

general. How beautiful would it be if one could devote the whole of

one’s existence to one single work, into which one would endeavour to

put everything, the beasts of the field as well as mankind; in short,

a kind of immense ark. And not in the order indicated by manuals of

philosophy, or according to the idiotic hierarchy on which we pride

ourselves, but according to the full current of life; a world in which

we should be nothing more than an accident, in which the passing cur,

even the stones of the roads, would complete and explain us. In sum, the

grand whole, without low or high, or clean or unclean, such as it indeed

is in reality. It is certainly to science that poets and novelists ought

to address themselves, for it is the only possible source of inspiration

to-day. But what are we to borrow from it? How are we to march in its

company? The moment I begin to think about that sort of thing I feel

that I am floundering. Ah, if I only knew, what a series of books I

would hurl at the heads of the crowd!’

He also became silent. The previous winter he had published his first

book: a series of little sketches, brought from Plassans, among which

only a few rougher notes indicated that the author was a mutineer, a

passionate lover of truth and power. And lately he had been feeling his

way, questioning himself while all sorts of confused ideas throbbed in

his brain. At first, smitten with the thought of undertaking something

herculean, he had planned a genesis of the universe, in three phases or

parts; the creation narrated according to science; mankind supervening

at the appointed hour and playing its part in the chain of beings and

events; then the future--beings constantly following one another, and

finishing the creation of the world by the endless labour of life. But

he had calmed down in presence of the venturesome hypotheses of this

third phase; and he was now looking out for a more restricted, more

human framework, in which, however, his vast ambition might find room.

‘Ah, to be able to see and paint everything,’ exclaimed Claude, after a

long interval. ‘To have miles upon miles of walls to cover, to decorate

the railway stations, the markets, the municipal offices, everything

that will be built, when architects are no longer idiots. Only strong

heads and strong muscles will be wanted, for there will be no lack of

subjects. Life such as it runs about the streets, the life of the

rich and the poor, in the market places, on the race-courses, on the

boulevards, in the populous alleys; and every trade being plied, and

every passion portrayed in full daylight, and the peasants, too, and the

beasts of the fields and the landscapes--ah! you’ll see it all, unless I

am a downright brute. My very hands are itching to do it. Yes! the whole

of modern life! Frescoes as high as the Pantheon! A series of canvases

big enough to burst the Louvre!’

Whenever they were thrown together the painter and the author generally

reached this state of excitement. They spurred each other mutually, they

went mad with dreams of glory; and there was such a burst of youth, such

a passion for work about their plans, that they themselves often smiled

afterwards at those great, proud dreams which seemed to endow them with

suppleness, strength, and spirit.

Claude, who had stepped back as far as the wall, remained leaning

against it, and gazing at his work. Seeing which, Sandoz, overcome by

fatigue, left the couch and joined him. Then both looked at the picture

without saying a word. The gentleman in the velveteen jacket was

entirely roughed in. His hand, more advanced than the rest, furnished

a pretty fresh patch of flesh colour amid the grass, and the dark coat

stood out so vigorously that the little silhouettes in the background,

the two little women wrestling in the sunlight, seemed to have retreated

further into the luminous quivering of the glade. The principal figure,

the recumbent woman, as yet scarcely more than outlined, floated about

like some aerial creature seen in dreams, some eagerly desired Eve

springing from the earth, with her features vaguely smiling and her

eyelids closed.

‘Well, now, what are you going to call it?’ asked Sandoz.

‘_The Open Air_,’ replied Claude, somewhat curtly.

The title sounded rather technical to the writer, who, in spite of

himself, was sometimes tempted to introduce literature into pictorial

art.

‘_The Open Air_! that doesn’t suggest anything.’

‘There is no occasion for it to suggest anything. Some women and a man

are reposing in a forest in the sunlight. Does not that suffice? Don’t

fret, there’s enough in it to make a masterpiece.’

He threw back his head and muttered between his teeth: ‘Dash it all!

it’s very black still. I can’t get Delacroix out of my eye, do what I

will. And then the hand, that’s Courbet’s manner. Everyone of us dabs

his brush into the romantic sauce now and then. We had too much of it

in our youth, we floundered in it up to our very chins. We need a jolly

good wash to get clear of it.’

Sandoz shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of despair. He also

bewailed the fact that he had been born at what he called the confluence

of Hugo and Balzac. Nevertheless, Claude remained satisfied, full of the

happy excitement of a successful sitting. If his friend could give him

two or three more Sundays the man in the jacket would be all there. He

had enough of him for the present. Both began to joke, for, as a rule,

Claude almost killed his models, only letting them go when they were

fainting, half dead with fatigue. He himself now very nigh dropped, his

legs bending under him, and his stomach empty. And as the cuckoo

clock struck five, he snatched at his crust of bread and devoured it.

Thoroughly worn out, he broke it with trembling fingers, and scarcely

chewed it, again standing before his picture, pursued by his passion to

such a degree as to be unconscious even that he was eating.

‘Five o’clock,’ said Sandoz, as he stretched himself, with his arms

upraised. ‘Let’s go and have dinner. Ah! here comes Dubuche, just in

time.’

There was a knock at the door, and Dubuche came in. He was a stout young

fellow, dark, with regular but heavy features, close-cropped hair, and

moustaches already full-blown. He shook hands with both his friends,

and stopped before the picture, looking nonplussed. In reality that

harum-scarum style of painting upset him, such was the even balance of

his nature, such his reverence as a steady student for the established

formulas of art; and it was only his feeling of friendship which, as

a rule, prevented him from criticising. But this time his whole being

revolted visibly.

‘Well, what’s the matter? Doesn’t it suit you?’ asked Sandoz, who was

watching him.

‘Yes, oh yes, it’s very well painted--but--’

‘Well, spit it out. What is it that ruffles you?’

‘Not much, only the gentleman is fully dressed, and the women are not.

People have never seen anything like that before.’

This sufficed to make both the others wild. Why, were there not a

hundred pictures in the Louvre composed in precisely the same way?

Hadn’t all Paris and all the painters and tourists of the world seen

them? And besides, if people had never seen anything like it, they would

see it now. After all, they didn’t care a fig for the public!

Not in the least disconcerted by these violent replies, Dubuche

repeated quietly: ‘The public won’t understand--the public will think it

indecorous--and so it is!’

‘You wretched bourgeois philistine!’ exclaimed Claude, exasperated.

‘They are making a famous idiot of you at the School of Arts. You

weren’t such a fool formerly.’

These were the current amenities of his two friends since Dubuche had

attended the School of Arts. He thereupon beat a retreat, rather afraid

of the turn the dispute was taking, and saved himself by belabouring the

painters of the School. Certainly his friends were right in one respect,

the School painters were real idiots. But as for the architects, that

was a different matter. Where was he to get his tuition, if not there?

Besides his tuition would not prevent him from having ideas of his own,

later on. Wherewith he assumed a very revolutionary air.

‘All right,’ said Sandoz, ‘the moment you apologise, let’s go and dine.’

But Claude had mechanically taken up a brush and set to work again.

Beside the gentleman in the velveteen jacket the figure of the recumbent

woman seemed to be fading away. Feverish and impatient, he traced a bold

outline round her so as to bring her forward.

‘Are you coming?’

‘In a minute; hang it, what’s the hurry? Just let me set this right, and

I’ll be with you.’

Sandoz shook his head and then remarked very quietly, lest he should

still further annoy him: ‘You do wrong to worry yourself like that, old

man. Yes, you are knocked up, and have had nothing to eat, and you’ll

only spoil your work, as you did the other day.’

But the painter waved him off with a peevish gesture. It was the old

story--he did not know when to leave off; he intoxicated himself with

work in his craving for an immediate result, in order to prove to

himself that he held his masterpiece at last. Doubts had just driven him

to despair in the midst of his delight at having terminated a successful

sitting. Had he done right, after all, in making the velveteen jacket

so prominent, and would he not afterwards fail to secure the brilliancy

which he wished the female figure to show? Rather than remain in

suspense he would have dropped down dead on the spot. Feverishly drawing

the sketch of Christine’s head from the portfolio where he had hidden

it, he compared it with the painting on the canvas, assisting himself,

as it were, by means of this document derived from life.

‘Hallo!’ exclaimed Dubuche, ‘where did you get that from? Who is it?’

Claude, startled by the questions, did not answer; then, without

reflecting, he who usually told them everything, brusquely lied,

prompted by a delicate impulse to keep silent respecting the adventure

of the night.

‘Tell us who it is?’ repeated the architect.

‘Nobody at all--a model.’

‘A model! a very young one, isn’t she? She looks very nice. I wish you

would give me her address. Not for myself, but for a sculptor I know

who’s on the look-out for a Psyche. Have you got the address there?’

Thereupon Dubuche turned to a corner of the greyish wall on which the

addresses of several models were written in chalk, haphazard. The

women particularly left their cards in that way, in awkward, childish

handwriting. Zoé Piedefer, 7 Rue Campagne-Première, a big brunette, who

was getting rather too stout, had scrawled her sign manual right across

the names of little Flore Beauchamp, 32 Rue de Laval, and Judith Vaquez,

69 Rue du Rocher, a Jewess, both of whom were too thin.

‘I say, have you got the address?’ resumed Dubuche.

Then Claude flew into a passion. ‘Don’t pester me! I don’t know and

don’t care. You’re a nuisance, worrying like that just when a fellow

wants to work.’

Sandoz had not said a word. Surprised at first, he had soon smiled. He

was gifted with more penetration than Dubuche, so he gave him a knowing

nod, and they then began to chaff. They begged Claude’s pardon; the

moment he wanted to keep the young person for his personal use, they

would not ask him to lend her. Ha! ha! the scamp went hunting about for

pretty models. And where had he picked up that one?

More and more embarrassed by these remarks, Claude went on fidgetting.

‘What a couple of idiots you are!’ he exclaimed, ‘If you only knew what

fools you are making of yourselves. That’ll do. You really make me sorry

for both of you.’

His voice sounded so stern that they both became silent immediately,

while he, after once more scratching out the woman’s head, drew it anew

and began to paint it in, following his sketch of Christine, but with a

feverish, unsteady touch which went at random.

‘Just give me another ten minutes, will you?’ he repeated. ‘I will rough

in the shoulders to be ready for to-morrow, and then we’ll go down.’

Sandoz and Dubuche, knowing that it was of no use to prevent him from

killing himself in this fashion, resigned themselves to the inevitable.

The latter lighted his pipe, and flung himself on the couch. He was the

only one of the three who smoked; the others had never taken kindly to

tobacco, always feeling qualmish after a cigar. And when Dubuche was

stretched on his back, his eyes turned towards the clouds of smoke he

raised, he began to talk about himself in an interminable monotonous

fashion. Ah! that confounded Paris, how one had to work one’s fingers

to the bone in order to get on. He recalled the fifteen months

of apprenticeship he had spent with his master, the celebrated

Dequersonnière, a former grand-prize man, now architect of the Civil

Branch of Public Works, an officer of the Legion of Honour and a member

of the Institute, whose chief architectural performance, the church of

St. Mathieu, was a cross between a pastry-cook’s mould and a clock in

the so-called First Empire style. A good sort of fellow, after all, was

this Dequersonnière whom Dubuche chaffed, while inwardly sharing

his reverence for the old classical formulas. However, but for his

fellow-pupils, the young man would not have learnt much at the studio in

the Rue du Four, for the master only paid a running visit to the place

some three times a week. A set of ferocious brutes, were those comrades

of his, who had made his life jolly hard in the beginning, but who, at

least, had taught him how to prepare a surface, outline, and wash in

a plan. And how often had he had to content himself with a cup of

chocolate and a roll for déjeuner in order to pay the necessary

five-and-twenty francs to the superintendent! And the sheets of paper he

had laboriously smudged, and the hours he had spent in poring over

books before he had dared to present himself at the School! And he had

narrowly escaped being plucked in spite of all his assiduous endeavours.

He lacked imagination, and the drawings he submitted, a caryatide and

a summer dining-room, both extremely mediocre performances, had classed

him at the bottom of the list. Fortunately, he had made up for this

in his oral examination with his logarithms, geometry, and history of

architecture, for he was very strong in the scientific parts. Now that

he was attending the School as a second-class student, he had to toil

and moil in order to secure a first-class diploma. It was a dog’s life,

there was no end to it, said he.

He stretched his legs apart, high upon the cushions, and smoked

vigorously and regularly.

‘What with their courses of perspective, of descriptive geometry, of

stereotomy, of building, and of the history of art--ah! upon my word,

they do make one blacken paper with notes. And every month there is a

competitive examination in architecture, sometimes a simple sketch,

at others a complete design. There’s no time for pleasure if a fellow

wishes to pass his examinations and secure the necessary honourable

mentions, especially if, besides all that, he has to find time to earn

his bread. As for myself, it’s almost killing me.’

One of the cushions having slipped upon the floor, he fished it up with

his feet. ‘All the same, I’m lucky. There are so many of us scouring

the town every day without getting the smallest job. The day before

yesterday I discovered an architect who works for a large contractor.

You can have no idea of such an ignoramus of an architect--a downright

numskull, incapable even of tracing a plan. He gives me twenty-five sous

an hour, and I set his houses straight for him. It came just in time,

too, for my mother sent me word that she was quite cleared out. Poor

mother, what a lot of money I have to refund her!’

As Dubuche was evidently talking to himself, chewing the cud of

his everyday thoughts--his constant thoughts of making a rapid

fortune--Sandoz did not even trouble to listen to him. He had opened the

little window, and seated himself on a level with the roof, for he felt

oppressed by the heat in the studio. But all at once he interrupted the

architect.

‘I say, are you coming to dinner on Thursday? All the other fellows will

be there--Fagerolles, Mahoudeau, Jory, Gagnière.’

Every Thursday, quite a band met at Sandoz’s: friends from Plassans and

others met in Paris--revolutionaries to a man, and all animated by the

same passionate love of art.

‘Next Thursday? No, I think not,’ answered Dubuche.

‘I am obliged to go to a dance at a family’s I know.’

‘Where you expect to get hold of a dowry, I suppose?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be such a bad spec.’

He shook the ashes from his pipe on to his left palm, and then,

suddenly raising his voice--‘I almost forgot. I have had a letter from

Pouillaud.’

‘You, too!--well, I think he’s pretty well done for, Pouillaud. Another

good fellow gone wrong.’

‘Why gone wrong? He’ll succeed his father; he’ll spend his money quietly

down there. He writes rationally enough. I always said he’d show us a

thing or two, in spite of all his practical jokes. Ah! that beast of a

Pouillaud.’

Sandoz, furious, was about to reply, when a despairing oath from

Claude stopped him. The latter had not opened his lips since he had

so obstinately resumed his work. To all appearance he had not even

listened.

‘Curse it--I have failed again. Decidedly, I’m a brute, I shall never do

anything.’ And in a fit of mad rage he wanted to rush at his picture and

dash his fist through it. His friends had to hold him back. Why, it was

simply childish to get into such a passion. Would matters be improved

when, to his mortal regret, he had destroyed his work? Still shaking,

he relapsed into silence, and stared at the canvas with an ardent fixed

gaze that blazed with all the horrible agony born of his powerlessness.

He could no longer produce anything clear or life-like; the woman’s

breast was growing pasty with heavy colouring; that flesh which, in his

fancy, ought to have glowed, was simply becoming grimy; he could not

even succeed in getting a correct focus. What on earth was the matter

with his brain that he heard it bursting asunder, as it were, amidst his

vain efforts? Was he losing his sight that he was no longer able to see

correctly? Were his hands no longer his own that they refused to obey

him? And thus he went on winding himself up, irritated by the strange

hereditary lesion which sometimes so greatly assisted his creative

powers, but at others reduced him to a state of sterile despair, such as

to make him forget the first elements of drawing. Ah, to feel giddy with

vertiginous nausea, and yet to remain there full of a furious passion

to create, when the power to do so fled with everything else, when

everything seemed to founder around him--the pride of work, the

dreamt-of glory, the whole of his existence!

‘Look here, old boy,’ said Sandoz at last, ‘we don’t want to worry you,

but it’s half-past six, and we are starving. Be reasonable, and come

down with us.’

Claude was cleaning a corner of his palette. Then he emptied some more

tubes on it, and, in a voice like thunder, replied with one single word,

‘No.’

For the next ten minutes nobody spoke; the painter, beside himself,

wrestled with his picture, whilst his friends remained anxious at this

attack, which they did not know how to allay. Then, as there came a

knock at the door, the architect went to open it.

‘Hallo, it’s Papa Malgras.’

Malgras, the picture-dealer, was a thick-set individual, with

close-cropped, brush-like, white hair, and a red splotchy face. He

was wrapped in a very dirty old green coat, that made him look like an

untidy cabman. In a husky voice, he exclaimed: ‘I happened to pass along

the quay, on the other side of the way, and I saw that gentleman at the

window. So I came up.’

Claude’s continued silence made him pause. The painter had turned to his

picture again with an impatient gesture. Not that this silence in any

way embarrassed the new comer, who, standing erect on his sturdy legs

and feeling quite at home, carefully examined the new picture with his

bloodshot eyes. Without any ceremony, he passed judgment upon it in one

phrase--half ironic, half affectionate: ‘Well, well, there’s a machine.’

Then, seeing that nobody said anything, he began to stroll round the

studio, looking at the paintings on the walls.

Papa Malgras, beneath his thick layer of grease and grime, was really

a very cute customer, with taste and scent for good painting. He never

wasted his time or lost his way among mere daubers; he went straight, as

if from instinct, to individualists, whose talent was contested still,

but whose future fame his flaming, drunkard’s nose sniffed from afar.

Added to this he was a ferocious hand at bargaining, and displayed

all the cunning of a savage in his efforts to secure, for a song, the

pictures that he coveted. True, he himself was satisfied with very

honest profits, twenty per cent., thirty at the most. He based his

calculations on quickly turning over his small capital, never purchasing

in the morning without knowing where to dispose of his purchase at

night. As a superb liar, moreover, he had no equal.

Pausing near the door, before the studies from the nude, painted at the

Boutin studio, he contemplated them in silence for a few moments, his

eyes glistening the while with the enjoyment of a connoisseur, which his

heavy eyelids tried to hide. Assuredly, he thought, there was a great

deal of talent and sentiment of life about that big crazy fellow Claude,

who wasted his time in painting huge stretches of canvas which no one

would buy. The girl’s pretty legs, the admirably painted woman’s trunk,

filled the dealer with delight. But there was no sale for that kind of

stuff, and he had already made his choice--a tiny sketch, a nook of the

country round Plassans, at once delicate and violent--which he pretended

not to notice. At last he drew near, and said, in an off-hand way:

‘What’s this? Ah! yes, I know, one of the things you brought back with

you from the South. It’s too crude. I still have the two I bought of

you.’

And he went on in mellow, long-winded phrases. ‘You’ll perhaps not

believe me, Monsieur Lantier, but that sort of thing doesn’t sell at

all--not at all. I’ve a set of rooms full of them. I’m always afraid of

smashing something when I turn round. I can’t go on like that, honour

bright; I shall have to go into liquidation, and I shall end my days in

the hospital. You know me, eh? my heart is bigger than my pocket, and

there’s nothing I like better than to oblige young men of talent like

yourself. Oh, for the matter of that, you’ve got talent, and I keep on

telling them so--nay, shouting it to them--but what’s the good? They

won’t nibble, they won’t nibble!’

He was trying the emotional dodge; then, with the spirit of a man about

to do something rash: ‘Well, it sha’n’t be said that I came in to waste

your time. What do you want for that rough sketch?’

Claude, still irritated, was painting nervously. He dryly answered,

without even turning his head: ‘Twenty francs.’

‘Nonsense; twenty francs! you must be mad. You sold me the others

ten francs a-piece--and to-day I won’t give a copper more than eight

francs.’

As a rule the painter closed with him at once, ashamed and humbled at

this miserable chaffering, glad also to get a little money now and

then. But this time he was obstinate, and took to insulting the

picture-dealer, who, giving tit for tat, all at once dropped the formal

‘you’ to assume the glib ‘thou,’ denied his talent, overwhelmed him with

invective, and taxed him with ingratitude. Meanwhile, however, he had

taken from his pocket three successive five-franc pieces, which, as

if playing at chuck-farthing, he flung from a distance upon the table,

where they rattled among the crockery.

‘One, two, three--not one more, dost hear? for there is already one too

many, and I’ll take care to get it back; I’ll deduct it from something

else of thine, as I live. Fifteen francs for that! Thou art wrong, my

lad, and thou’lt be sorry for this dirty trick.’

Quite exhausted, Claude let him take down the little canvas, which

disappeared as if by magic in his capacious green coat. Had it dropped

into a special pocket, or was it reposing on Papa Malgras’ ample chest?

Not the slightest protuberance indicated its whereabouts.

Having accomplished his stroke of business, Papa Malgras abruptly calmed

down and went towards the door. But he suddenly changed his mind and

came back. ‘Just listen, Lantier,’ he said, in the honeyest of tones; ‘I

want a lobster painted. You really owe me that much after fleecing me.

I’ll bring you the lobster, you’ll paint me a bit of still life from

it, and keep it for your pains. You can eat it with your friends. It’s

settled, isn’t it?’

At this proposal Sandoz and Dubuche, who had hitherto listened

inquisitively, burst into such loud laughter that the picture-dealer

himself became gay. Those confounded painters, they did themselves no

good, they simply starved. What would have become of the lazy beggars if

he, Papa Malgras, hadn’t brought a leg of mutton now and then, or a nice

fresh plaice, or a lobster, with its garnish of parsley?

‘You’ll paint me my lobster, eh, Lantier? Much obliged.’ And he

stationed himself anew before the large canvas, with his wonted smile

of mingled derision and admiration. And at last he went off, repeating,

‘Well, well, there’s a machine.’

Claude wanted to take up his palette and brushes once more. But his legs

refused their service; his arms fell to his side, stiff, as if pinioned

there by some occult force. In the intense melancholy silence that had

followed the din of the dispute he staggered, distracted, bereft of

sight before his shapeless work.

‘I’m done for, I’m done for,’ he gasped. ‘That brute has finished me

off!’

The clock had just struck seven; he had been at work for eight mortal

hours without tasting anything but a crust of bread, without taking a

moment’s rest, ever on his legs, shaken by feverish excitement. And now

the sun was setting, shadows began to darken the studio, which in the

gloaming assumed a most melancholy aspect. When the light went down like

this on the crisis of a bad day’s work, it seemed to Claude as if the

sun would never rise again, but had for ever carried life and all the

jubilant gaiety of colour away.

‘Come,’ implored Sandoz, with all the gentleness of brotherly

compassion. ‘Come, there’s a good fellow.’

Even Dubuche added, ‘You’ll see more clearly into it to-morrow. Come and

dine.’

For a moment Claude refused to surrender. He stood rooted to the spot,

deaf to their friendly voices, and fiercely obstinate.

What did he want to do then, since his tired fingers were no longer able

to grasp the brush? He did not know, but, however powerless he might be,

he was gnawed by a mad craving to go on working still and to create

in spite of everything. Even if he did nothing, he would at least stay

there, he would not vacate the spot. All at once, however, he made up

his mind, shaken the while as by a big sob. He clutched firmly hold

of his broadest palette-knife, and, with one deep, slow sweep, he

obliterated the woman’s head and bosom. It was veritable murder, a

pounding away of human flesh; the whole disappeared in a murky, muddy

mash. By the side of the gentleman in the dark jacket, amidst the

bright verdure, where the two little wrestlers so lightly tinted were

disporting themselves, there remained naught of the nude, headless,

breastless woman but a mutilated trunk, a vague cadaverous stump, an

indistinct, lifeless patch of visionary flesh.

Sandoz and Dubuche were already descending the stairs with a great

clatter, and Claude followed them, fleeing his work, in agony at having

to leave it thus scarred with a gaping gash.