AT last Christine gave a final stroke with her feather-broom, and they
were settled. The studio in the Rue de Douai, small and inconvenient,
had only one little room, and a kitchen, as big as a cupboard, attached
to it. They were obliged to take their meals in the studio; they had
to live in it, with the child always tumbling about their legs. And
Christine had a deal of trouble in making their few sticks suffice, as
she wished to do, in order to save expense. After all, she was obliged
to buy a second-hand bedstead; and yielded to the temptation of having
some white muslin curtains, which cost her seven sous the metre. The
den then seemed charming to her, and she began to keep it scrupulously
clean, resolving to do everything herself, and to dispense with a
servant, as living would be a difficult matter.
During the first months Claude lived in ever-increasing excitement. His
peregrinations through the noisy streets; his feverish discussions on
the occasion of his visits to friends; all the rage and all the burning
ideas he thus brought home from out of doors, made him hold forth aloud
even in his sleep. Paris had seized hold of him again; and in the full
blaze of that furnace, a second youth, enthusiastic ambition to see,
do, and conquer, had come upon him. Never had he felt such a passion for
work, such hope, as if it sufficed for him to stretch out his hand in
order to create masterpieces that should set him in the right rank,
which was the first. While crossing Paris he discovered subjects for
pictures everywhere; the whole city, with its streets, squares, bridges,
and panoramas of life, suggested immense frescoes, which he, however,
always found too small, for he was intoxicated with the thought of doing
something colossal. Thus he returned home quivering, his brain seething
with projects; and of an evening threw off sketches on bits of paper, in
the lamp-light, without being able to decide by what he ought to begin
the series of grand productions that he dreamt about.
One serious obstacle was the smallness of his studio. If he had only had
the old garret of the Quai de Bourbon, or even the huge dining-room of
Bennecourt! But what could he do in that oblong strip of space, that
kind of passage, which the landlord of the house impudently let to
painters for four hundred francs a year, after roofing it in with glass?
The worst was that the sloping glazed roof looked to the north, between
two high walls, and only admitted a greenish cellar-like light. He was
therefore obliged to postpone his ambitious projects, and he decided
to begin with average-sized canvases, wisely saying to himself that the
dimensions of a picture are not a proper test of an artist’s genius.
The moment seemed to him favourable for the success of a courageous
artist who, amidst the breaking up of the old schools, would at length
bring some originality and sincerity into his work. The formulas of
recent times were already shaken. Delacroix had died without leaving any
disciples. Courbet had barely a few clumsy imitators behind him; their
best pieces would merely become so many museum pictures, blackened
by age, tokens only of the art of a certain period. It seemed easy to
foresee the new formula that would spring from theirs, that rush of
sunshine, that limpid dawn which was rising in new works under the
nascent influence of the ‘open air’ school. It was undeniable; those
light-toned paintings over which people had laughed so much at the Salon
of the Rejected were secretly influencing many painters, and gradually
brightening every palette. Nobody, as yet, admitted it, but the first
blow had been dealt, and an evolution was beginning, which became more
perceptible at each succeeding Salon. And what a stroke it would be if,
amidst the unconscious copies of impotent essayists, amidst the timid
artful attempts of tricksters, a master were suddenly to reveal himself,
giving body to the new formula by dint of audacity and power, without
compromise, showing it such as it should be, substantial, entire, so
that it might become the truth of the end of the century!
In that first hour of passion and hope, Claude, usually so harassed by
doubts, believed in his genius. He no longer experienced any of those
crises, the anguish of which had driven him for days into the streets in
quest of his vanished courage. A fever stiffened him, he worked on with
the blind obstinacy of an artist who dives into his entrails, to drag
therefrom the fruit that tortures him. His long rest in the country had
endowed him with singular freshness of visual perception, and joyous
delight in execution; he seemed to have been born anew to his art,
and endowed with a facility and balance of power he had never hitherto
possessed. He also felt certain of progress, and experienced great
satisfaction at some successful bits of work, in which his former
sterile efforts at last culminated. As he had said at Bennecourt, he
had got hold of his ‘open air,’ that carolling gaiety of tints which
astonished his comrades when they came to see him. They all admired,
convinced that he would only have to show his work to take a very high
place with it, such was its individuality of style, for the first time
showing nature flooded with real light, amid all the play of reflections
and the constant variations of colours.
Thus, for three years, Claude struggled on, without weakening, spurred
to further efforts by each rebuff, abandoning nought of his ideas, but
marching straight before him, with all the vigour of faith.
During the first year he went forth amid the December snows to place
himself for four hours a day behind the heights of Montmartre, at the
corner of a patch of waste land whence as a background he painted some
miserable, low, tumble-down buildings, overtopped by factory chimneys,
whilst in the foreground, amidst the snow, he set a girl and a ragged
street rough devouring stolen apples. His obstinacy in painting from
nature greatly complicated his work, and gave rise to almost insuperable
difficulties. However, he finished this picture out of doors; he merely
cleaned and touched it up a bit in his studio. When the canvas was
placed beneath the wan daylight of the glazed roof, he himself was
startled by its brutality. It showed like a scene beheld through a
doorway open on the street. The snow blinded one. The two figures, of a
muddy grey in tint, stood out, lamentable. He at once felt that such a
picture would not be accepted, but he did not try to soften it; he sent
it to the Salon, all the same. After swearing that he would never again
try to exhibit, he now held the view that one should always present
something to the hanging committee if merely to accentuate its
wrong-doing. Besides, he admitted the utility of the Salon, the only
battlefield on which an artist might come to the fore at one stroke. The
hanging committee refused his picture.
The second year Claude sought a contrast. He selected a bit of the
public garden of Batignolles in May; in the background were some large
chestnut trees casting their shade around a corner of greensward and
several six-storied houses; while in front, on a seat of a crude green
hue, some nurses and petty cits of the neighbourhood sat in a line
watching three little girls making sand pies. When permission to paint
there had been obtained, he had needed some heroism to bring his work to
a successful issue amid the bantering crowd. At last he made up his mind
to go there at five in the morning, in order to paint in the background;
reserving the figures, he contented himself with making mere sketches
of them from nature, and finishing them in his studio. This time his
picture seemed to him less crude; it had acquired some of the wan,
softened light which descended through the glass roof. He thought his
picture accepted, for all his friends pronounced it to be a masterpiece,
and went about saying that it would revolutionise the Salon. There
was stupefaction and indignation when a fresh refusal of the hanging
committee was rumoured. The committee’s intentions could not be denied:
it was a question of systematically strangling an original artist. He,
after his first burst of passion, vented all his anger upon his work,
which he stigmatised as false, dishonest, and execrable. It was a
well-deserved lesson, which he should remember: ought he to have
relapsed into that cellar-like studio light? Was he going to revert to
the filthy cooking of imaginary figures? When the picture came back, he
took a knife and ripped it from top to bottom.
And so during the third year he obstinately toiled on a work of revolt.
He wanted the blazing sun, that Paris sun which, on certain days, turns
the pavement to a white heat in the dazzling reflection from the house
frontages. Nowhere is it hotter; even people from burning climes mop
their faces; you would say you were in some region of Africa beneath the
heavily raining glow of a sky on fire. The subject Claude chose was a
corner of the Place du Carrousel, at one o’clock in the afternoon, when
the sunrays fall vertically. A cab was jolting along, its driver half
asleep, its horse steaming, with drooping head, vague amid the throbbing
heat. The passers-by seemed, as it were, intoxicated, with the one
exception of a young woman, who, rosy and gay under her parasol, walked
on with an easy queen-like step, as if the fiery element were her proper
sphere. But what especially rendered this picture terrible was a new
interpretation of the effects of light, a very accurate decomposition
of the sunrays, which ran counter to all the habits of eyesight, by
emphasising blues, yellows and reds, where nobody had been accustomed to
see any. In the background the Tuileries vanished in a golden shimmer;
the paving-stones bled, so to say; the figures were only so many
indications, sombre patches eaten into by the vivid glare. This time his
comrades, while still praising, looked embarrassed, all seized with
the same apprehensions. Such painting could only lead to martyrdom. He,
amidst their praises, understood well enough the rupture that was taking
place, and when the hanging committee had once more closed the Salon
against him, he dolorously exclaimed, in a moment of lucidity:
‘All right; it’s an understood thing--I’ll die at the task.’
However, although his obstinate courage seemed to increase, he now and
then gradually relapsed into his former doubts, consumed by the struggle
he was waging with nature. Every canvas that came back to him seemed bad
to him--above all incomplete, not realising what he had aimed at. It was
this idea of impotence that exasperated him even more than the refusals
of the hanging committee. No doubt he did not forgive the latter; his
works, even in an embryo state, were a hundred times better than all
the trash which was accepted. But what suffering he felt at being ever
unable to show himself in all his strength, in such a master-piece as he
could not bring his genius to yield! There were always some superb bits
in his paintings. He felt satisfied with this, that, and the other. Why,
then, were there sudden voids? Why were there inferior bits, which he
did not perceive while he was at work, but which afterwards utterly
killed the picture like ineffaceable defects? And he felt quite
unable to make any corrections; at certain moments a wall rose up, an
insuperable obstacle, beyond which he was forbidden to venture. If he
touched up the part that displeased him a score of times, so a score of
times did he aggravate the evil, till everything became quite muddled
and messy.
He grew anxious, and failed to see things clearly; his brush refused to
obey him, and his will was paralysed. Was it his hands or his eyes that
ceased to belong to him amid those progressive attacks of the hereditary
disorder that had already made him anxious? Those attacks became more
frequent; he once more lapsed into horrible weeks, wearing himself out,
oscillating betwixt uncertainty and hope; and his only support during
those terrible hours, which he spent in a desperate hand-to-hand
struggle with his rebellious work, was the consoling dream of his future
masterpiece, the one with which he would at last be fully satisfied, in
painting which his hands would show all the energy and deftness of true
creative skill. By some ever-recurring phenomenon, his longing to create
outstripped the quickness of his fingers; he never worked at one picture
without planning the one that was to follow. Then all that remained
to him was an eager desire to rid himself of the work on which he was
engaged, for it brought him torture; no doubt it would be good for
nothing; he was still making fatal concessions, having recourse to
trickery, to everything that a true artist should banish from his
conscience. But what he meant to do after that--ah! what he meant to
do--he beheld it superb and heroic, above attack and indestructible. All
this was the everlasting mirage that goads on the condemned disciples
of art, a falsehood that comes in a spirit of tenderness and compassion,
and without which production would become impossible to those who die of
their failure to create life.
In addition to those constantly renewed struggles with himself, Claude’s
material difficulties now increased. Was it not enough that he could not
give birth to what he felt existing within him? Must he also battle with
every-day cares? Though he refused to admit it, painting from nature in
the open air became impossible when a picture was beyond a certain size.
How could he settle himself in the streets amidst the crowd?--how obtain
from each person the necessary number of sittings? That sort of painting
must evidently be confined to certain determined subjects, landscapes,
small corners of the city, in which the figures would be but so many
silhouettes, painted in afterwards. There were also a thousand and one
difficulties connected with the weather; the wind which threatened to
carry off the easel, the rain which obliged one to interrupt one’s work.
On such days Claude came home in a rage, shaking his fist at the sky
and accusing nature of resisting him in order that he might not take and
vanquish her. He also complained bitterly of being poor; for his dream
was to have a movable studio, a vehicle in Paris, a boat on the Seine,
in both of which he would have lived like an artistic gipsy. But nothing
came to his aid, everything conspired against his work.
And Christine suffered with Claude. She had shared his hopes very
bravely, brightening the studio with her housewifely activity; but now
she sat down, discouraged, when she saw him powerless. At each picture
which was refused she displayed still deeper grief, hurt in her womanly
self-love, taking that pride in success which all women have. The
painter’s bitterness soured her also; she entered into his feelings and
passions, identified herself with his tastes, defended his painting,
which had become, as it were, part of herself, the one great concern of
their lives--indeed, the only important one henceforth, since it was the
one whence she expected all her happiness. She understood well enough
that art robbed her more and more of her lover each day, but the real
struggle between herself and art had not yet begun. For the time she
yielded, and let herself be carried away with Claude, so that they
might be but one--one only in the self-same effort. From that partial
abdication of self there sprang, however, a sadness, a dread of what
might be in store for her later on. Every now and then a shudder chilled
her to the very heart. She felt herself growing old, while intense
melancholy upset her, an unreasoning longing to weep, which she
satisfied in the gloomy studio for hours together, when she was alone
there.
At that period her heart expanded, as it were, and a mother sprang from
the loving woman. That motherly feeling for her big artist child was
made up of all the vague infinite pity which filled her with tenderness,
of the illogical fits of weakness into which she saw him fall each
hour, of the constant pardons which she was obliged to grant him. He was
beginning to make her unhappy, his caresses were few and far between, a
look of weariness constantly overspread his features. How could she love
him then if not with that other affection of every moment, remaining in
adoration before him, and unceasingly sacrificing herself? In her inmost
being insatiable passion still lingered; she was still the sensuous
woman with thick lips set in obstinately prominent jaws. Yet there was
a gentle melancholy, in being merely a mother to him, in trying to make
him happy amid that life of theirs which now was spoilt.
Little Jacques was the only one to suffer from that transfer of
tenderness. She neglected him more; the man, his father, became her
child, and the poor little fellow remained as mere testimony of their
great passion of yore. As she saw him grow up, and no longer require so
much care, she began to sacrifice him, without intentional harshness,
but merely because she felt like that. At meal-times she only gave
him the inferior bits; the cosiest nook near the stove was not for his
little chair; if ever the fear of an accident made her tremble now
and then, her first cry, her first protecting movement was not for her
helpless child. She ever relegated him to the background, suppressed
him, as it were: ‘Jacques, be quiet; you tire your father. Jacques, keep
still; don’t you see that your father is at work?’
The urchin suffered from being cooped up in Paris. He, who had had the
whole country-side to roll about in, felt stifled in the narrow space
where he now had to keep quiet. His rosy cheeks became pale, he grew up
puny, serious, like a little man, with eyes which stared at things in
wonder. He was five by now, and his head by a singular phenomenon had
become disproportionately large, in such wise as to make his father say,
‘He has a great man’s nut!’ But the child’s intelligence seemed, on the
contrary, to decrease in proportion as his skull became larger. Very
gentle and timid, he became absorbed in thought for hours, incapable of
answering a question. And when he emerged from that state of immobility
he had mad fits of shouting and jumping, like a young animal giving rein
to instinct. At such times warnings ‘to keep quiet’ rained upon him, for
his mother failed to understand his sudden outbursts, and became uneasy
at seeing the father grow irritated as he sat before his easel. Getting
cross herself, she would then hastily seat the little fellow in his
corner again. Quieted all at once, giving the startled shudder of one
who has been too abruptly awakened, the child would after a time doze
off with his eyes wide open, so careless of enjoying life that his toys,
corks, pictures, and empty colour-tubes dropped listlessly from his
hands. Christine had already tried to teach him his alphabet, but he
had cried and struggled, so they had decided to wait another year or two
before sending him to school, where his masters would know how to make
him learn.
Christine at last began to grow frightened at the prospect of impending
misery. In Paris, with that growing child beside them, living proved
expensive, and the end of each month became terrible, despite her
efforts to save in every direction. They had nothing certain but
Claude’s thousand francs a year; and how could they live on fifty
francs a month, which was all that was left to them after deducting four
hundred francs for the rent? At first they had got out of embarrassment,
thanks to the sale of a few pictures, Claude having found Gagnière’s old
amateur, one of those detested bourgeois who possess the ardent souls
of artists, despite the monomaniacal habits in which they are confined.
This one, M. Hue, a retired chief clerk in a public department, was
unfortunately not rich enough to be always buying, and he could only
bewail the purblindness of the public, which once more allowed a genius
to die of starvation; for he himself, convinced, struck by grace at the
first glance, had selected Claude’s crudest works, which he hung by the
side of his Delacroix, predicting equal fortune for them. The worst was
that Papa Malgras had just retired after making his fortune. It was but
a modest competence after all, an income of about ten thousand francs,
upon which he had decided to live in a little house at Bois Colombes,
like the careful man he was.
It was highly amusing to hear him speak of the famous Naudet, full of
disdain for the millions turned over by that speculator, ‘millions
that would some day fall upon his nose,’ said Malgras. Claude, having
casually met him, only succeeded in selling him a last picture, one of
his sketches from the nude made at the Boutin studio, that superb study
of a woman’s trunk which the erstwhile dealer had not been able to see
afresh without feeling a revival of his old passion for it. So misery
was imminent; outlets were closing instead of new ones opening;
disquieting rumours were beginning to circulate concerning the young
painter’s works, so constantly rejected at the Salon; and besides,
Claude’s style of art, so revolutionary and imperfect, in which the
startled eye found nought of admitted conventionality, would of itself
have sufficed to drive away wealthy buyers. One evening, being unable
to settle his bill at his colour shop, the painter had exclaimed that he
would live upon the capital of his income rather than lower himself to
the degrading production of trade pictures. But Christine had violently
opposed such an extreme measure; she would retrench still further;
in short, she preferred anything to such madness, which would end by
throwing them into the streets without even bread to eat.
After the rejection of Claude’s third picture, the summer proved so
wonderfully fine that the painter seemed to derive new strength from
it. There was not a cloud; limpid light streamed day after day upon the
giant activity of Paris. Claude had resumed his peregrinations through
the city, determined to find a masterstroke, as he expressed it,
something huge, something decisive, he did not exactly know what.
September came, and still he had found nothing that satisfied him;
he simply went mad for a week about one or another subject, and then
declared that it was not the thing after all. His life was spent in
constant excitement; he was ever on the watch, on the point of setting
his hand on the realisation of his dream, which always flew away. In
reality, beneath his intractable realism lay the superstition of a
nervous woman; he believed in occult and complex influences; everything,
luck or ill-luck, must depend upon the view selected.
One afternoon--it was one of the last fine days of the season--Claude
took Christine out with him, leaving little Jacques in the charge of the
doorkeeper, a kind old woman, as was their wont when they wanted to go
out together. That day the young painter was possessed by a sudden whim
to ramble about and revisit in Christine’s company the nooks beloved in
other days; and behind this desire of his there lurked a vague hope
that she would bring him luck. And thus they went as far as the Pont
Louis-Philippe, and remained for a quarter of an hour on the Quai des
Ormes, silent, leaning against the parapet, and looking at the old Hôtel
du Martoy, across the Seine, where they had first loved each other.
Then, still without saying a word, they went their former round; they
started along the quays, under the plane trees, seeing the past rise up
before them at every step. Everything spread out again: the bridges
with their arches opening upon the sheeny water; the Cité, enveloped in
shade, above which rose the flavescent towers of Notre-Dame; the
great curve of the right bank flooded with sunlight, and ending in the
indistinct silhouette of the Pavillon de Flore, together with the broad
avenues, the monuments and edifices on both banks, and all the life of
the river, the floating wash-houses, the baths, and the lighters.
As of old, the orb in its decline followed them, seemingly rolling along
the distant housetops, and assuming a crescent shape, as it appeared
from behind the dome of the Institute. There was a dazzling sunset, they
had never beheld a more magnificent one, such a majestic descent amidst
tiny cloudlets that changed into purple network, between the meshes of
which a shower of gold escaped. But of the past that thus rose up before
their eyes there came to them nought but invincible sadness--a sensation
that things escaped them, and that it was impossible for them to retrace
their way up stream and live their life over again. All those old stones
remained cold. The constant current beneath the bridges, the water that
had ever flowed onward and onward, seemed to have borne away something
of their own selves, the delight of early desire and the joyfulness of
hope. Now that they belonged to one another, they no longer tasted the
simple happiness born of feeling the warm pressure of their arms as they
strolled on slowly, enveloped by the mighty vitality of Paris.
On reaching the Pont des Saints-Pères, Claude, in sheer despair, stopped
short. He had relinquished Christine’s arm, and had turned his face
towards the point of the Cité. She no doubt felt the severance that
was taking place and became very sad. Seeing that he lingered there
obliviously, she wished to regain her hold upon him.
‘My dear,’ said she, ‘let us go home; it’s time. Jacques will be waiting
for us, you know.’
But he went half way across the bridge, and she had to follow him. Then
once more he remained motionless, with his eyes still fixed on the Cité,
on that island which ever rode at anchor, the cradle and heart of Paris,
where for centuries all the blood of her arteries had converged amid the
constant growth of faubourgs invading the plain. And a glow came
over Claude’s face, his eyes sparkled, and at last he made a sweeping
gesture:
‘Look! Look!’
In the immediate foreground beneath them was the port of St. Nicolas,
with the low shanties serving as offices for the inspectors of
navigation, and the large paved river-bank sloping down, littered with
piles of sand, barrels, and sacks, and edged with a row of lighters,
still full, in which busy lumpers swarmed beneath the gigantic arm of
an iron crane. Then on the other side of the river, above a cold
swimming-bath, resounding with the shouts of the last bathers of the
season, the strips of grey linen that served as a roofing flapped in
the wind. In the middle, the open stream flowed on in rippling, greenish
wavelets tipped here and there with white, blue, and pink. And then
there came the Pont des Arts, standing back, high above the water on
its iron girders, like black lace-work, and animated by a ceaseless
procession of foot-passengers, who looked like ants careering over the
narrow line of the horizontal plane. Below, the Seine flowed away to
the far distance; you saw the old arches of the Pont-Neuf, browny
with stone-rust; on the left, as far as the Isle of St. Louis, came a
mirror-like gap; and the other arm of the river curved sharply, the lock
gates of the Mint shutting out the view with a bar of foam. Along the
Pont-Neuf passed big yellow omnibuses, motley vehicles of all kinds,
with the mechanical regularity of so many children’s toys. The whole of
the background was inframed within the perspective of the two banks; on
the right were houses on the quays, partly hidden by a cluster of lofty
trees, from behind which on the horizon there emerged a corner of the
Hôtel de Ville, together with the square clock tower of St. Gervais,
both looking as indistinct as if they had stood far away in the suburbs.
And on the left bank there was a wing of the Institute, the flat
frontage of the Mint, and yet another enfilade of trees.
But the centre of the immense picture, that which rose most prominently
from the stream and soared to the sky, was the Cité, showing like the
prow of an antique vessel, ever burnished by the setting sun. Down
below, the poplars on the strip of ground that joins the two sections
of the Pont-Neuf hid the statue of Henri IV. with a dense mass of green
foliage. Higher up, the sun set the two lines of frontages in contrast,
wrapping the grey buildings of the Quai de l’Horloge in shade, and
illumining with a blaze those of the Quai des Orfèvres, rows of
irregular houses which stood out so clearly that one distinguished the
smallest details, the shops, the signboards, even the curtains at the
windows. Higher up, amid the jagged outlines of chimney stacks, behind a
slanting chess-board of smaller roofs, the pepper-caster turrets of the
Palais de Justice and the garrets of the Prefecture of Police displayed
sheets of slate, intersected by a colossal advertisement painted in blue
upon a wall, with gigantic letters which, visible to all Paris, seemed
like some efflorescence of the feverish life of modern times sprouting
on the city’s brow. Higher, higher still, betwixt the twin towers of
Notre-Dame, of the colour of old gold, two arrows darted upwards,
the spire of the cathedral itself, and to the left that of the
Sainte-Chapelle, both so elegantly slim that they seemed to quiver in
the breeze, as if they had been the proud topmasts of the ancient vessel
rising into the brightness of the open sky.
‘Are you coming, dear?’ asked Christine, gently.
Claude did not listen to her; this, the heart of Paris, had taken full
possession of him. The splendid evening seemed to widen the horizon.
There were patches of vivid light, and of clearly defined shadow; there
was a brightness in the precision of each detail, a transparency in the
air, which throbbed with gladness. And the river life, the turmoil of
the quays, all the people, streaming along the streets, rolling over the
bridges, arriving from every side of that huge cauldron, Paris, steamed
there in visible billows, with a quiver that was apparent in the
sunlight. There was a light breeze, high aloft a flight of small
cloudlets crossed the paling azure sky, and one could hear a slow
but mighty palpitation, as if the soul of Paris here dwelt around its
cradle.
But Christine, frightened at seeing Claude so absorbed, and seized
herself with a kind of religious awe, took hold of his arm and dragged
him away, as if she had felt that some great danger was threatening him.
‘Let us go home. You are doing yourself harm. I want to get back.’
At her touch he started like a man disturbed in sleep. Then, turning his
head to take a last look, he muttered: ‘Ah! heavens! Ah! heavens, how
beautiful!’
He allowed himself to be led away. But throughout the evening, first
at dinner, afterwards beside the stove, and until he went to bed, he
remained like one dazed, so deep in his cogitations that he did not
utter half a dozen sentences. And Christine, failing to draw from him
any answer to her questions, at last became silent also. She looked
at him anxiously; was it the approach of some serious illness, had he
inhaled some bad air whilst standing midway across the bridge yonder?
His eyes stared vaguely into space, his face flushed as if with
some inner straining. One would have thought it the mute travail of
germination, as if something were springing into life within him.
The next morning, immediately after breakfast, he set off, and Christine
spent a very sorrowful day, for although she had become more easy in
mind on hearing him whistle some of his old southern tunes as he got up,
she was worried by another matter, which she had not mentioned to him
for fear of damping his spirits again. That day they would for the first
time lack everything; a whole week separated them from the date when
their little income would fall due, and she had spent her last copper
that morning. She had nothing left for the evening, not even the
wherewithal to buy a loaf. To whom could she apply? How could she manage
to hide the truth any longer from him when he came home hungry? She
made up her mind to pledge the black silk dress which Madame Vanzade
had formerly given her, but it was with a heavy heart; she trembled with
fear and shame at the idea of the pawnshop, that familiar resort of the
poor which she had never as yet entered. And she was tortured by such
apprehension about the future, that from the ten francs which were lent
her she only took enough to make a sorrel soup and a stew of potatoes.
On coming out of the pawn-office, a meeting with somebody she knew had
given her the finishing stroke.
As it happened, Claude came home very late, gesticulating merrily, and
his eyes very bright, as if he were excited by some secret joy; he was
very hungry, and grumbled because the cloth was not laid. Then, having
sat down between Christine and little Jacques, he swallowed his soup and
devoured a plateful of potatoes.
‘Is that all?’ he asked, when he had finished. ‘You might as well have
added a scrap of meat. Did you have to buy some boots again?’
She stammered, not daring to tell him the truth, but hurt at heart by
this injustice. He, however, went on chaffing her about the coppers
she juggled away to buy herself things with; and getting more and more
excited, amid the egotism of feelings which he seemingly wished to keep
to himself, he suddenly flew out at Jacques.
‘Hold your noise, you brat!--you drive one mad.’
The child, forgetting all about his dinner, had been tapping the edge
of his plate with his spoon, his eyes full of mirthful delight at this
music.
‘Jacques, be quiet,’ scoldingly said his mother, in her turn. ‘Let your
father have his dinner in peace.’
Then the little one, abashed, at once became very quiet, and relapsed
into gloomy stillness, with his lustreless eyes fixed on his potatoes,
which, however, he did not eat.
Claude made a show of stuffing himself with cheese, while Christine,
quite grieved, offered to fetch some cold meat from a ham and beef shop;
but he declined, and prevented her going by words that pained her still
more. Then, the table having been cleared, they all sat round the lamp
for the evening, she sewing, the little one turning over a picture-book
in silence, and Claude drumming on the table with his fingers, his mind
the while wandering back to the spot whence he had come. Suddenly he
rose, sat down again with a sheet of paper and a pencil, and began
sketching rapidly, in the vivid circle of light that fell from under the
lamp-shade. And such was his longing to give outward expression to the
tumultuous ideas beating in his skull, that soon this sketch did not
suffice for his relief. On the contrary, it goaded him on, and he
finished by unburthening his mind in a flood of words. He would have
shouted to the walls; and if he addressed himself to his wife it was
because she happened to be there.
‘Look, that’s what we saw yesterday. It’s magnificent. I spent three
hours there to-day. I’ve got hold of what I want--something wonderful,
something that’ll knock everything else to pieces. Just look! I station
myself under the bridge; in the immediate foreground I have the Port of
St. Nicolas, with its crane, its lighters which are being unloaded, and
its crowd of labourers. Do you see the idea--it’s Paris at work--all
those brawny fellows displaying their bare arms and chests? Then on
the other side I have the swimming-baths--Paris at play--and some skiff
there, no doubt, to occupy the centre of the composition; but of that
I am not as yet certain. I must feel my way. As a matter of course, the
Seine will be in the middle, broad, immense.’
While talking, he kept on indicating outlines with his pencil,
thickening his strokes over and over again, and tearing the paper in
his very energy. She, in order to please him, bent over the sketch,
pretending to grow very interested in his explanations. But there was
such a labyrinth of lines, such a confusion of summary details, that she
failed to distinguish anything.
‘You are following me, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, very beautiful indeed.’
‘Then I have the background, the two arms of the rivet with their quays,
the Cité, rising up triumphantly in the centre, and standing out against
the sky. Ah! that background, what a marvel! People see it every day,
pass before it without stopping; but it takes hold of one all the same;
one’s admiration accumulates, and one fine afternoon it bursts forth.
Nothing in the world can be grander; it is Paris herself, glorious in
the sunlight. Ah! what a fool I was not to think of it before! How many
times I have looked at it without seeing! However, I stumbled on it
after that ramble along the quays! And, do you remember, there’s a dash
of shadow on that side; while here the sunrays fall quite straight. The
towers are yonder; the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle tapers upward, as
slim as a needle pointing to the sky. But no, it’s more to the right.
Wait, I’ll show you.’
He began again, never wearying, but constantly retouching the sketch,
and adding innumerable little characteristic details which his painter’s
eye had noticed; here the red signboard of a distant shop vibrated in
the light; closer by was a greenish bit of the Seine, on whose surface
large patches of oil seemed to be floating; and then there was the
delicate tone of a tree, the gamut of greys supplied by the house
frontages, and the luminous cast of the sky. She complaisantly approved
of all he said and tried to look delighted.
But Jacques once again forgot what he had been told. After long
remaining silent before his book, absorbed in the contemplation of a
wood-cut depicting a black cat, he began to hum some words of his own
composition: ‘Oh, you pretty cat; oh, you ugly cat; oh, you pretty, ugly
cat,’ and so on, _ad infinitum_, ever in the same lugubrious manner.
Claude, who was made fidgety by the buzzing noise, did not at first
understand what was upsetting him. But after a time the child’s
harassing phrase fell clearly upon his ear.
‘Haven’t you done worrying us with your cat?’ he shouted furiously.
‘Hold your tongue, Jacques, when your father is talking!’ repeated
Christine.
Upon my word, I do believe he is becoming an idiot. Just look at his
head, if it isn’t like an idiot’s. It’s dreadful. Just say; what do you
mean by your pretty and ugly cat?’
The little fellow, turning pale and wagging his big head, looked stupid,
and replied: ‘Don’t know.’
Then, as his father and mother gazed at each other with a discouraged
air, he rested his cheek on the open picture-book, and remained like
that, neither stirring nor speaking, but with his eyes wide open.
It was getting late; Christine wanted to put him to bed, but Claude had
already resumed his explanations. He now told her that, the very next
morning, he should go and make a sketch on the spot, just in order to
fix his ideas. And, as he rattled on, he began to talk of buying a small
camp easel, a thing upon which he had set his heart for months. He kept
harping on the subject, and spoke of money matters till she at last
became embarrassed, and ended by telling him of everything--the last
copper she had spent that morning, and the silk dress she had pledged
in order to dine that evening. Thereupon he became very remorseful
and affectionate; he kissed her and asked her forgiveness for having
complained about the dinner. She would excuse him, surely; he would have
killed father and mother, as he kept on repeating, when that confounded
painting got hold of him. As for the pawn-shop, it made him laugh; he
defied misery.
‘I tell you that we are all right,’ he exclaimed. ‘That picture means
success.’
She kept silent, thinking about her meeting of the morning, which she
wished to hide from him; but without apparent cause or transition, in
the kind of torpor that had come over her, the words she would have kept
back rose invincibly to her lips.
‘Madame Vanzade is dead,’ she said.
He looked surprised. Ah! really? How did she, Christine, know it?
‘I met the old man-servant. Oh, he’s a gentleman by now, looking very
sprightly, in spite of his seventy years. I did not know him again. It
was he who spoke to me. Yes, she died six weeks ago. Her millions have
gone to various charities, with the exception of an annuity to the
old servants, upon which they are living snugly like people of the
middle-classes.’
He looked at her, and at last murmured, in a saddened voice: ‘My poor
Christine, you are regretting things now, aren’t you? She would have
given you a marriage portion, have found you a husband! I told you so in
days gone by. She would, perhaps, have left you all her money, and you
wouldn’t now be starving with a crazy fellow like myself.’
She then seemed to wake from her dream. She drew her chair to his,
caught hold of one of his arms and nestled against him, as if her whole
being protested against his words:
‘What are you saying? Oh! no; oh! no. It would have been shameful to
have thought of her money. I would confess it to you if it were the
case, and you know that I never tell lies; but I myself don’t know what
came over me when I heard the news. I felt upset and saddened, so sad
that I imagined everything was over for me. It was no doubt remorse;
yes, remorse at having deserted her so brutally, poor invalid that she
was, the good old soul who called me her daughter! I behaved very badly,
and it won’t bring me luck. Ah! don’t say “No,” I feel it well enough;
henceforth there’s an end to everything for me.’
Then she wept, choked by those confused regrets, the significance of
which she failed to understand, regrets mingling with the one feeling
that her life was spoilt, and that she now had nothing but unhappiness
before her.
‘Come, wipe your eyes,’ said Claude, becoming affectionate once more.
‘Is it possible that you, who were never nervous, can conjure up
chimeras and worry yourself in this way? Dash it all, we shall get out
of our difficulties! First of all, you know that it was through you that
I found the subject for my picture. There cannot be much of a curse upon
you, since you bring me luck.’
He laughed, and she shook her head, seeing well enough that he wanted to
make her smile. She was suffering on account of his picture already; for
on the bridge he had completely forgotten her, as if she had ceased to
belong to him! And, since the previous night, she had realised that he
was farther and farther removed from her, alone in a world to which she
could not ascend. But she allowed him to soothe her, and they exchanged
one of their kisses of yore, before rising from the table to retire to
rest.
Little Jacques had heard nothing. Benumbed by his stillness, he had
fallen asleep, with his cheek on his picture-book; and his big head, so
heavy at times that it bent his neck, looked pale in the lamplight.
Poor little offspring of genius, which, when it begets at all, so often
begets idiocy or physical imperfection! When his mother put him to bed
Jacques did not even open his eyes.
It was only at this period that the idea of marrying Christine came
to Claude. Though yielding to the advice of Sandoz, who expressed
his surprise at the prolongation of an irregular situation which no
circumstances justified, he more particularly gave way to a feeling
of pity, to a desire to show himself kind to his mistress, and to win
forgiveness for his delinquencies. He had seen her so sad of late, so
uneasy with respect to the future, that he did not know how to revive
her spirits. He himself was growing soured, and relapsing into his
former fits of anger, treating her, at times, like a servant, to whom
one flings a week’s notice. Being his lawful wife, she would, no doubt,
feel herself more in her rightful home, and would suffer less from his
rough behaviour. She herself, for that matter, had never again spoken
of marriage. She seemed to care nothing for earthly things, but entirely
reposed upon him; however, he understood well enough that it grieved
her that she was not able to visit at Sandoz’s. Besides, they no longer
lived amid the freedom and solitude of the country; they were in Paris,
with its thousand and one petty spites, everything that is calculated
to wound a woman in an irregular position. In reality, he had nothing
against marriage save his old prejudices, those of an artist who takes
life as he lists. Since he was never to leave her, why not afford her
that pleasure? And, in fact, when he spoke to her about it, she gave a
loud cry and threw her arms round his neck, surprised at experiencing
such great emotion. During a whole week it made her feel thoroughly
happy. But her joy subsided long before the ceremony.
Moreover, Claude did not hurry over any of the formalities, and they had
to wait a long while for the necessary papers. He continued getting the
sketches for his picture together, and she, like himself, did not seem
in the least impatient. What was the good? It would assuredly make no
difference in their life. They had decided to be married merely at the
municipal offices, not in view of displaying any contempt for religion,
but to get the affair over quickly and simply. That would suffice.
The question of witnesses embarrassed them for a moment. As she was
absolutely unacquainted with anybody, he selected Sandoz and Mahoudeau
to act for her. For a moment he had thought of replacing the latter by
Dubuche, but he never saw the architect now, and he feared to compromise
him. He, Claude, would be content with Jory and Gagnière. In that way
the affair would pass off among friends, and nobody would talk of it.
Several weeks had gone by; they were in December, and the weather proved
terribly cold. On the day before the wedding, although they barely had
thirty-five francs left them, they agreed that they could not send their
witnesses away with a mere shake of the hand; and, rather than have
a lot of trouble in the studio, they decided to offer them lunch at a
small restaurant on the Boulevard de Clichy, after which they would all
go home.
In the morning, while Christine was tacking a collar to a grey linsey
gown which, with the coquetry of woman, she had made for the occasion,
it occurred to Claude, who was already wearing his frock-coat and
kicking his heels impatiently, to go and fetch Mahoudeau, for the
latter, he asserted, was quite capable of forgetting all about the
appointment. Since autumn, the sculptor had been living at Montmartre,
in a small studio in the Rue des Tilleuls. He had moved thither in
consequence of a series of affairs that had quite upset him. First
of all, he had been turned out of the fruiterer’s shop in the Rue du
Cherche-Midi for not paying his rent; then had come a definite rupture
with Chaîne, who, despairing of being able to live by his brush, had
rushed into commercial enterprise, betaking himself to all the fairs
around Paris as the manager of a kind of ‘fortune’s wheel’ belonging to
a widow; while last of all had come the sudden flight of Mathilde, her
herbalist’s business sold up, and she herself disappearing, it seemed,
with some mysterious admirer. At present Mahoudeau lived all by himself
in greater misery than ever, only eating when he secured a job at
scraping some architectural ornaments, or preparing work for some more
prosperous fellow-sculptor.
‘I am going to fetch him, do you hear?’ Claude repeated to Christine.
‘We still have a couple of hours before us. And, if the others come,
make them wait. We’ll go to the municipal offices all together.’
Once outside, Claude hurried along in the nipping cold which loaded
his moustache with icicles. Mahoudeau’s studio was at the end of a
conglomeration of tenements--‘rents,’ so to say--and he had to cross a
number of small gardens, white with rime, and showing the bleak, stiff
melancholy of cemeteries. He could distinguish his friend’s place from
afar on account of the colossal plaster statue of the ‘Vintaging Girl,’
the once successful exhibit of the Salon, for which there had not been
sufficient space in the narrow ground-floor studio. Thus it was rotting
out in the open like so much rubbish shot from a cart, a lamentable
spectacle, weather-bitten, riddled by the rain’s big, grimy tears. The
key was in the door, so Claude went in.
‘Hallo! have you come to fetch me?’ said Mahoudeau, in surprise. ‘I’ve
only got my hat to put on. But wait a bit, I was asking myself whether
it wouldn’t be better to light a little fire. I am uneasy about my woman
there.’
Some water in a bucket was ice-bound. So cold was the studio that it
froze inside as hard as it did out of doors, for, having been penniless
for a whole week, Mahoudeau had gingerly eked out the little coal
remaining to him, only lighting the stove for an hour or two of a
morning. His studio was a kind of tragic cavern, compared with which the
shop of former days evoked reminiscences of snug comfort, such was the
tomb-like chill that fell on one’s shoulders from the creviced ceiling
and the bare walls. In the various corners some statues, of less bulky
dimensions than the ‘Vintaging Girl,’ plaster figures which had been
modelled with passion and exhibited, and which had then come back for
want of buyers, seemed to be shivering with their noses turned to the
wall, forming a melancholy row of cripples, some already badly damaged,
showing mere stumps of arms, and all dust-begrimed and clay-bespattered.
Under the eyes of their artist creator, who had given them his heart’s
blood, those wretched nudities dragged out years of agony. At first, no
doubt, they were preserved with jealous care, despite the lack of room,
but then they lapsed into the grotesque honor of all lifeless things,
until a day came when, taking up a mallet, he himself finished them off,
breaking them into mere lumps of plaster, so as to be rid of them.
‘You say we have got two hours, eh?’ resumed Mahoudeau. ‘Well, I’ll just
light a bit of fire; it will be the wiser perhaps.’
Then, while lighting the stove, he began bewailing his fate in an angry
voice. What a dog’s life a sculptor’s was! The most bungling stonemason
was better off. A figure which the Government bought for three thousand
francs cost well nigh two thousand, what with its model, clay, marble
or bronze, all sorts of expenses, indeed, and for all that it remained
buried in some official cellar on the pretext that there was no room
for it elsewhere. The niches of the public buildings remained empty,
pedestals were awaiting statues in the public gardens. No matter, there
was never any room! And there were no possible commissions from private
people; at best one received an order for a few busts, and at very rare
intervals one for a memorial statue, subscribed for by the public and
hurriedly executed at reduced terms. Sculpture was the noblest of arts,
the most manly, yes, but the one which led the most surely to death by
starvation!
‘Is your machine progressing?’ asked Claude.
‘Without this confounded cold, it would be finished,’ answered
Mahoudeau. ‘I’ll show it you.’
He rose from his knees after listening to the snorting of the stove.
In the middle of the studio, on a packing-case, strengthened by
cross-pieces, stood a statue swathed is linen wraps which were quite
rigid, hard frozen, draping the figure with the whiteness of a shroud.
This statue embodied Mahoudeau’s old dream, unrealised until now from
lack of means--it was an upright figure of that bathing girl of whom
more than a dozen small models had been knocking about his place for
years. In a moment of impatient revolt he himself had manufactured
trusses and stays out of broom-handles, dispensing with the necessary
iron work in the hope that the wood would prove sufficiently solid.
From time to time he shook the figure to try it, but as yet it had not
budged.
‘The devil!’ he muttered; ‘some warmth will do her good. These wraps
seem glued to her--they form quite a breastplate.’
The linen was crackling between his fingers, and splinters of ice were
breaking off. He was obliged to wait until the heat produced a slight
thaw, and then with great care he stripped the figure, baring the
head first, then the bosom, and then the hips, well pleased at finding
everything intact, and smiling like a lover at a woman fondly adored.
‘Well, what do you think of it?’
Claude, who had only previously seen a little rough model of the statue,
nodded his head, in order that he might not have to answer immediately.
Decidedly, that good fellow Mahoudeau was turning traitor, and drifting
towards gracefulness, in spite of himself, for pretty things ever sprang
from under his big fingers, former stonecutter though he was. Since
his colossal ‘Vintaging Girl,’ he had gone on reducing and reducing the
proportions of his figures without appearing to be aware of it himself,
always ready to stick out ferociously for the gigantic, which agreed
with his temperament, but yielding to the partiality of his eyes for
sweetness and gracefulness. And indeed real nature broke at last through
inflated ambition. Exaggerated still, his ‘Bathing Girl’ was already
possessed of great charm, with her quivering shoulders and her
tightly-crossed arms that supported her breast.
‘Well, you don’t like her?’ he asked, looking annoyed.
‘Oh, yes, I do! I think you are right to tone things down a bit, seeing
that you feel like that. You’ll have a great success with this. Yes,
it’s evident it will please people very much.’
Mahoudeau, whom such praises would once have thrown into consternation,
seemed delighted. He explained that he wished to conquer public opinion
without relinquishing a tithe of his convictions.
‘Ah! dash it! it takes a weight off my mind to find you pleased,’ said
he, ‘for I should have destroyed it if you had told me to do so, I
give you my word! Another fortnight’s work, and I’ll sell my skin to no
matter whom in order to pay the moulder. I say, I shall have a fine show
at the Salon, perhaps get a medal.’
He laughed, waved his arms about, and then, breaking off:
‘As we are not in a hurry, sit down a bit. I want to get the wraps quite
thawed.’
The stove, which was becoming red hot, diffused great heat. The figure,
placed close by, seemed to revive under the warm air that now crept up
her from her shins to her neck. And the two friends, who had sat down,
continued looking the statue full in the face, chatting about it and
noting each detail. The sculptor especially grew excited in his delight,
and indulged in caressing gestures.
All at once, however, Claude fancied he was the victim of some
hallucination. To him the figure seemed to be moving; a quiver like
the ripple of a wavelet crossed her stomach, and her left hip became
straightened, as if the right leg were about to step out.
‘Have you noticed the smooth surface just about the loins?’ Mahoudeau
went on, without noticing anything. ‘Ah, my boy, I took great pains over
that!’
But by degrees the whole statue was becoming animated. The loins swayed
and the bosom swelled, as with a deep sigh, between the parted arms. And
suddenly the head drooped, the thighs bent, and the figure came forward
like a living being, with all the wild anguish, the grief-inspired
spring of a woman who is flinging herself down.
Claude at last understood things, when Mahoudeau uttered a terrible cry.
‘By heavens, she’s breaking to pieces!--she is coming down!’
The clay, in thawing, had snapped the weak wooden trusses. There came a
cracking noise, as if bones indeed were splitting; and Mahoudeau, with
the same passionate gesture with which he had caressed the figure from
afar, working himself into a fever, opened both arms, at the risk of
being killed by the fall. For a moment the bathing girl swayed to and
fro, and then with one crash came down on her face, broken in twain at
the ankles, and leaving her feet sticking to the boards.
Claude had jumped up to hold his friend back.
‘Dash it! you’ll be smashed!’ he cried.
But dreading to see her finish herself off on the floor, Mahoudeau
remained with hands outstretched. And the girl seemed to fling herself
on his neck. He caught her in his arms, winding them tightly around her.
Her bosom was flattened against his shoulder and her thighs beat against
his own, while her decapitated head rolled upon the floor. The shock was
so violent that Mahoudeau was carried off his legs and thrown over, as
far back as the wall; and there, without relaxing his hold on the girl’s
trunk, he remained as if stunned lying beside her.
‘Ah! confound it!’ repeated Claude, furiously, believing that his friend
was dead.
With great difficulty Mahoudeau rose to his knees, and burst into
violent sobs. He had only damaged his face in the fall. Some blood
dribbled down one of his cheeks, mingling with his tears.
‘Ah! curse poverty!’ he said. ‘It’s enough to make a fellow drown
himself not to be able to buy a couple of rods! And there she is, there
she is!’
His sobs grew louder; they became an agonising wail; the painful
shrieking of a lover before the mutilated corpse of his affections. With
unsteady hands he touched the limbs lying in confusion around him; the
head, the torso, the arms that had snapped in twain; above aught else
the bosom, now caved in. That bosom, flattened, as if it had been
operated upon for some terrible disease, suffocated him, and he
unceasingly returned to it, probing the sore, trying to find the gash by
which life had fled, while his tears, mingled with blood, flowed freely,
and stained the statue’s gaping wounds with red.
‘Do help me!’ he gasped. ‘One can’t leave her like this.’
Claude was overcome also, and his own eyes grew moist from a feeling
of artistic brotherliness. He hastened to his comrade’s aide, but the
sculptor, after claiming his assistance, persisted in picking up the
remains by himself, as if dreading the rough handling of anybody else.
He slowly crawled about on his knees, took up the fragments one by
one, and put them together on a board. The figure soon lay there in its
entirety, as if it had been one of those girls who, committing suicide
from love, throw themselves from some monument and are shattered
by their fall, and put together again, looking both grotesque and
lamentable, to be carried to the Morgue. Mahoudeau, seated on the floor
before his statue, did not take his eyes from it, but became absorbed in
heart-rending contemplation. However, his sobs subsided, and at last
he said with a long-drawn sigh: ‘I shall have to model her lying down!
There’s no other way! Ah, my poor old woman, I had such trouble to set
her on her legs, and I thought her so grand like that!’
But all at once Claude grew uneasy. What about his wedding? Mahoudeau
must change his clothes. As he had no other frock-coat than the one he
was wearing, he was obliged to make a jacket do. Then, the figure having
been covered with linen wraps once more, like a corpse over which a
sheet has been pulled, they both started off at a run. The stove was
roaring away, the thaw filled the whole studio with water, and slush
streamed from the old dust-begrimed plaster casts.
When they reached the Rue de Douai there was no one there except little
Jacques, in charge of the doorkeeper. Christine, tired of waiting, had
just started off with the three others, thinking that there had been
some mistake--that Claude might have told her that he would go straight
to the mayor’s offices with Mahoudeau. The pair fell into a sharp trot,
but only overtook Christine and their comrades in the Rue Drouot in
front of the municipal edifice. They all went upstairs together, and
as they were late they met with a very cool reception from the usher on
duty. The wedding was got over in a few minutes, in a perfectly empty
room. The mayor mumbled on, and the bride and bridegroom curtly uttered
the binding ‘Yes,’ while their witnesses were marvelling at the bad
taste of the appointments of the apartment. Once outside, Claude took
Christine’s arm again, and that was all.
It was pleasant walking in the clear frosty weather. Thus the party
quietly went back on foot, climbing the Rue des Martyrs to reach the
restaurant on the Boulevard de Clichy. A small private room had been
engaged; the lunch was a very friendly affair, and not a word was
said about the simple formality that had just been gone through; other
subjects were spoken of all the while, as at one of their customary
gatherings.
It was thus that Christine, who in reality was very affected despite
her pretended indifference, heard her husband and his friends excite
themselves for three mortal hours about Mahoudeau’s unfortunate statue.
Since the others had been made acquainted with the story, they kept
harping on every particular of it. Sandoz thought the whole thing
very wonderful; Jory and Gagnière discussed the strength of stays and
trusses; the former mainly concerned about the monetary loss involved,
and the other demonstrating with a chair that the statue might have
been kept up. As for Mahoudeau, still very shaky and growing dazed; he
complained of a stiffness which he had not felt before; his limbs began
to hurt him, he had strained his muscles and bruised his skin as if he
had been caught in the embrace of a stone siren. Christine washed the
scratch on his cheek, which had begun to bleed again, and it seemed to
her as if the mutilated bathing girl had sat down to table with them,
as if she alone was of any importance that day; for she alone seemed to
interest Claude, whose narrative, repeated a score of times, was full of
endless particulars about the emotion he had felt on seeing that bosom
and those hips of clay shattered at his feet.
However, at dessert there came a diversion, for Gagnière all at once
remarked to Jory:
‘By the way, I saw you with Mathilde the day before yesterday. Yes, yes,
in the Rue Dauphine.’
Jory, who had turned very red, tried to deny it; ‘Oh, a mere accidental
meeting--honour bright!’ he stammered. ‘I don’t know where she hangs
out, or I would tell you.’
‘What! is it you who are hiding her?’ exclaimed Mahoudeau. ‘Well, nobody
wants to see her again!’
The truth was that Jory, throwing to the winds all his habits of
prudence and parsimony, was now secretly providing for Mathilde. She had
gained an ascendency over him by his vices.
They still lingered at table, and night was falling when they escorted
Mahoudeau to his own door. Claude and Christine, on reaching home, took
Jacques from the doorkeeper, and found the studio quite chilly, wrapped
in such dense gloom that they had to grope about for several minutes
before they were able to light the lamp. They also had to light the
stove again, and it struck seven o’clock before they were able to draw
breath at their ease. They were not hungry, so they merely finished the
remains of some boiled beef, mainly by way of encouraging the child to
eat his soup; and when they had put him to bed, they settled themselves
with the lamp betwixt them, as was their habit every evening.
However, Christine had not put out any work, she felt too much moved to
sew. She sat there with her hands resting idly on the table, looking at
Claude, who on his side had at once become absorbed in a sketch, a
bit of his picture, some workmen of the Port Saint Nicolas, unloading
plaster. Invincible dreaminess came over the young woman, all sorts of
recollections and regrets became apparent in the depths of her dim
eyes; and by degrees growing sadness, great mute grief took absolute
possession of her, amid the indifference, the boundless solitude into
which she seemed to be drifting, although she was so near to Claude. He
was, indeed, on the other side of the table, yet how far away she felt
him to be! He was yonder before that point of the Cité, he was even
farther still, in the infinite inaccessible regions of art; so far,
indeed, that she would now never more be able to join him! She several
times tried to start a conversation, but without eliciting any answer.
The hours went by, she grew weary and numb with doing nothing, and she
ended by taking out her purse and counting her money.
‘Do you know how much we have to begin our married life with?’
Claude did not even raise his head.
‘We’ve nine sous. Ah! talk of poverty--’
He shrugged his shoulders, and finally growled: ‘We shall be rich some
day; don’t fret.’
Then the silence fell again, and she did not even attempt to break it,
but gazed at her nine coppers laid in a row upon the table. At last, as
it struck midnight, she shivered, ill with waiting and chilled by the
cold.
‘Let’s go to bed, dear,’ she murmured; ‘I’m dead tired.’
He, however, was working frantically, and did not even hear her.
‘The fire’s gone out,’ she began again, ‘we shall make ourselves ill;
let’s go to bed.’
Her imploring voice reached him at last, and made him start with sudden
exasperation.
‘Oh! go if you like! You can see very well that I want to finish
something!’
She remained there for another minute, amazed by his sudden anger, her
face expressive of deep sorrow. Then, feeling that he would rather be
without her, that the very presence of a woman doing nothing upset him,
she rose from the table and went off, leaving the door wide open. Half
an hour, three-quarters went by, nothing stirred, not a sound came from
her room; but she was not asleep, her eyes were staring into the gloom;
and at last she timidly ventured upon a final appeal, from the depths of
the dark alcove.
An oath was the only reply she received. And nothing stirred after that.
She perhaps dozed off. The cold in the studio grew keener, and the wick
of the lamp began to carbonise and burn red, while Claude, still bending
over his sketch, did not seem conscious of the passing minutes.
At two o’clock, however, he rose up, furious to find the lamp going out
for lack of oil. He only had time to take it into the other room, so
that he might not have to undress in the dark. But his displeasure
increased on seeing that Christine’s eyes were wide open. He felt
inclined to complain of it. However, after some random remarks, he
suddenly exclaimed:
‘The most surprising thing is that her trunk wasn’t hurt!’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Christine, in amazement.
‘Why, Mahoudeau’s girl,’ he answered.
At this she shook nervously, turned and buried her face in the pillow;
and he was quite surprised on hearing her burst into sobs.
‘What! you are crying?’ he exclaimed.
She was choking, sobbing with heart-rending violence.
‘Come, what’s the matter with you?--I’ve said nothing to you. Come,
darling, what’s the matter?’
But, while he was speaking, the cause of her great grief dawned
upon him. No doubt, on a day like that, he ought to have shown more
affection; but his neglect was unintentional enough; he had not even
given the matter a thought. She surely knew him, said he; he became a
downright brute when he was at work. Then he bent over and embraced her.
But it was as if something irreparable had taken place, as if something
had for ever snapped, leaving a void between them. The formality of
marriage seemed to have killed love.