His Masterpiece — Chapter 10, Part C

‘Pray, let’s go,’ he said.

‘Take me away--I can’t stand it any longer.

’ They had all the trouble in the world to find a free table in the refreshment room.

People were pressed together in that big, shady retreat, girt round with brown serge drapery under the girders of the lofty iron flooring of the upstairs galleries.

In the background, and but partially visible in the darkness, stood three dressers displaying dishes of preserved fruit symmetrically ranged on shelves; while, nearer at hand, at counters placed on the right and left, two ladies, a dark one and a fair one, watched the crowd with a military air; and from the dim depths of this seeming cavern rose a sea of little marble tables, a tide of chairs, serried, entangled, surging, swelling, overflowing and spreading into the garden, under the broad, pallid light which fell from the glass roof.

At last Sandoz saw some people rise.

He darted forward and conquered the vacant table by sheer struggling with the mob.

‘Ah!

dash it!

we are here at all events.

What will you have to eat?

’ Claude made a gesture of indifference.

The lunch was execrable; there was some trout softened by over-boiling, some undercut of beef dried up in the oven, some asparagus smelling of moist linen, and, in addition, one had to fight to get served; for the hustled waiters, losing their heads, remained in distress in the narrow passages which the chairs were constantly blocking.

Behind the hangings on the left, one could hear a racket of saucepans and crockery; the kitchen being installed there on the sand, like one of those Kermesse cook-shops set up by the roadside in the open air.

Sandoz and Claude had to eat, seated obliquely and half strangled between two parties of people whose elbows almost ended by getting into their plates; and each time that a waiter passed he gave their chairs a shake with his hips.

However, the inconvenience, like the abominable cookery, made one gay.

People jested about the dishes, different tables fraternised together, common misfortune brought about a kind of pleasure party.

Strangers ended by sympathising; friends kept up conversations, although they were seated three rows distant from one another, and were obliged to turn their heads and gesticulate over their neighbours’ shoulders.

The women particularly became animated, at first rather anxious as to the crush, and then ungloving their hands, catching up their skirts, and laughing at the first thimbleful of neat wine they drank.

However, Sandoz, who had renounced finishing his meat, raised his voice amid the terrible hubbub caused by the chatter and the serving: ‘A bit of cheese, eh?

And let’s try to get some coffee.

’ Claude, whose eyes looked dreamy, did not hear.

He was gazing into the garden.

From his seat he could see the central clump of verdure, some lofty palms which stood in relief against the grey hangings with which the garden was decorated all round.

A circle of statues was set out there; and you could see the back of a faun; the profile of a young girl with full cheeks; the face of a bronze Gaul, a colossal bit of romanticism which irritated one by its stupid assumption of patriotism;

the trunk of a woman hanging by the wrists, some Andromeda of the Place Pigalle; and others, and others still following the bends of the pathways; rows of shoulders and hips, heads, breasts, legs, and arms, all mingling and growing indistinct in the distance.

On the left stretched a line of busts--such delightful ones--furnishing a most comical and uncommon suite of noses.

There was the huge pointed nose of a priest, the tip-tilted nose of a soubrette, the handsome classical nose of a fifteenth-century Italian woman, the mere fancy nose of a sailor--in fact, every kind of nose, both the magistrate’s and the manufacturer’s, and the nose of the gentleman decorated with the Legion of Honour--all of them motionless and ranged in endless succession!

However, Claude saw nothing of them; to him they were but grey spots in the hazy, greenish light.

His stupor still lasted, and he was only conscious of one thing, the luxuriousness of the women’s dresses, of which he had formed a wrong estimate amid the pushing in the galleries, and which were here freely displayed, as if the wearers had been promenading over the gravel in the conservatory of some château.

All the elegance of Paris passed by, the women who had come to show themselves, in dresses thoughtfully combined and destined to be described in the morrow’s newspapers.

People stared a great deal at an actress, who walked about with a queen-like tread, on the arm of a gentleman who assumed the complacent airs of a prince consort.

The women of society looked like so many hussies, and they all of them took stock of one another with that slow glance which estimates the value of silk and the length of lace, and which ferrets everywhere, from the tips of boots to the feathers upon bonnets.

This was neutral ground, so to say;

some ladies who were seated had drawn their chairs together, after the fashion in the garden of the Tuileries, and occupied themselves exclusively with criticising those of their own sex who passed by.

Two female friends quickened their pace, laughing.

Another woman, all alone, walked up and down, mute, with a black look in her eyes.

Some others, who had lost one another, met again, and began ejaculating about the adventure.

And, meantime, the dark moving mass of men came to a standstill, then set off again till it stopped short before a bit of marble, or eddied back to a bit of bronze.

And among the mere bourgeois, who were few in number, though all of them looked out of their element there, moved men with celebrated names--all the _illustrations_ of Paris.

A name of resounding glory re-echoed as a fat, ill-clad gentleman passed by; the winged name of a poet followed as a pale man with a flat, common face approached.

A living wave was rising from this crowd in the even, colourless light when suddenly a flash of sunshine, from behind the clouds of a final shower, set the glass panes on high aflame, making the stained window on the western side resplendent, and raining down in golden particles through the still atmosphere; and then everything became warm--the snowy statues amid the shiny green stuff, the soft lawns parted by the yellow sand of the pathways, the rich dresses with their glossy satin and bright beads, even the very voices, whose hilarious murmur seemed to crackle like a bright fire of vine shoots.

Some gardeners, completing the arrangements of the flower-beds, turned on the taps of the stand-pipes and promenaded about with their pots, the showers squirting from which came forth again in tepid steam from the drenched grass.

And meanwhile a plucky sparrow, who had descended from the iron girders, despite the number of people, dipped his beak in the sand in front of the buffet, eating some crumbs which a young woman threw him by way of amusement.

Of all the tumult, however, Claude only heard the ocean-like din afar, the rumbling of the people rolling onwards in the galleries.

And a recollection came to him, he remembered that noise which had burst forth like a hurricane in front of his picture at the Salon of the Rejected.

But nowadays people no longer laughed at him; upstairs the giant roar of Paris was acclaiming Fagerolles!

It so happened that Sandoz, who had turned round, said to Claude: ‘Hallo!

there’s Fagerolles!

’ And, indeed, Fagerolles and Jory had just laid hands on a table near by without noticing their friends, and the journalist, continuing in his gruff voice a conversation which had previously begun, remarked: ‘Yes, I saw his “Dead Child”!

Ah!

the poor devil!

what an ending!

’ But Fagerolles nudged Jory, and the latter, having caught sight of his two old comrades, immediately added: ‘Ah!

that dear old Claude!

How goes it, eh?

You know that I haven’t yet seen your picture.

But I’m told that it’s superb.

’ ‘Superb!

’ declared Fagerolles, who then began to express his surprise.

‘So you lunched here.

What an idea!

Everything is so awfully bad.

We two have just come from Ledoyen’s. Oh!

such a crowd and such hustling, such mirth!

Bring your table nearer and let us chat a bit.

’ They joined the two tables together.

But flatterers and petitioners were already after the triumphant young master.

Three friends rose up and noisily saluted him from afar.

A lady became smilingly contemplative when her husband had whispered his name in her ear.

And the tall, thin fellow, the artist whose picture had been badly hung, and who had pursued him since the morning, as enraged as ever, left a table where he was seated at the further end of the buffet, and again hurried forward to complain, imperatively demanding ‘the line’ at once.

‘Oh!

go to the deuce!

’ at last cried Fagerolles, his patience and amiability exhausted.

And he added, when the other had gone off, mumbling some indistinct threats: ‘It’s true; a fellow does all he can to be obliging, but those chaps would drive one mad!

All of them on the “line”!

leagues of “line” then!

Ah!

what a business it is to be a committee-man!

One wears out one’s legs, and one only reaps hatred as reward.

’ Claude, who was looking at him with his oppressed air, seemed to wake up for a moment, and murmured: ‘I wrote to you; I wanted to go and see you to thank you.

Bongrand told me about all the trouble you had.

So thanks again.

’ But Fagerolles hastily broke in: ‘Tut, tut!

I certainly owed that much to our old friendship.

It’s I who am delighted to have given you any pleasure.

’ He showed the embarrassment which always came upon him in presence of the acknowledged master of his youth, that kind of humility which filled him perforce when he was with the man whose mute disdain, even at this moment, sufficed to spoil all his triumph.

‘Your picture is very good,’ slowly added Claude, who wished to be kind-hearted and generous.

This simple praise made Fagerolles’ heart swell with exaggerated, irresistible emotion, springing he knew not whence; and this rascal, who believed in nothing, who was usually so proficient in humbug, answered in a shaky voice: ‘Ah!

my dear fellow, ah!

it’s very kind of you to tell me that!

’ Sandoz had at last obtained two cups of coffee, and as the waiter had forgotten to bring any sugar, he had to content himself with some pieces which a party had left on an adjoining table.

A few tables, indeed, had now become vacant, but the general freedom had increased, and one woman’s laughter rang out so loudly that every head turned round.

The men were smoking, and a bluish cloud slowly rose above the straggling tablecloths, stained by wine and littered with dirty plates and dishes.

When Fagerolles, on his aide, succeeded in obtaining two glasses of chartreuse for himself and Jory, he began to talk to Sandoz, whom he treated with a certain amount of deference, divining that the novelist might become a power.

And Jory thereupon appropriated Claude, who had again become mournful and silent.

‘You know, my dear fellow,’ said the journalist, ‘I didn’t send you any announcement of my marriage.

On account of our position we managed it on the quiet without inviting any guests.

All the same, I should have liked to let you know.

You will excuse me, won’t you?

’ He showed himself expansive, gave particulars, full of the happiness of life, and egotistically delighted to feel fat and victorious in front of that poor vanquished fellow.

He succeeded with everything, he said.

He had given up leader-writing, feeling the necessity of settling down seriously, and he had risen to the editorship of a prominent art review, on which, so it was asserted, he made thirty thousand francs a year, without mentioning certain profits realised by shady trafficking in the sale of art collections.

The middle-class rapacity which he had inherited from his mother, the hereditary passion for profit which had secretly impelled him to embark in petty speculations as soon as he had gained a few coppers, now openly displayed itself, and ended by making him a terrible customer, who bled all the artists and amateurs who came under his clutches.

It was amidst this good luck of his that Mathilde, now all-powerful, had brought him to the point of begging her, with tears in his eyes, to become his wife, a request which she had proudly refused during six long months.

‘When folks are destined to live together,’ he continued, ‘the best course is to set everything square.

You experienced it yourself, my dear fellow; you know something about it, eh?

And if I told you that she wouldn’t consent at first--yes, it’s a fact--for fear of being misjudged and of doing me harm.

Oh!

she has such grandeur, such delicacy of mind!

No, nobody can have an idea of that woman’s qualities.

Devoted, taking all possible care of one, economical, and acute, too, and such a good adviser!

Ah!

it was a lucky chance that I met her!

I no longer do anything without consulting her; I let her do as she likes; she manages everything, upon my word.

’ The truth was that Mathilde had finished by reducing him to the frightened obedience of a little boy.

The once dissolute she-ghoul had become a dictatorial spouse, eager for respect, and consumed with ambition and love of money.

She showed, too, every form of sourish virtue.

It was said that they had been seen taking the Holy Communion together at Notre Dame de Lorette.

They kissed one another before other people, and called each other by endearing nicknames.

Only, of an evening, he had to relate how he had spent his time during the day, and if the employment of a single hour remained suspicious, if he did not bring home all the money he had received, down to the odd coppers, she led him the most abominable life imaginable.

This, of course, Jory left unmentioned.

By way of conclusion he exclaimed: ‘And so we waited for my father’s death, and then I married her.

’ Claude, whose mind had so far been wandering, and who had merely nodded without listening, was struck by that last sentence.

‘What!

you married her--married Mathilde?

’ That exclamation summed up all the astonishment that the affair caused him, all the recollections that occurred to him of Mahoudeau’s shop.

That Jory, why, he could still hear him talking about Mathilde in an abominable manner; and yet he had married her!

It was really stupid for a fellow to speak badly of a woman, for he never knew if he might not end by marrying her some day or other!

However, Jory was perfectly serene, his memory was dead, he never allowed himself an allusion to the past, never showed the slightest embarrassment when his comrades’ eyes were turned on him.

Besides, Mathilde seemed to be a new-comer.

He introduced her to them as if they knew nothing whatever about her.

Sandoz, who had lent an ear to the conversation, greatly interested by this fine business, called out as soon as Jory and Claude became silent: ‘Let’s be off, eh?

My legs are getting numbed.

’ But at that moment Irma Bécot appeared, and stopped in front of the buffet.

With her hair freshly gilded, she had put on her best looks--all the tricky sheen of a tawny hussy, who seemed to have just stepped out of some old Renaissance frame; and she wore a train of light blue brocaded silk, with a satin skirt covered with Alençon lace, of such richness that quite an escort of gentlemen followed her in admiration.

On perceiving Claude among the others, she hesitated for a moment, seized, as it were, with cowardly shame in front of that ill-clad, ugly, derided devil.

Then, becoming valiant, as it were, it was his hand that she shook the first amid all those well-dressed men, who opened their eyes in amazement.

She laughed with an affectionate air, and spoke to him in a friendly, bantering way.

Fagerolles, however, was already paying for the two chartreuses he had ordered, and at last he went off with Irma, whom Jory also decided to follow.

Claude watched them walk away together, she between the two men, moving on in regal fashion, greatly admired, and repeatedly bowed to by people in the crowd.

‘One can see very well that Mathilde isn’t here,’ quietly remarked Sandoz.

‘Ah!

my friend, what clouts Jory would receive on getting home!

’ The novelist now asked for the bill.

All the tables were becoming vacant; there only remained a litter of bones and crusts.

A couple of waiters were wiping the marble slabs with sponges, whilst a third raked up the soiled sand.

Behind the brown serge hangings the staff of the establishment was lunching--one could hear a grinding of jaws and husky laughter, a rumpus akin to that of a camp of gipsies devouring the contents of their saucepans.

Claude and Sandoz went round the garden, where they discovered a statue by Mahoudeau, very badly placed in a corner near the eastern vestibule.

It was the bathing girl at last, standing erect, but of diminutive proportions, being scarcely as tall as a girl ten years old, but charmingly delicate--with slim hips and a tiny bosom, displaying all the exquisite hesitancy of a sprouting bud.

The figure seemed to exhale a perfume, that grace which nothing can give, but which flowers where it lists, stubborn, invincible, perennial grace, springing still and ever from Mahoudeau’s thick fingers, which were so ignorant of their special aptitude that they had long treated this very grace with derision.

Sandoz could not help smiling.

‘And to think that this fellow has done everything he could to warp his talent.

If his figure were better placed, it would meet with great success.

’ ‘Yes, great success,’ repeated Claude.

‘It is very pretty.

’ Precisely at that moment they perceived Mahoudeau, already in the vestibule, and going towards the staircase.

They called him, ran after him, and then all three remained talking together for a few minutes.

The ground-floor gallery stretched away, empty, with its sanded pavement, and the pale light streaming through its large round windows.

One might have fancied oneself under a railway bridge.

Strong pillars supported the metallic framework, and an icy chillness blew from above, moistening the sand in which one’s feet sank.

In the distance, behind a torn curtain, one could see rows of statues, the rejected sculptural exhibits, the casts which poor sculptors did not even remove, gathered together in a livid kind of Morgue, in a state of lamentable abandonment.

But what surprised one, on raising one’s head, was the continuous din, the mighty tramp of the public over the flooring of the upper galleries.

One was deafened by it; it rolled on without a pause, as if interminable trains, going at full speed, were ever and ever shaking the iron girders.

When Mahoudeau had been complimented, he told Claude that he had searched for his picture in vain.

In the depths of what hole could they have put it?

Then, in a fit of affectionate remembrance for the past, he asked anxiously after Gagnière and Dubuche.

Where were the Salons of yore which they had all reached in a band, the mad excursions through the galleries as in an enemy’s country, the violent disdain they had felt on going away, the discussions which had made their tongues swell and emptied their brains?

Nobody now saw Dubuche.

Two or three times a month Gagnière came from Melun, in a state of bewilderment, to attend some concert; and he now took such little interest in painting that he had not even looked in at the Salon, although he exhibited his usual landscape, the same view of the banks of the Seine which he had been sending for the last fifteen years--a picture of a pretty greyish tint, so conscientious and quiet that the public had never remarked it.

‘I was going upstairs,’ resumed Mahoudeau.

‘Will you come with me?

’ Claude, pale with suffering, raised his eyes every second.

Ah!

that terrible rumbling, that devouring gallop of the monster overhead, the shock of which he felt in his very limbs!

He held out his hand without speaking.

‘What!

are you going to leave us?

’ exclaimed Sandoz.

Take just another turn with us, and we’ll go away together.

’ Then, on seeing Claude so weary, a feeling of pity made his heart contract.

He divined that the poor fellow’s courage was exhausted, that he was desirous of solitude, seized with a desire to fly off alone and hide his wound.

‘Then, good-bye, old man: I’ll call and see you to-morrow.

’ Staggering, and as if pursued by the tempest upstairs, Claude disappeared behind the clumps of shrubbery in the garden.

But two hours later Sandoz, who after losing Mahoudeau had just found him again with Jory and Fagerolles, perceived the unhappy painter again standing in front of his picture, at the same spot where he had met him the first time.

At the moment of going off the wretched fellow had come up there again, harassed and attracted despite himself.

There was now the usual five o’clock crush.

The crowd, weary of winding round the galleries, became distracted, and pushed and shoved without ever finding its way out.

Since the coolness of the morning, the heat of all the human bodies, the odour of all the breath exhaled there had made the atmosphere heavy, and the dust of the floors, flying about, rose up in a fine mist.

People still took each other to see certain pictures, the subjects of which alone struck and attracted the crowd.

Some went off, came back, and walked about unceasingly.

The women were particularly obstinate in not retiring; they seemed determined to remain there till the attendants should push them out when six o’clock began to strike.

Some fat ladies had foundered.

Others, who had failed to find even the tiniest place to sit down, leaned heavily on their parasols, sinking, but still obstinate.

Every eye was turned anxiously and supplicatingly towards the settees laden with people.

And all that those thousands of sight-seers were now conscious of, was that last fatigue of theirs, which made their legs totter, drew their features together, and tortured them with headache--that headache peculiar to fine-art shows, which is caused by the constant straining of one’s neck and the blinding dance of colours.

Alone on the little settee where at noon already they had been talking about their private affairs, the two decorated gentlemen were still chatting quietly, with their minds a hundred leagues away from the place.

Perhaps they had returned thither, perhaps they had not even stirred from the spot.

‘And so,’ said the fat one, ‘you went in, pretending not to understand?

’ ‘Quite so,’ replied the thin one.

‘I looked at them and took off my hat.

It was clear, eh?

’ ‘Astonishing!

You really astonish me, my dear friend.

’ Claude, however, only heard the low beating of his heart, and only beheld the ‘Dead Child’ up there in the air, near the ceiling.

He did not take his eyes off it, a prey to a fascination which held him there, quite independent of his will.

The crowd turned round him, people’s feet trod on his own, he was pushed and carried away; and, like some inert object, he abandoned himself, waved about, and ultimately found himself again on the same spot as before without having once lowered his head, quite ignorant of what was occurring below, all his life being concentrated up yonder beside his work, his little Jacques, swollen in death.

Two big tears which stood motionless between his eyelids prevented him from seeing clearly.

And it seemed to him as if he would never have time to see enough.

Then Sandoz, in his deep compassion, pretended he did not perceive his old friend; it was as if he wished to leave him there, beside the tomb of his wrecked life.

Their comrades once more went past in a band.

Fagerolles and Jory darted on ahead, and, Mahoudeau having asked Sandoz where Claude’s picture was hung, the novelist told a lie, drew him aside and took him off.

All of them went away.

In the evening Christine only managed to draw curt words from Claude;

everything was going on all right, said he; the public showed no ill-humour; the picture had a good effect, though it was hung perhaps rather high up.

However, despite this semblance of cold tranquillity, he seemed so strange that she became frightened.

After dinner, as she returned from carrying the dirty plates into the kitchen, she no longer found him near the table.

He had opened a window which overlooked some waste ground, and he stood there, leaning out to such a degree that she could scarcely see him.

At this she sprang forward, terrified, and pulled him violently by his jacket.

‘Claude!

Claude!

what are you doing?

’ He turned round, with his face as white as a sheet and his eyes haggard.

‘I’m looking,’ he said.

But she closed the window with trembling hands, and after that significant incident such anguish clung to her that she no longer slept at night-time.