His Masterpiece: Chapter 9

Chapter 9

AS Claude could not paint his huge picture in the small studio of the
Rue de Douai, he made up his mind to rent some shed that would be
spacious enough, elsewhere; and strolling one day on the heights of
Montmartre, he found what he wanted half way down the slope of the Rue
Tourlaque, a street that descends abruptly behind the cemetery, and
whence one overlooks Clichy as far as the marshes of Gennevilliers. It
had been a dyer's drying shed, and was nearly fifty feet long and more
than thirty broad, with walls of board and plaster admitting the wind
from every point of the compass. The place was let to him for three
hundred francs. Summer was at hand; he would soon work off his picture
and then quit.

This settled, feverish with hope, Claude decided to go to all the
necessary expenses; as fortune was certain to come in the end, why
trammel its advent by unnecessary scruples? Taking advantage of his
right, he broke in upon the principal of his income, and soon grew
accustomed to spend money without counting. At first he kept the
matter from Christine, for she had already twice stopped him from
doing so; and when he was at last obliged to tell her, she also, after
a week of reproaches and apprehension, fell in with it, happy at the
comfort in which she lived, and yielding to the pleasure of always
having a little money in her purse. Thus there came a few years of
easy unconcern.

Claude soon became altogether absorbed in his picture. He had
furnished the huge studio in a very summary style: a few chairs, the
old couch from the Quai de Bourbon, and a deal table bought
second-hand for five francs sufficed him. In the practice of his art
he was entirely devoid of that vanity which delights in luxurious
surroundings. The only real expense to which he went was that of
buying some steps on castors, with a platform and a movable footboard.
Next he busied himself about his canvas, which he wished to be six and
twenty feet in length and sixteen in height. He insisted upon
preparing it himself; ordered a framework and bought the necessary
seamless canvas, which he and a couple of friends had all the work in
the world to stretch properly by the aid of pincers. Then he just
coated the canvas with ceruse, laid on with a palette-knife, refusing
to size it previously, in order that it might remain absorbent, by
which method he declared that the painting would be bright and solid.
An easel was not to be thought of. It would not have been possible to
move a canvas of such dimensions on it. So he invented a system of
ropes and beams, which held it slightly slanting against the wall in a
cheerful light. And backwards and forwards in front of the big white
surface rolled the steps, looking like an edifice, like the
scaffolding by means of which a cathedral is to be reared.

But when everything was ready, Claude once more experienced
misgivings. An idea that he had perhaps not chosen the proper light in
which to paint his picture fidgeted him. Perhaps an early morning
effect would have been better? Perhaps, too, he ought to have chosen a
dull day, and so he went back to the Pont des Saint-Peres, and lived
there for another three months.

The Cite rose up before him, between the two arms of the river, at
all hours and in all weather. After a late fall of snow he beheld it
wrapped in ermine, standing above mud-coloured water, against a light
slatey sky. On the first sunshiny days he saw it cleanse itself of
everything that was wintry and put on an aspect of youth, when verdure
sprouted from the lofty trees which rose from the ground below the
bridge. He saw it, too, on a somewhat misty day recede to a distance
and almost evaporate, delicate and quivering, like a fairy palace.
Then, again, there were pelting rains, which submerged it, hid it as
with a huge curtain drawn from the sky to the earth; storms, with
lightning flashes which lent it a tawny hue, the opaque light of
some cut-throat place half destroyed by the fall of the huge
copper-coloured clouds; and there were winds that swept over it
tempestuously, sharpening its angles and making it look hard, bare,
and beaten against the pale blue sky. Then, again, when the sunbeams
broke into dust amidst the vapours of the Seine, it appeared steeped
in diffused brightness, without a shadow about it, lighted up equally
on every side, and looking as charmingly delicate as a cut gem set in
fine gold. He insisted on beholding it when the sun was rising and
transpiercing the morning mists, when the Quai de l'Horloge flushes
and the Quai des Orfevres remains wrapt in gloom; when, up in the pink
sky, it is already full of life, with the bright awakening of its
towers and spires, while night, similar to a falling cloak, slides
slowly from its lower buildings. He beheld it also at noon, when the
sunrays fall on it vertically, when a crude glare bites into it, and
it becomes discoloured and mute like a dead city, retaining nought but
the life of heat, the quiver that darts over its distant housetops. He
beheld it, moreover, beneath the setting sun, surrendering itself to
the night which was slowly rising from the river, with the salient
edges of its buildings still fringed with a glow as of embers, and
with final conflagrations rekindling in its windows, from whose panes
leapt tongue-like flashes. But in presence of those twenty different
aspects of the Cite, no matter what the hour or the weather might be,
he ever came back to the Cite that he had seen the first time, at
about four o'clock one fine September afternoon, a Cite all serenity
under a gentle breeze, a Cite which typified the heart of Paris
beating in the limpid atmosphere, and seemingly enlarged by the vast
stretch of sky which a flight of cloudlets crossed.

Claude spent his time under the Pont des Saints-Peres, which he had
made his shelter, his home, his roof. The constant din of the vehicles
overhead, similar to the distant rumbling of thunder, no longer
disturbed him. Settling himself against the first abutment, beneath
the huge iron arches, he took sketches and painted studies. The
_employes_ of the river navigation service, whose offices were hard
by, got to know him, and, indeed, the wife of an inspector, who lived
in a sort of tarred cabin with her husband, two children, and a cat,
kept his canvases for him, to save him the trouble of carrying them to
and fro each day. It became his joy to remain in that secluded nook
beneath Paris, which rumbled in the air above him, whose ardent life
he ever felt rolling overhead. He at first became passionately
interested in Port St. Nicolas, with its ceaseless bustle suggesting
that of a distant genuine seaport. The steam crane, _The Sophia_,
worked regularly, hauling up blocks of stone; tumbrels arrived to
fetch loads of sand; men and horses pulled, panting for breath on the
big paving-stones, which sloped down as far as the water, to a granite
margin, alongside which two rows of lighters and barges were moored.
For weeks Claude worked hard at a study of some lightermen unloading a
cargo of plaster, carrying white sacks on their shoulders, leaving a
white pathway behind them, and bepowdered with white themselves,
whilst hard by the coal removed from another barge had stained the
waterside with a huge inky smear. Then he sketched the silhouette of a
swimming-bath on the left bank, together with a floating wash-house
somewhat in the rear, showing the windows open and the washerwomen
kneeling in a row, on a level with the stream, and beating their dirty
linen. In the middle of the river, he studied a boat which a waterman
sculled over the stern; then, farther behind, a steamer of the towing
service straining its chain, and dragging a series of rafts loaded
with barrels and boards up stream. The principal backgrounds had been
sketched a long while ago, still he did several bits over again--the
two arms of the Seine, and a sky all by itself, into which rose only
towers and spires gilded by the sun. And under the hospitable bridge,
in that nook as secluded as some far-off cleft in a rock, he was
rarely disturbed by anybody. Anglers passed by with contemptuous
unconcern. His only companion was virtually the overseer's cat, who
cleaned herself in the sunlight, ever placid beneath the tumult of the
world overhead.

At last Claude had all his materials ready. In a few days he threw off
an outline sketch of the whole, and the great work was begun. However,
the first battle between himself and his huge canvas raged in the Rue
Tourlaque throughout the summer; for he obstinately insisted upon
personally attending to all the technical calculations of his
composition, and he failed to manage them, getting into constant
muddles about the slightest deviation from mathematical accuracy, of
which he had no experience. It made him indignant with himself. So he
let it go, deciding to make what corrections might be necessary
afterwards. He covered his canvas with a rush--in such a fever as to
live all day on his steps, brandishing huge brushes, and expending as
much muscular force as if he were anxious to move mountains. And when
evening came he reeled about like a drunken man, and fell asleep as
soon as he had swallowed his last mouthful of food. His wife even had
to put him to bed like a child. From those heroic efforts, however,
sprang a masterly first draught in which genius blazed forth amidst
the somewhat chaotic masses of colour. Bongrand, who came to look at
it, caught the painter in his big arms, and stifled him with embraces,
his eyes full of tears. Sandoz, in his enthusiasm, gave a dinner; the
others, Jory, Mahoudeau and Gagniere, again went about announcing a
masterpiece. As for Fagerolles, he remained motionless before the
painting for a moment, then burst into congratulations, pronouncing it
too beautiful.

And, in fact, subsequently, as if the irony of that successful
trickster had brought him bad luck, Claude only spoilt his original
draught. It was the old story over again. He spent himself in one
effort, one magnificent dash; he failed to bring out all the rest; he
did not know how to finish. He fell into his former impotence; for two
years he lived before that picture only, having no feeling for
anything else. At times he was in a seventh heaven of exuberant joy;
at others flung to earth, so wretched, so distracted by doubt, that
dying men gasping in their beds in a hospital were happier than
himself. Twice already had he failed to be ready for the Salon, for
invariably, at the last moment, when he hoped to have finished in a
few sittings, he found some void, felt his composition crack and
crumble beneath his fingers. When the third Salon drew nigh, there
came a terrible crisis; he remained for a fortnight without going to
his studio in the Rue Tourlaque, and when he did so, it was as to a
house desolated by death. He turned the huge canvas to the wall and
rolled his steps into a corner; he would have smashed and burned
everything if his faltering hands had found strength enough. Nothing
more existed; amid a blast of anger he swept the floor clean, and
spoke of setting to work at little things, since he was incapable of
perfecting paintings of any size.

In spite of himself, his first idea of a picture on a smaller scale
took him back to the Cite. Why should not he paint a simple view, on a
moderate sized canvas? But a kind of shame, mingled with strange
jealousy, prevented him from settling himself in his old spot under
the Pont des Saints-Peres. It seemed to him as if that spot were
sacred now; that he ought not to offer any outrage to his great work,
dead as it was. So he stationed himself at the end of the bank, above
the bridge. This time, at any rate, he would work directly from
nature; and he felt happy at not having to resort to any trickery, as
was unavoidable with works of a large size. The small picture, very
carefully painted, more highly finished than usual, met, however, with
the same fate as the others before the hanging committee, who were
indignant with this style of painting, executed with a tipsy brush, as
was said at the time in the studios. The slap in the face which Claude
thus received was all the more severe, as a report had spread of
concessions, of advances made by him to the School of Arts, in order
that his work might be received. And when the picture came back to
him, he, deeply wounded, weeping with rage, tore it into narrow
shreds, which he burned in his stove. It was not sufficient that he
should kill that one with a knife-thrust, it must be annihilated.

Another year went by for Claude in desultory toil. He worked from
force of habit, but finished nothing; he himself saying, with a
dolorous laugh, that he had lost himself, and was trying to find
himself again. In reality, tenacious consciousness of his genius left
him a hope which nothing could destroy, even during his longest crises
of despondency. He suffered like some one damned, for ever rolling the
rock which slipped back and crushed him; but the future remained, with
the certainty of one day seizing that rock in his powerful arms and
flinging it upward to the stars. His friends at last beheld his eyes
light up with passion once more. It was known that he again secluded
himself in the Rue Tourlaque. He who formerly had always been carried
beyond the work on which he was engaged, by some dream of a picture to
come, now stood at bay before that subject of the Cite. It had become
his fixed idea--the bar that closed up his life. And soon he began to
speak freely of it again in a new blaze of enthusiasm, exclaiming,
with childish delight, that he had found his way and that he felt
certain of victory.

One day Claude, who, so far, had not opened his door to his friends,
condescended to admit Sandoz. The latter tumbled upon a study with a
deal of dash in it, thrown off without a model, and again admirable in
colour. The subject had remained the same--the Port St. Nicolas on the
left, the swimming-baths on the right, the Seine and Cite in the
background. But Sandoz was amazed at perceiving, instead of the boat
sculled by a waterman, another large skiff taking up the whole centre
of the composition--a skiff occupied by three women. One, in a bathing
costume, was rowing; another sat over the edge with her legs dangling
in the water, her costume partially unfastened, showing her bare
shoulder; while the third stood erect and nude at the prow, so bright
in tone that she seemed effulgent, like the sun.

'Why, what an idea!' muttered Sandoz. 'What are those women doing
there?'

'Why, they are bathing,' Claude quietly answered. 'Don't you see that
they have come out of the swimming-baths? It supplies me with a motive
for the nude; it's a real find, eh? Does it shock you?'

His old friend, who knew him well by now, dreaded lest he should give
him cause for discouragement.

'I? Oh, no! Only I am afraid that the public will again fail to
understand. That nude woman in the very midst of Paris--it's
improbable.'

Claude looked naively surprised.

'Ah! you think so? Well, so much the worse. What's the odds, as long
as the woman is well painted? Besides, I need something like that to
get my courage up.'

On the following occasions, Sandoz gently reverted to the strangeness
of the composition, pleading, as was his nature, the cause of outraged
logic. How could a modern painter who prided himself on painting
merely what was real--how could he so bastardise his work as to
introduce fanciful things into it? It would have been so easy to
choose another subject, in which the nude would have been necessary.
But Claude became obstinate, and resorted to lame and violent
explanations, for he would not avow his real motive: an idea which had
come to him and which he would have been at a loss to express clearly.
It was, however, a longing for some secret symbolism. A recrudescence
of romanticism made him see an incarnation of Paris in that nude
figure; he pictured the city bare and impassioned, resplendent with
the beauty of woman.

Before the pressing objections of his friend he pretended to be shaken
in his resolutions.

'Well, I'll see; I'll dress my old woman later on, since she worries
you,' he said. 'But meanwhile I shall do her like that. You
understand, she amuses me.'

He never reverted to the subject again, remaining silently obstinate,
merely shrugging his shoulders and smiling with embarrassment whenever
any allusion betrayed the general astonishment which was felt at the
sight of that Venus emerging triumphantly from the froth of the Seine
amidst all the omnibuses on the quays and the lightermen working at
the Port of St. Nicolas.

Spring had come round again, and Claude had once more resolved to work
at his large picture, when in a spirit of prudence he and Christine
modified their daily life. She, at times, could not help feeling
uneasy at seeing all their money so quickly spent. Since the supply
had seemed inexhaustible, they had ceased counting. But, at the end of
four years, they had woke up one morning quite frightened, when, on
asking for accounts, they found that barely three thousand francs were
left out of the twenty thousand. They immediately reverted to severe
economy, stinting themselves as to bread, planning the cutting down of
the most elementary expenses; and it was thus that, in the first
impulse of self-sacrifice, they left the Rue de Douai. What was the
use of paying two rents? There was room enough in the old drying-shed
in the Rue Tourlaque--still stained with the dyes of former days--to
afford accommodation for three people. Settling there was,
nevertheless, a difficult affair; for however big the place was, it
provided them, after all, with but one room. It was like a gipsy's
shed, where everything had to be done in common. As the landlord was
unwilling, the painter himself had to divide it at one end by a
partition of boards, behind which he devised a kitchen and a bedroom.
They were then delighted with the place, despite the chinks through
which the wind blew, and although on rainy days they had to set basins
beneath the broader cracks in the roof. The whole looked mournfully
bare; their few poor sticks seemed to dance alongside the naked walls.
They themselves pretended to be proud at being lodged so spaciously;
they told their friends that Jacques would at least have a little room
to run about. Poor Jacques, in spite of his nine years, did not seem
to be growing; his head alone became larger and larger. They could not
send him to school for more than a week at a stretch, for he came back
absolutely dazed, ill from having tried to learn, in such wise that
they nearly always allowed him to live on all fours around them,
crawling from one corner to another.

Christine, who for quite a long while had not shared Claude's daily
work, now once more found herself beside him throughout his long hours
of toil. She helped him to scrape and pumice the old canvas of the big
picture, and gave him advice about attaching it more securely to the
wall. But they found that another disaster had befallen them--the
steps had become warped by the water constantly trickling through the
roof, and, for fear of an accident, Claude had to strengthen them with
an oak cross-piece, she handing him the necessary nails one by one.
Then once more, and for the second time, everything was ready. She
watched him again outlining the work, standing behind him the while,
till she felt faint with fatigue, and finally dropping to the floor,
where she remained squatting, and still looking at him.

Ah! how she would have liked to snatch him from that painting which
had seized hold of him! It was for that purpose that she made herself
his servant, only too happy to lower herself to a labourer's toil.
Since she shared his work again, since the three of them, he, she, and
the canvas, were side by side, her hope revived. If he had escaped her
when she, all alone, cried her eyes out in the Rue de Douai, if he
lingered till late in the Rue Tourlaque, fascinated as by a mistress,
perhaps now that she was present she might regain her hold over him.
Ah, painting, painting! in what jealous hatred she held it! Hers was
no longer the revolt of a girl of the bourgeoisie, who painted neatly
in water-colours, against independent, brutal, magnificent art. No,
little by little she had come to understand it, drawn towards it at
first by her love for the painter, and gained over afterwards by the
feast of light, by the original charm of the bright tints which
Claude's works displayed. And now she had accepted everything, even
lilac-tinted soil and blue trees. Indeed, a kind of respect made her
quiver before those works which had at first seemed so horrid to her.
She recognised their power well enough, and treated them like rivals
about whom one could no longer joke. But her vindictiveness grew in
proportion to her admiration; she revolted at having to stand by and
witness, as it were, a diminution of herself, the blow of another love
beneath her own roof.

At first there was a silent struggle of every minute. She thrust
herself forward, interposed whatever she could, a hand, a shoulder,
between the painter and his picture. She was always there,
encompassing him with her breath, reminding him that he was hers. Then
her old idea revived--she also would paint; she would seek and join
him in the depths of his art fever. Every day for a whole month she
put on a blouse, and worked like a pupil by the side of a master,
diligently copying one of his sketches, and she only gave in when she
found the effort turn against her object; for, deceived, as it were,
by their joint work, he finished by forgetting that she was a woman,
and lived with her on a footing of mere comradeship as between man and
man. Accordingly she resorted to what was her only strength.

To perfect some of the small figures of his latter pictures, Claude
had many a time already taken the hint of a head, the pose of an arm,
the attitude of a body from Christine. He threw a cloak over her
shoulders, and caught her in the posture he wanted, shouting to her
not to stir. These were little services which she showed herself only
too pleased to render him, but she had not hitherto cared to go
further, for she was hurt by the idea of being a model now that she
was his wife. However, since Claude had broadly outlined the large
upright female figure which was to occupy the centre of his picture,
Christine had looked at the vague silhouette in a dreamy way, worried
by an ever-pursuing thought before which all scruples vanished. And
so, when he spoke of taking a model, she offered herself, reminding
him that she had posed for the figure in the 'Open Air' subject, long
ago. 'A model,' she added, 'would cost you seven francs a sitting. We
are not so rich, we may as well save the money.'

The question of economy decided him at once.

'I'm agreeable, and it's even very good of you to show such courage,
for you know that it is not a bit of pastime to sit for me. Never
mind, you had better confess to it, you big silly, you are afraid of
another woman coming here; you are jealous.'

Jealous! Yes, indeed she was jealous, so she suffered agony. But she
snapped her fingers at other women; all the models in Paris might have
sat to him for what she cared. She had but one rival, that painting,
that art which robbed her of him.

Claude, who was delighted, at first made a study, a simple academic
study, in the attitude required for his picture. They waited until
Jacques had gone to school, and the sitting lasted for hours. During
the earlier days Christine suffered a great deal from being obliged to
remain in the same position; then she grew used to it, not daring to
complain, lest she might vex him, and even restraining her tears when
he roughly pushed her about. And he soon acquired the habit of doing
so, treating her like a mere model; more exacting with her, however,
than if he had paid her, never afraid of unduly taxing her strength,
since she was his wife. He employed her for every purpose, at every
minute, for an arm, a foot, the most trifling detail that he stood in
need of. And thus in a way he lowered her to the level of a 'living
lay figure,' which he stuck in front of him and copied as he might
have copied a pitcher or a stew-pan for a bit of still life.

This time Claude proceeded leisurely, and before roughing in the large
figure he tired Christine for months by making her pose in twenty
different ways. At last, one day, he began the roughing in. It was an
autumnal morning, the north wind was already sharp, and it was by no
means warm even in the big studio, although the stove was roaring. As
little Jacques was poorly again and unable to go to school, they had
decided to lock him up in the room at the back, telling him to be very
good. And then the mother settled herself near the stove, motionless,
in the attitude required.

During the first hour, the painter, perched upon his steps, kept
glancing at her, but did not speak a word. Unutterable sadness stole
over her, and she felt afraid of fainting, no longer knowing whether
she was suffering from the cold or from a despair that had come from
afar, and the bitterness of which she felt to be rising within her.
Her fatigue became so great that she staggered and hobbled about on
her numbed legs.

'What, already?' cried Claude. 'Why, you haven't been at it more than
a quarter of an hour. You don't want to earn your seven francs, then?'

He was joking in a gruff voice, delighted with his work. And she had
scarcely recovered the use of her limbs, beneath the dressing-gown she
had wrapped round her, when he went on shouting: 'Come on, come on, no
idling! It's a grand day to-day is! I must either show some genius or
else kick the bucket.'

Then, in a weary way, she at last resumed the pose.

The misfortune was that before long, both by his glances and the
language he used, she fully realised that she herself was as nothing
to him. If ever he praised a limb, a tint, a contour, it was solely
from the artistic point of view. Great enthusiasm and passion he often
showed, but it was not passion for herself as in the old days. She
felt confused and deeply mortified. Ah! this was the end; in her he no
longer loved aught but his art, the example of nature and life! And
then, with her eyes gazing into space, she would remain rigid, like a
statue, keeping back the tears which made her heart swell, lacking
even the wretched consolation of being able to cry. And day by day the
same sorry life began afresh for her. To stand there as his model had
become her profession. She could not refuse, however bitter her grief.
Their once happy life was all over, there now seemed to be three
people in the place; it was as if Claude had introduced a mistress
into it--that woman he was painting. The huge picture rose up between
them, parted them as with a wall, beyond which he lived with the
other. That duplication of herself well nigh drove Christine mad with
jealousy, and yet she was conscious of the pettiness of her
sufferings, and did not dare to confess them lest he should laugh at
her. However, she did not deceive herself; she fully realised that he
preferred her counterfeit to herself, that her image was the
worshipped one, the sole thought, the affection of his every hour. He
almost killed her with long sittings in that cold draughty studio, in
order to enhance the beauty of the other; upon whom depended all his
joys and sorrows according as to whether he beheld her live or
languish beneath his brush. Was not this love? And what suffering to
have to lend herself so that the other might be created, so that she
might be haunted by a nightmare of that rival, so that the latter
might for ever rise between them, more powerful than reality! To think
of it! So much dust, the veriest trifle, a patch of colour on a
canvas, a mere semblance destroying all their happiness!--he, silent,
indifferent, brutal at times, and she, tortured by his desertion, in
despair at being unable to drive away that creature who ever
encroached more and more upon their daily life!

And it was then that Christine, finding herself altogether beaten in
her efforts to regain Claude's love, felt all the sovereignty of art
weigh down upon her. That painting, which she had already accepted
without restriction, she raised still higher in her estimation, placed
inside an awesome tabernacle before which she remained overcome, as
before those powerful divinities of wrath which one honours from the
very hatred and fear that they inspire. Hers was a holy awe, a
conviction that struggling was henceforth useless, that she would be
crushed like a bit of straw if she persisted in her obstinacy. Each of
her husband's canvases became magnified in her eyes, the smallest
assumed triumphal dimensions, even the worst painted of them
overwhelmed her with victory, and she no longer judged them, but
grovelled, trembling, thinking them all formidable, and invariably
replying to Claude's questions:

'Oh, yes; very good! Oh, superb! Oh, very, very extraordinary that
one!'

Nevertheless, she harboured no anger against him; she still worshipped
him with tearful tenderness, as she saw him thus consume himself with
efforts. After a few weeks of successful work, everything got spoilt
again; he could not finish his large female figure. At times he almost
killed his model with fatigue, keeping hard at work for days and days
together, then leaving the picture untouched for a whole month. The
figure was begun anew, relinquished, painted all over again at least a
dozen times. One year, two years went by without the picture reaching
completion. Though sometimes it was almost finished, it was scratched
out the next morning and painted entirely over again.

Ah! what an effort of creation it was, an effort of blood and tears,
filling Claude with agony in his attempt to beget flesh and instil
life! Ever battling with reality, and ever beaten, it was a struggle
with the Angel. He was wearing himself out with this impossible task
of making a canvas hold all nature; he became exhausted at last with
the pains which racked his muscles without ever being able to bring
his genius to fruition. What others were satisfied with, a more or
less faithful rendering, the various necessary bits of trickery,
filled him with remorse, made him as indignant as if in resorting to
such practices one were guilty of ignoble cowardice; and thus he began
his work over and over again, spoiling what was good through his
craving to do better. He would always be dissatisfied with his women
--so his friends jokingly declared--until they flung their arms round
his neck. What was lacking in his power that he could not endow them
with life? Very little, no doubt. Sometimes he went beyond the right
point, sometimes he stopped short of it. One day the words, 'an
incomplete genius,' which he overheard, both flattered and frightened
him. Yes, it must be that; he jumped too far or not far enough; he
suffered from a want of nervous balance; he was afflicted with some
hereditary derangement which, because there were a few grains the more
or the less of some substance in his brain, was making him a lunatic
instead of a great man. Whenever a fit of despair drove him from his
studio, whenever he fled from his work, he now carried about with him
that idea of fatal impotence, and he heard it beating against his
skull like the obstinate tolling of a funeral bell.

His life became wretched. Never had doubt of himself pursued him in
that way before. He disappeared for whole days together; he even
stopped out a whole night, coming back the next morning stupefied,
without being able to say where he had gone. It was thought that he
had been tramping through the outskirts of Paris rather than find
himself face to face with his spoilt work. His sole relief was to flee
the moment that work filled him with shame and hatred, and to remain
away until he felt sufficient courage to face it once more. And not
even his wife dared to question him on his return--indeed, she was
only too happy to see him back again after her anxious waiting. At
such times he madly scoured Paris, especially the outlying quarters,
from a longing to debase himself and hob-nob with labourers. He
expressed at each recurring crisis his old regret at not being some
mason's hodman. Did not happiness consist in having solid limbs, and
in performing the work one was built for well and quickly? He had
wrecked his life; he ought to have got himself engaged in the building
line in the old times when he had lunched at the 'Dog of Montargis,'
Gomard's tavern, where he had known a Limousin, a big, strapping,
merry fellow, whose brawny arms he envied. Then, on coming back to the
Rue Tourlaque, with his legs faint and his head empty, he gave his
picture much the same distressful, frightened glance as one casts at a
corpse in a mortuary, until fresh hope of resuscitating it, of
endowing it with life, brought a flush to his face once more.

One day Christine was posing, and the figure of the woman was again
well nigh finished. For the last hour, however, Claude had been
growing gloomy, losing the childish delight that he had displayed at
the beginning of the sitting. So his wife scarcely dared to breathe,
feeling by her own discomfort that everything must be going wrong once
more, and afraid that she might accelerate the catastrophe if she
moved as much as a finger. And, surely enough, he suddenly gave a cry
of anguish, and launched forth an oath in a thunderous voice.

'Oh, curse it! curse it!'

He had flung his handful of brushes from the top of the steps. Then,
blinded with rage, with one blow of his fist he transpierced the
canvas.

Christine held out her trembling hands.

'My dear, my dear!'

But when she had flung a dressing-gown over her shoulders, and
approached the picture, she experienced keen delight, a burst of
satisfied hatred. Claude's fist had struck 'the other one' full in the
bosom, and there was a gaping hole! At last, then, that other one was
killed!

Motionless, horror-struck by that murder, Claude stared at the
perforated bosom. Poignant grief came upon him at the sight of the
wound whence the blood of his work seemed to flow. Was it possible?
Was it he who had thus murdered what he loved best of all on earth?
His anger changed into stupor; his fingers wandered over the canvas,
drawing the ragged edges of the rent together, as if he had wished to
close the bleeding gash. He was choking; he stammered, distracted with
boundless grief:

'She is killed, she is killed!'

Then Christine, in her maternal love for that big child of an artist,
felt moved to her very entrails. She forgave him as usual. She saw
well enough that he now had but one thought--to mend the rent, to
repair the evil at once; and she helped him; it was she who held the
shreds together, whilst he from behind glued a strip of canvas against
them. When she dressed herself, 'the other one' was there again,
immortal, simply retaining near her heart a slight scar, which seemed
to make her doubly dear to the painter.

As this unhinging of Claude's faculties increased, he drifted into a
sort of superstition, into a devout belief in certain processes and
methods. He banished oil from his colours, and spoke of it as of a
personal enemy. On the other hand, he held that turpentine produced a
solid unpolished surface, and he had some secrets of his own which he
hid from everybody; solutions of amber, liquefied copal, and other
resinous compounds that made colours dry quickly, and prevented them
from cracking. But he experienced some terrible worries, as the
absorbent nature of the canvas at once sucked in the little oil
contained in the paint. Then the question of brushes had always
worried him greatly; he insisted on having them with special handles;
and objecting to sable, he used nothing but oven-dried badger hair.
More important, however, than everything else was the question of
palette-knives, which, like Courbet, he used for his backgrounds. He
had quite a collection of them, some long and flexible, others broad
and squat, and one which was triangular like a glazier's, and which
had been expressly made for him. It was the real Delacroix knife.
Besides, he never made use of the scraper or razor, which he
considered beneath an artist's dignity. But, on the other hand, he
indulged in all sorts of mysterious practices in applying his colours,
concocted recipes and changed them every month, and suddenly fancied
that he had bit on the right system of painting, when, after
repudiating oil and its flow, he began to lay on successive touches
until he arrived at the exact tone he required. One of his fads for a
long while was to paint from right to left; for, without confessing as
much, he felt sure that it brought him luck. But the terrible affair
which unhinged him once more was an all-invading theory respecting the
complementary colours. Gagniere had been the first to speak to him on
the subject, being himself equally inclined to technical speculation.
After which Claude, impelled by the exuberance of his passion, took to
exaggerating the scientific principles whereby, from the three
primitive colours, yellow, red, and blue, one derives the three
secondary ones, orange, green, and violet, and, further, a whole
series of complementary and similar hues, whose composites are
obtained mathematically from one another. Thus science entered into
painting, there was a method for logical observation already. One only
had to take the predominating hue of a picture, and note the
complementary or similar colours, to establish experimentally what
variations would occur; for instance, red would turn yellowish if it
were near blue, and a whole landscape would change in tint by the
refractions and the very decomposition of light, according to the
clouds passing over it. Claude then accurately came to this
conclusion: That objects have no real fixed colour; that they assume
various hues according to ambient circumstances; but the misfortune
was that when he took to direct observation, with his brain throbbing
with scientific formulas, his prejudiced vision lent too much force to
delicate shades, and made him render what was theoretically correct in
too vivid a manner: thus his style, once so bright, so full of the
palpitation of sunlight, ended in a reversal of everything to which
the eye was accustomed, giving, for instance, flesh of a violet tinge
under tricoloured skies. Insanity seemed to be at the end of it all.

Poverty finished off Claude. It had gradually increased, while the
family spent money without counting; and, when the last copper of the
twenty thousand francs had gone, it swooped down upon them--horrible
and irreparable. Christine, who wanted to look for work, was incapable
of doing anything, even ordinary needlework. She bewailed her lot,
twirling her fingers and inveighing against the idiotic young lady's
education that she had received, since it had given her no profession,
and her only resource would be to enter into domestic service, should
life still go against them. Claude, on his side, had become a subject
of chaff with the Parisians, and no longer sold a picture. An
independent exhibition at which he and some friends had shown some
pictures, had finished him off as regards amateurs--so merry had the
public become at the sight of his canvases, streaked with all the
colours of the rainbow. The dealers fled from him. M. Hue alone now
and then made a pilgrimage to the Rue Tourlaque, and remained in
ecstasy before the exaggerated bits, those which blazed in unexpected
pyrotechnical fashion, in despair at being unable to cover them with
gold. And though the painter wanted to make him a present of them,
implored him to accept them, the old fellow displayed extraordinary
delicacy of feeling. He pinched himself to amass a small sum of money
from time to time, and then religiously took away the seemingly
delirious picture, to hang it beside his masterpieces. Such windfalls
came too seldom, and Claude was obliged to descend to 'trade art,'
repugnant as it was to him. Such, indeed, was his despair at having
fallen into that poison house, where he had sworn never to set foot,
that he would have preferred starving to death, but for the two poor
beings who were dependent on him and who suffered like himself. He
became familiar with 'viae dolorosae' painted at reduced prices, with
male and female saints at so much per gross, even with 'pounced' shop
blinds--in short, all the ignoble jobs that degrade painting and make
it so much idiotic delineation, lacking even the charm of naivete. He
even suffered the humiliation of having portraits at five-and-twenty
francs a-piece refused, because he failed to produce a likeness; and
he reached the lowest degree of distress--he worked according to size
for the petty dealers who sell daubs on the bridges, and export them
to semi-civilised countries. They bought his pictures at two and three
francs a-piece, according to the regulation dimensions. This was like
physical decay, it made him waste away; he rose from such tasks
feeling ill, incapable of serious work, looking at his large picture
in distress, and leaving it sometimes untouched for a week, as if he
had felt his hands befouled and unworthy of working at it.

They scarcely had bread to eat, and the huge shanty, which Christine
had shown herself so proud of, on settling in it, became uninhabitable
in the winter. She, once such an active housewife, now dragged herself
about the place, without courage even to sweep the floor, and thus
everything lapsed into abandonment. In the disaster little Jacques was
sadly weakened by unwholesome and insufficient food, for their meals
often consisted of a mere crust, eaten standing. With their lives thus
ill-regulated, uncared for, they were drifting to the filth of the
poor who lose even all self-pride.

At the close of another year, Claude, on one of those days of defeat,
when he fled from his miscarried picture, met an old acquaintance.
This time he had sworn he would never go home again, and he had been
tramping across Paris since noon, as if at his heels he had heard the
wan spectre of the big, nude figure of his picture--ravaged by
constant retouching, and always left incomplete--pursuing him with a
passionate craving for birth. The mist was melting into a yellowish
drizzle, befouling the muddy streets. It was about five o'clock, and
he was crossing the Rue Royale like one walking in his sleep, at the
risk of being run over, his clothes in rags and mud-bespattered up to
his neck, when a brougham suddenly drew up.

'Claude, eh? Claude!--is that how you pass your friends?'

It was Irma Becot who spoke, Irma in a charming grey silk dress,
covered with Chantilly lace. She had hastily let down the window, and
she sat smiling, beaming in the frame-work of the carriage door.

'Where are you going?'

He, staring at her open-mouthed, replied that he was going nowhere. At
which she merrily expressed surprise in a loud voice, looking at him
with her saucy eyes.

'Get in, then; it's such a long while since we met,' said she. 'Get
in, or you'll be knocked down.'

And, in fact, the other drivers were getting impatient, and urging
their horses on, amidst a terrible din, so he did as he was bidden,
feeling quite dazed; and she drove him away, dripping, with the
unmistakable signs of his poverty upon him, in the brougham lined with
blue satin, where he sat partly on the lace of her skirt, while the
cabdrivers jeered at the elopement before falling into line again.

When Claude came back to the Rue Tourlaque he was in a dazed
condition, and for a couple of days remained musing whether after all
he might not have taken the wrong course in life. He seemed so strange
that Christine questioned him, whereupon he at first stuttered and
stammered, and finally confessed everything. There was a scene; she
wept for a long while, then pardoned him once more, full of infinite
indulgence for him. And, indeed, amidst all her bitter grief there
sprang up a hope that he might yet return to her, for if he could
deceive her thus he could not care as much as she had imagined for
that hateful painted creature who stared down from the big canvas.

The days went by, and towards the middle of the winter Claude's
courage revived once more. One day, while putting some old frames in
order, he came upon a roll of canvas which had fallen behind the other
pictures. On opening the roll he found on it the nude figure, the
reclining woman of his old painting, 'In the Open Air,' which he had
cut out when the picture had come back to him from the Salon of the
Rejected. And, as he gazed at it, he uttered a cry of admiration:

'By the gods, how beautiful it is!'

He at once secured it to the wall with four nails, and remained for
hours in contemplation before it. His hands shook, the blood rushed to
his face. Was it possible that he had painted such a masterly thing?
He had possessed genius in those days then. So his skull, his eyes,
his fingers had been changed. He became so feverishly excited and felt
such a need of unburthening himself to somebody, that at last he
called his wife.

'Just come and have a look. Isn't her attitude good, eh? How
delicately her muscles are articulated! Just look at that bit there,
full of sunlight. And at the shoulder here. Ah, heavens! it's full of
life; I can feel it throb as I touch it.'

Christine, standing by, kept looking and answering in monosyllables.
This resurrection of herself, after so many years, had at first
flattered and surprised her. But on seeing him become so excited, she
gradually felt uncomfortable and irritated, without knowing why.

'Tell me,' he continued, 'don't you think her beautiful enough for one
to go on one's knees to her?'

'Yes, yes. But she has become rather blackish--'

Claude protested vehemently. Become blackish, what an idea! That woman
would never grow black; she possessed immortal youth! Veritable
passion had seized hold of him; he spoke of the figure as of a living
being; he had sudden longings to look at her that made him leave
everything else, as if he were hurrying to an appointment.

Then, one morning, he was taken with a fit of work.

'But, confound it all, as I did that, I can surely do it again,' he
said. 'Ah, this time, unless I'm a downright brute, we'll see about
it.'

And Christine had to give him a sitting there and then. For eight
hours a day, indeed, during a whole month he kept her before him,
without compassion for her increasing exhaustion or for the fatigue he
felt himself. He obstinately insisted upon producing a masterpiece; he
was determined that the upright figure of his big picture should equal
that reclining one which he saw on the wall, beaming with life. He
constantly referred to it, compared it with the one he was painting,
distracted by the fear of being unable to equal it. He cast one glance
at it, another at Christine, and a third at his canvas, and burst into
oaths whenever he felt dissatisfied. He ended by abusing his wife.

She was no longer young. Age had spoilt her figure, and that it was
which spoilt his work. She listened, and staggered in her very grief.
Those sittings, from which she had already suffered so much, were
becoming unbearable torture now. What was this new freak of crushing
her with her own girlhood, of fanning her jealousy by filling her with
regret for vanished beauty? She was becoming her own rival, she could
no longer look at that old picture of herself without being stung at
the heart by hateful envy. Ah, how heavily had that picture, that
study she had sat for long ago, weighed upon her existence! The whole
of her misfortunes sprang from it. It had changed the current of her
existence. And it had come to life again, it rose from the dead,
endowed with greater vitality than herself, to finish killing her, for
there was no longer aught but one woman for Claude--she who was shown
reclining on the old canvas, and who now arose and became the upright
figure of his new picture.

Then Christine felt herself growing older and older at each successive
sitting. And she experienced the infinite despair which comes upon
passionate women when love, like beauty, abandons them. Was it because
of this that Claude no longer cared for her, that he sought refuge in
an unnatural passion for his work? She soon lost all clear perception
of things; she fell into a state of utter neglect, going about in a
dressing jacket and dirty petticoats, devoid of all coquettish
feeling, discouraged by the idea that it was useless for her to
continue struggling, since she had become old.

There were occasionally abominable scenes between her and Claude, who
this time, however, obstinately stuck to his work and finished his
picture, swearing that, come what might, he would send it to the
Salon. He lived on his steps, cleaning up his backgrounds until dark.
At last, thoroughly exhausted, he declared that he would touch the
canvas no more; and Sandoz, on coming to see him one day, at four
o'clock, did not find him at home. Christine declared that he had just
gone out to take a breath of air on the height of Montmartre.

The breach between Claude and his old friends had gradually widened.
With time the latters' visits had become brief and far between, for
they felt uncomfortable when they found themselves face to face with
that disturbing style of painting; and they were more and more upset
by the unhinging of a mind which had been the admiration of their
youth. Now all had fled; none excepting Sandoz ever came. Gagniere had
even left Paris, to settle down in one of the two houses he owned at
Melun, where he lived frugally upon the proceeds of the other one,
after suddenly marrying, to every one's surprise, an old maid, his
music mistress, who played Wagner to him of an evening. As for
Mahoudeau, he alleged work as an excuse for not coming, and indeed he
was beginning to earn some money, thanks to a bronze manufacturer, who
employed him to touch up his models. Matters were different with Jory,
whom no one saw, since Mathilde despotically kept him sequestrated.
She had conquered him, and he had fallen into a kind of domesticity
comparable to that of a faithful dog, yielding up the keys of his
cashbox, and only carrying enough money about him to buy a cigar at a
time. It was even said that Mathilde, like the devotee she had once
been, had thrown him into the arms of the Church, in order to
consolidate her conquest, and that she was constantly talking to him
about death, of which he was horribly afraid. Fagerolles alone
affected a lively, cordial feeling towards his old friend Claude
whenever he happened to meet him. He then always promised to go and
see him, but never did so. He was so busy since his great success, in
such request, advertised, celebrated, on the road to every imaginable
honour and form of fortune! And Claude regretted nobody save Dubuche,
to whom he still felt attached, from a feeling of affection for the
old reminiscences of boyhood, notwithstanding the disagreements which
difference of disposition had provoked later on. But Dubuche, it
appeared, was not very happy either. No doubt he was gorged with
millions, but he led a wretched life, constantly at logger-heads with
his father-in-law (who complained of having been deceived with regard
to his capabilities as an architect), and obliged to pass his life
amidst the medicine bottles of his ailing wife and his two children,
who, having been prematurely born, had to be reared virtually in
cotton wool.

Of all the old friends, therefore, there only remained Sandoz, who
still found his way to the Rue Tourlaque. He came thither for little
Jacques, his godson, and for the sorrowing woman also, that Christine
whose passionate features amidst all this distress moved him deeply,
like a vision of one of the ardently amorous creatures whom he would
have liked to embody in his books. But, above all, his feeling of
artistic brotherliness had increased since he had seen Claude losing
ground, foundering amidst the heroic folly of art. At first he had
remained utterly astonished at it, for he had believed in his friend
more than in himself. Since their college days, he had always placed
himself second, while setting Claude very high on fame's ladder--on
the same rung, indeed, as the masters who revolutionise a period. Then
he had been grievously affected by that bankruptcy of genius; he had
become full of bitter, heartfelt pity at the sight of the horrible
torture of impotency. Did one ever know who was the madman in art?
Every failure touched him to the quick, and the more a picture or a
book verged upon aberration, sank to the grotesque and lamentable, the
more did Sandoz quiver with compassion, the more did he long to lull
to sleep, in the soothing extravagance of their dreams, those who were
thus blasted by their own work.

On the day when Sandoz called, and failed to find Claude at home, he
did not go away; but, seeing Christine's eyelids red with crying, he
said:

'If you think that he'll be in soon, I'll wait for him.'

'Oh! he surely won't be long.'

'In that case I'll wait, unless I am in your way.'

Never had her demeanour, the crushed look of a neglected woman, her
listless movements, her slow speech, her indifference for everything
but the passion that was consuming her, moved him so deeply. For the
last week, perhaps, she had not put a chair in its place, or dusted a
piece of furniture; she left the place to go to wreck and ruin,
scarcely having the strength to drag herself about. And it was enough
to break one's heart to behold that misery ending in filth beneath the
glaring light from the big window; to gaze on that ill-pargetted
shanty, so bare and disorderly, where one shivered with melancholy
although it was a bright February afternoon.

Christine had slowly sat down beside an iron bedstead, which Sandoz
had not noticed when he came in.

'Hallo,' he said, 'is Jacques ill?'

She was covering up the child, who constantly flung off the
bedclothes.

'Yes, he hasn't been up these three days. We brought his bed in here
so that he might be with us. He was never very strong. But he is
getting worse and worse, it's distracting.'

She had a fixed stare in her eyes and spoke in a monotonous tone, and
Sandoz felt frightened when he drew up to the bedside. The child's
pale head seemed to have grown bigger still, so heavy that he could no
longer support it. He lay perfectly still, and one might have thought
he was dead, but for the heavy breathing coming from between his
discoloured lips.

'My poor little Jacques, it's I, your godfather. Won't you say how
d'ye do?'

The child made a fruitless, painful effort to lift his head; his
eyelids parted, showing his white eyeballs, then closed again.

'Have you sent for a doctor?'

Christine shrugged her shoulders.

'Oh! doctors, what do they know?' she answered. 'We sent for one; he
said that there was nothing to be done. Let us hope that it will pass
over again. He is close upon twelve years old now, and maybe he is
growing too fast.'

Sandoz, quite chilled, said nothing for fear of increasing her
anxiety, since she did not seem to realise the gravity of the disease.
He walked about in silence and stopped in front of the picture.

'Ho, ho! it's getting on; it's on the right road this time.'

'It's finished.'

'What! finished?'

And when she told him that the canvas was to be sent to the Salon that
next week, he looked embarrassed, and sat down on the couch, like a
man who wishes to judge the work leisurely. The background, the quays,
the Seine, whence arose the triumphal point of the Cite, still
remained in a sketchy state--masterly, however, but as if the painter
had been afraid of spoiling the Paris of his dream by giving it
greater finish. There was also an excellent group on the left, the
lightermen unloading the sacks of plaster being carefully and
powerfully treated. But the boat full of women in the centre
transpierced the picture, as it were, with a blaze of flesh-tints
which were quite out of place; and the brilliancy and hallucinatory
proportions of the large nude figure which Claude had painted in a
fever seemed strangely, disconcertingly false amidst the reality of
all the rest.

Sandoz, silent, fell despair steal over him as he sat in front of that
magnificent failure. But he saw Christine's eyes fixed upon him, and
had sufficient strength of mind to say:

'Astounding!--the woman, astounding!'

At that moment Claude came in, and on seeing his old chum he uttered a
joyous exclamation and shook his hand vigorously. Then he approached
Christine, and kissed little Jacques, who had once more thrown off the
bedclothes.

'How is he?'

'Just the same.'

'To be sure, to be sure; he is growing too fast. A few days' rest will
set him all right. I told you not to be uneasy.'

And Claude thereupon sat down beside Sandoz on the couch. They both
took their ease, leaning back, with their eyes surveying the picture;
while Christine, seated by the bed, looked at nothing, and seemingly
thought of nothing, in the everlasting desolation of her heart. Night
was slowly coming on, the vivid light from the window paled already,
losing its sheen amidst the slowly-falling crepuscular dimness.

'So it's settled; your wife told me that you were going to send it
in.'

'Yes.'

'You are right; you had better have done with it once for all. Oh,
there are some magnificent bits in it. The quay in perspective to the
left, the man who shoulders that sack below. But--'

He hesitated, then finally took the bull by the horns.

'But, it's odd that you have persisted in leaving those women nude. It
isn't logical, I assure you; and, besides, you promised me you would
dress them--don't you remember? You have set your heart upon them very
much then?'

'Yes.'

Claude answered curtly, with the obstinacy of one mastered by a fixed
idea and unwilling to give any explanations. Then he crossed his arms
behind his head, and began talking of other things, without, however,
taking his eyes off his picture, over which the twilight began to cast
a slight shadow.

'Do you know where I have just come from?' he asked. 'I have been to
Courajod's. You know, the great landscape painter, whose "Pond of
Gagny" is at the Luxembourg. You remember, I thought he was dead, and
we were told that he lived hereabouts, on the other side of the hill,
in the Rue de l'Abreuvoir. Well, old boy, he worried me, did Courajod.
While taking a breath of air now and then up there, I discovered his
shanty, and I could no longer pass in front of it without wanting to
go inside. Just think, a master, a man who invented our modern
landscape school, and who lives there, unknown, done for, like a mole
in its hole! You can have no idea of the street or the caboose: a
village street, full of fowls, and bordered by grassy banks; and a
caboose like a child's toy, with tiny windows, a tiny door, a tiny
garden. Oh! the garden--a mere patch of soil, sloping down abruptly,
with a bed where four pear trees stand, and the rest taken up by a
fowl-house, made out of green boards, old plaster, and wire network,
held together with bits of string.'

His words came slowly; he blinked while he spoke as if the thought of
his picture had returned to him and was gradually taking possession of
him, to such a degree as to hamper him in his speech about other
matters.

'Well, as luck would have it, I found Courajod on his doorstep to-day.
An old man of more than eighty, wrinkled and shrunk to the size of a
boy. I should like you to see him, with his clogs, his peasant's
jersey and his coloured handkerchief wound over his head as if he were
an old market-woman. I pluckily went up to him, saying, "Monsieur
Courajod, I know you very well; you have a picture in the Luxembourg
Gallery which is a masterpiece. Allow a painter to shake hands with
you as he would with his master." And then you should have seen him
take fright, draw back and stutter, as if I were going to strike him.
A regular flight! However, I followed him, and gradually he recovered
his composure, and showed me his hens, his ducks, his rabbits and
dogs--an extraordinary collection of birds and beasts; there was even
a raven among them. He lives in the midst of them all; he speaks to no
one but his animals. As for the view, it's simply magnificent; you see
the whole of the St. Denis plain for miles upon miles; rivers and
towns, smoking factory-chimneys, and puffing railway-engines; in
short, the place is a real hermitage on a hill, with its back turned
to Paris and its eyes fixed on the boundless country. As a matter of
course, I came back to his picture. "Oh, Monsieur Courajod," said I,
"what talent you showed! If you only knew how much we all admire you.
You are one of our illustrious men; you'll remain the ancestor of us
all." But his lips began to tremble again; he looked at me with an air
of terror-stricken stupidity; I am sure he would not have waved me
back with a more imploring gesture if I had unearthed under his very
eyes the corpse of some forgotten comrade of his youth. He kept
chewing disconnected words between his toothless gums; it was the
mumbling of an old man who had sunk into second childhood, and whom
it's impossible to understand. "Don't know--so long ago--too old
--don't care a rap." To make a long story short, he showed me the
door; I heard him hurriedly turn the key in lock, barricading himself
and his birds and animals against the admiration of the outside world.
Ah, my good fellow, the idea of it! That great man ending his life
like a retired grocer; that voluntary relapse into "nothingness" even
before death. Ah, the glory, the glory for which we others are ready
to die!'

Claude's voice, which had sunk lower and lower, died away at last in a
melancholy sigh. Darkness was still coming on; after gradually
collecting in the corners, it rose like a slow, inexorable tide, first
submerging the legs of the chairs and the table, all the confusion of
things that littered the tiled floor. The lower part of the picture
was already growing dim, and Claude, with his eyes still desperately
fixed on it, seemed to be watching the ascent of the darkness as if he
had at last judged his work in the expiring light. And no sound was
heard save the stertorous breathing of the sick child, near whom there
still loomed the dark silhouette of the motionless mother.

Then Sandoz spoke in his turn, his hands also crossed behind his head,
and his back resting against one of the cushions of the couch.

'Does one ever know? Would it not be better, perhaps, to live and die
unknown? What a sell it would be if artistic glory existed no more
than the Paradise which is talked about in catechisms and which even
children nowadays make fun of! We, who no longer believe in the
Divinity, still believe in our own immortality. What a farce it all
is!'

Then, affected to melancholy himself by the mournfulness of the
twilight, and stirred by all the human suffering he beheld around him,
he began to speak of his own torments.

'Look here, old man, I, whom you envy, perhaps--yes, I, who am
beginning to get on in the world, as middle-class people say--I, who
publish books and earn a little money--well, I am being killed by it
all. I have often already told you this, but you don't believe me,
because, as you only turn out work with a deal of trouble and cannot
bring yourself to public notice, happiness in your eyes could
naturally consist in producing a great deal, in being seen, and
praised or slated. Well, get admitted to the next Salon, get into the
thick of the battle, paint other pictures, and then tell me whether
that suffices, and whether you are happy at last. Listen; work has
taken up the whole of my existence. Little by little, it has robbed me
of my mother, of my wife, of everything I love. It is like a germ
thrown into the cranium, which feeds on the brain, finds its way into
the trunk and limbs, and gnaws up the whole of the body. The moment I
jump out of bed of a morning, work clutches hold of me, rivets me to
my desk without leaving me time to get a breath of fresh air; then it
pursues me at luncheon--I audibly chew my sentences with my bread.
Next it accompanies me when I go out, comes back with me and dines off
the same plate as myself; lies down with me on my pillow, so utterly
pitiless that I am never able to set the book in hand on one side;
indeed, its growth continues even in the depth of my sleep. And
nothing outside of it exists for me. True, I go upstairs to embrace my
mother, but in so absent-minded a way, that ten minutes after leaving
her I ask myself whether I have really been to wish her good-morning.
My poor wife has no husband; I am not with her even when our hands
touch. Sometimes I have an acute feeling that I am making their lives
very sad, and I feel very remorseful, for happiness is solely composed
of kindness, frankness and gaiety in one's home; but how can I escape
from the claws of the monster? I at once relapse into the somnambulism
of my working hours, into the indifference and moroseness of my fixed
idea. If the pages I have written during the morning have been worked
off all right, so much the better; if one of them has remained in
distress, so much the worse. The household will laugh or cry according
to the whim of that all-devouring monster--Work. No, no! I have
nothing that I can call my own. In my days of poverty I dreamt of rest
in the country, of travel in distant lands; and now that I might make
those dreams reality, the work that has been begun keeps me shut up.
There is no chance of a walk in the morning's sun, no chance of
running round to a friend's house, or of a mad bout of idleness! My
strength of will has gone with the rest; all this has become a habit;
I have locked the door of the world behind me, and thrown the key out
of the window. There is no longer anything in my den but work and
myself--and work will devour me, and then there will be nothing left,
nothing at all!'

He paused, and silence reigned once more in the deepening gloom. Then
he began again with an effort:

'And if one were only satisfied, if one only got some enjoyment out of
such a nigger's life! Ah! I should like to know how those fellows
manage who smoke cigarettes and complacently stroke their beards while
they are at work. Yes, it appears to me that there are some who find
production an easy pleasure, to be set aside or taken up without the
least excitement. They are delighted, they admire themselves, they
cannot write a couple of lines but they find those lines of a rare,
distinguished, matchless quality. Well, as for myself, I bring forth
in anguish, and my offspring seems a horror to me. How can a man be
sufficiently wanting in self-doubt as to believe in himself? It
absolutely amazes me to see men, who furiously deny talent to
everybody else, lose all critical acumen, all common-sense, when it
becomes a question of their own bastard creations. Why, a book is
always very ugly. To like it one mustn't have had a hand in the
cooking of it. I say nothing of the jugsful of insults that are
showered upon one. Instead of annoying, they rather encourage me. I
see men who are upset by attacks, who feel a humiliating craving to
win sympathy. It is a simple question of temperament; some women would
die if they failed to please. But, to my thinking, insult is a very
good medicine to take; unpopularity is a very manly school to be
brought up in. Nothing keeps one in such good health and strength as
the hooting of a crowd of imbeciles. It suffices that a man can say
that he has given his life's blood to his work; that he expects
neither immediate justice nor serious attention; that he works without
hope of any kind, and simply because the love of work beats beneath
his skin like his heart, irrespective of any will of his own. If he
can do all this, he may die in the effort with the consoling illusion
that he will be appreciated one day or other. Ah! if the others only
knew how jauntily I bear the weight of their anger. Only there is my
own choler, which overwhelms me; I fret that I cannot live for a
moment happy. What hours of misery I spend, great heavens! from the
very day I begin a novel. During the first chapters there isn't so
much trouble. I have plenty of room before me in which to display
genius. But afterwards I become distracted, and am never satisfied
with the daily task; I condemn the book before it is finished, judging
it inferior to its elders; and I torture myself about certain pages,
about certain sentences, certain words, so that at last the very
commas assume an ugly look, from which I suffer. And when it is
finished--ah! when it is finished, what a relief! Not the enjoyment of
the gentleman who exalts himself in the worship of his offspring, but
the curse of the labourer who throws down the burden that has been
breaking his back. Then, later on, with another book, it all begins
afresh; it will always begin afresh, and I shall die under it, furious
with myself, exasperated at not having had more talent, enraged at not
leaving a "work" more complete, of greater dimensions--books upon
books, a pile of mountain height! And at my death I shall feel
horrible doubts about the task I may have accomplished, asking myself
whether I ought not to have gone to the left when I went to the right,
and my last word, my last gasp, will be to recommence the whole over
again--'

He was thoroughly moved; the words stuck in his throat; he was obliged
to draw breath for a moment before delivering himself of this
passionate cry in which all his impenitent lyricism took wing:

Ah, life! a second span of life, who shall give it to me, that work
may rob me of it again--that I may die of it once more?'

It had now become quite dark; the mother's rigid silhouette was no
longer visible; the hoarse breathing of the child sounded amidst the
obscurity like a terrible and distant signal of distress, uprising
from the streets. In the whole studio, which had become lugubriously
black, the big canvas only showed a glimpse of pallidity, a last
vestige of the waning daylight. The nude figure, similar to an
agonising vision, seemed to be floating about, without definite shape,
the legs having already vanished, one arm being already submerged, and
the only part at all distinct being the trunk, which shone like a
silvery moon.

After a protracted pause, Sandoz inquired:

'Shall I go with you when you take your picture?'

Getting no answer from Claude, he fancied he could hear him crying.
Was it with the same infinite sadness, the despair by which he himself
had been stirred just now? He waited for a moment, then repeated his
question, and at last the painter, after choking down a sob,
stammered:

'Thanks, the picture will remain here; I sha'n't send it.'

'What? Why, you had made up your mind?'

'Yes, yes, I had made up my mind; but I had not seen it as I saw it
just now in the waning daylight. I have failed with it, failed with it
again--it struck my eyes like a blow, it went to my very heart.'

His tears now flowed slow and scalding in the gloom that hid him from
sight. He had been restraining himself, and now the silent anguish
which had consumed him burst forth despite all his efforts.

'My poor friend,' said Sandoz, quite upset; 'it is hard to tell you
so, but all the same you are right, perhaps, in delaying matters to
finish certain parts rather more. Still I am angry with myself, for I
shall imagine that it was I who discouraged you by my everlasting
stupid discontent with things.'

Claude simply answered:

'You! what an idea! I was not even listening to you. No; I was
looking, and I saw everything go helter-skelter in that confounded
canvas. The light was dying away, and all at once, in the greyish
dusk, the scales suddenly dropped from my eyes. The background alone
is pretty; the nude woman is altogether too loud; what's more, she's
out of the perpendicular, and her legs are badly drawn. When I noticed
that, ah! it was enough to kill me there and then; I felt life
departing from me. Then the gloom kept rising and rising, bringing a
whirling sensation, a foundering of everything, the earth rolling into
chaos, the end of the world. And soon I only saw the trunk waning like
a sickly moon. And look, look! there now remains nothing of her, not a
glimpse; she is dead, quite black!'

In fact, the picture had at last entirely disappeared. But the painter
had risen and could be heard swearing in the dense obscurity.

'D--n it all, it doesn't matter, I'll set to work at it again--'

Then Christine, who had also risen from her chair, against which he
stumbled, interrupted him, saying: 'Take care, I'll light the lamp.'

She lighted it and came back looking very pale, casting a glance of
hatred and fear at the picture. It was not to go then? The abomination
was to begin once more!

'I'll set to work at it again,' repeated Claude, 'and it shall kill
me, it shall kill my wife, my child, the whole lot; but, by heaven, it
shall be a masterpiece!'

Christine sat down again; they approached Jacques, who had thrown the
clothes off once more with his feverish little hands. He was still
breathing heavily, lying quite inert, his head buried in the pillow
like a weight, with which the bed seemed to creak. When Sandoz was on
the point of going, he expressed his uneasiness. The mother appeared
stupefied; while the father was already returning to his picture, the
masterpiece which awaited creation, and the thought of which filled
him with such passionate illusions that he gave less heed to the
painful reality of the sufferings of his child, the true living flesh
of his flesh.

On the following morning, Claude had just finished dressing, when he
heard Christine calling in a frightened voice. She also had just woke
with a start from the heavy sleep which had benumbed her while she sat
watching the sick child.

'Claude! Claude! Oh, look! He is dead.'

The painter rushed forward, with heavy eyes, stumbling, and apparently
failing to understand, for he repeated with an air of profound
amazement, 'What do you mean by saying he is dead?'

For a moment they remained staring wildly at the bed. The poor little
fellow, with his disproportionate head--the head of the progeny of
genius, exaggerated as to verge upon cretinism--did not appear to have
stirred since the previous night; but no breath came from his mouth,
which had widened and become discoloured, and his glassy eyes were
open. His father laid his hands upon him and found him icy cold.

'It is true, he is dead.'

And their stupor was such that for yet another moment they remained
with their eyes dry, simply thunderstruck, as it were, by the
abruptness of that death which they considered incredible.

Then, her knees bending under her, Christine dropped down in front of
the bed, bursting into violent sobs which shook her from head to foot,
and wringing her hands, whilst her forehead remained pressed against
the mattress. In that first moment of horror her despair was
aggravated above all by poignant remorse--the remorse of not having
sufficiently cared for the poor child. Former days started up before
her in a rapid vision, each bringing with it regretfulness for unkind
words, deferred caresses, rough treatment even. And now it was all
over; she would never be able to compensate the lad for the affection
she had withheld from him. He whom she thought so disobedient had
obeyed but too well at last. She had so often told him when at play to
be still, and not to disturb his father at his work, that he was quiet
at last, and for ever. The idea suffocated her; each sob drew from her
a dull moan.

Claude had begun walking up and down the studio, unable to remain
still. With his features convulsed, he shed a few big tears, which he
brushed away with the back of his hand. And whenever he passed in
front of the little corpse he could not help glancing at it. The
glassy eyes, wide open, seemed to exercise a spell over him. At first
he resisted, but a confused idea assumed shape within him, and would
not be shaken off. He yielded to it at last, took a small canvas, and
began to paint a study of the dead child. For the first few minutes
his tears dimmed his sight, wrapping everything in a mist; but he kept
wiping them away, and persevered with his work, even though his brush
shook. Then the passion for art dried his tears and steadied his hand,
and in a little while it was no longer his icy son that lay there, but
merely a model, a subject, the strange interest of which stirred him.
That huge head, that waxy flesh, those eyes which looked like holes
staring into space--all excited and thrilled him. He stepped back,
seemed to take pleasure in his work, and vaguely smiled at it.

When Christine rose from her knees, she found him thus occupied. Then,
bursting into tears again, she merely said:

'Ah! you can paint him now, he'll never stir again.'

For five hours Claude kept at it, and on the second day, when Sandoz
came back with him from the cemetery, after the funeral, he shuddered
with pity and admiration at the sight of the small canvas. It was one
of the fine bits of former days, a masterpiece of limpidity and power,
to which was added a note of boundless melancholy, the end of
everything--all life ebbing away with the death of that child.

But Sandoz, who had burst out into exclamations fall of praise, was
quite taken aback on hearing Claude say to him:

'You are sure you like it? In that case, as the other machine isn't
ready, I'll send this to the Salon.'

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