His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

unconfessed feeling of respect for the man whose ideas he had stolen.

As it happened, Mazel was in a frightfully bad humour that day. At the outset of the sitting the brigadier had come to him, saying: “There was a mistake yesterday, Monsieur Mazel. A hors-concours12 picture was rejected. You know, No. 2520, a nude woman under a tree.”

In fact, on the day before, this painting had been consigned to the grave amid unanimous contempt, nobody having noticed that it was the work of an old classical painter highly respected by the Institute; and the brigadier’s fright, and the amusing circumstance of a picture having thus been condemned by mistake, enlivened the younger members of the committee and made them sneer in a provoking manner.

Mazel, who detested such mishaps, which he rightly felt were disastrous for the authority of the School of Arts, made an angry gesture, and drily said:

“Well, fish it out again, and put it among the admitted pictures. It isn’t so surprising, there was an intolerable noise yesterday. How can one judge anything like that at a gallop, when one can’t even obtain silence?”

He rang his bell furiously, and added:

“Come, gentlemen, everything is ready⁠—a little good will, if you please.”

Unluckily, a fresh misfortune occurred as soon as the first paintings were set on the trestle. One canvas among others attracted Mazel’s attention, so bad did he consider it, so sharp in tone as to make one’s very teeth grate. As his sight was failing him, he leant forward to look at the signature, muttering the while: “Who’s the pig⁠—”

But he quickly drew himself up, quite shocked at having read the name of one of his friends, an artist who, like himself, was a rampart of healthy principles. Hoping that he had not been overheard, he thereupon called out:

“Superb! No. 1, eh, gentlemen?”

No. 1 was granted⁠—the formula of admission which entitled the picture to be hung on the line. Only, some of the committeemen laughed and nudged each other, at which Mazel felt very hurt, and became very fierce.

Moreover, they all made such blunders at times. A great many of them eased their feelings at the first glance, and then recalled their words as soon as they had deciphered the signature. This ended by making them cautious, and so with furtive glances they made sure of the artist’s name before expressing any opinion. Besides, whenever a colleague’s work, some fellow committeeman’s suspicious-looking canvas, was brought forward, they took the precaution to warn each other by making signs behind the painter’s back, as if to say, “Take care, no mistake, mind; it’s his picture.”

Fagerolles, despite his colleagues’ fidgety nerves, carried the day on a first occasion. It was a question of admitting a frightful portrait painted by one of his pupils, whose family, a very wealthy one, received him on a footing of intimacy. To achieve this he had taken Mazel on one side in order to try to move him with a sentimental story about an unfortunate father with three daughters, who were starving. But the president let himself be entreated for a long while, saying that a man shouldn’t waste his time painting when he was dying for lack of food, and that he ought to have a little more consideration for his three daughters! However, in the result, Mazel raised his hand, alone, with Fagerolles. Some of the others then angrily protested, and even two members of the Institute seemed disgusted, whereupon Fagerolles whispered to them in a low key:

“It’s for Mazel! He begged me to vote. The painter’s a relative of his, I think; at all events, he greatly wants the picture to be accepted.”

At this the two academicians promptly raised their hands, and a large majority declared itself in favour of the portrait.

But all at once laughter, witticisms, and indignant cries rang out: The Dead Child had just been placed on the trestle. Were they to have the morgue sent to them now? said some. And while the old men drew back in alarm, the younger ones scoffed at the child’s big head, which was plainly that of a monkey who had died from trying to swallow a gourd.

Fagerolles at once understood that the game was lost. At first he tried to spirit the vote away by a joke, in accordance with his skilful tactics:

“Come, gentlemen, an old combatant⁠—”

But furious exclamations cut him short. Oh, no! not that one. They knew him, that old combatant! A madman who had been persevering in his obstinacy for fifteen years past⁠—a proud, stuck-up fellow who posed for being a genius, and who had talked about demolishing the Salon, without even sending a picture that it was possible to accept. All their hatred of independent originality, of the competition of the “shop over the way,” which frightened them, of that invincible power which triumphs even when it is seemingly defeated, resounded in their voices. No, no; away with it!

Then Fagerolles himself made the mistake of getting irritated, yielding to the anger he felt at finding what little real influence he possessed.

“You are unjust; at least, be impartial,” he said.

Thereupon the tumult reached a climax. He was surrounded and jostled, arms waved about him in threatening fashion, and angry words were shot out at him like bullets.

“You dishonour the committee, monsieur!”

“If you defend that thing, it’s simply to get your name in the newspapers!”

“You aren’t competent to speak on the subject!”

Then Fagerolles, beside himself, losing even the pliancy of his bantering disposition, retorted:

“I’m as competent as you are.”

“Shut up!” resumed a comrade, a very irascible little painter with a fair complexion. “You surely don’t want to make us swallow such a turnip as that?”

Yes, yes, a turnip! They all repeated the word in tones of conviction⁠—that word which they usually cast at the very worst smudges, at the pale, cold, glairy painting of daubers.

“All right,” at last said Fagerolles, clenching his teeth. “I demand the vote.”

Since the discussion had become envenomed, Mazel had been ringing his bell,