His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

“Gentlemen⁠—come, gentlemen; it’s extraordinary that one can’t settle matters without shouting⁠—I beg of you, gentlemen⁠—”

At last he obtained a little silence. In reality, he was not a bad-hearted man. Why should not they admit that little picture, although he himself thought it execrable? They admitted so many others!

“Come, gentlemen, the vote is asked for.”

He himself was, perhaps, about to raise his hand, when Bongrand, who had hitherto remained silent, with the blood rising to his cheeks in the anger he was trying to restrain, abruptly went off like a popgun, most unseasonably giving vent to the protestations of his rebellious conscience.

“But, curse it all! there are not four among us capable of turning out such a piece of work!”

Some grunts sped around; but the sledgehammer blow had come upon them with such force that nobody answered.

“Gentlemen, the vote is asked for,” curtly repeated Mazel, who had turned pale.

His tone sufficed to explain everything: it expressed all his latent hatred of Bongrand, the fierce rivalry that lay hidden under their seemingly good-natured handshakes.

Things rarely came to such a pass as this. They almost always arranged matters. But in the depths of their ravaged pride there were wounds which always bled; they secretly waged duels which tortured them with agony, despite the smile upon their lips.

Bongrand and Fagerolles alone raised their hands, and The Dead Child, being rejected, could only perhaps be rescued at the general revision.

This general revision was the terrible part of the task. Although, after twenty days’ continuous toil, the committee allowed itself forty-eight hours’ rest, so as to enable the keepers to prepare the final work, it could not help shuddering on the afternoon when it came upon the assemblage of three thousand rejected paintings, from among which it had to rescue as many canvases as were necessary for the then-regulation total of two thousand five hundred admitted works to be complete. Ah! those three thousand pictures, placed one after the other alongside the walls of all the galleries, including the outer one, deposited also even on the floors, and lying there like stagnant pools, between which the attendants devised little paths⁠—they were like an inundation, a deluge, which rose up, streamed over the whole Palais de l’Industrie, and submerged it beneath the murky flow of all the mediocrity and madness to be found in the river of Art. And but a single afternoon sitting was held, from one till seven o’clock⁠—six hours of wild galloping through a maze! At first they held out against fatigue and strove to keep their vision clear; but the forced march soon made their legs give way, their eyesight was irritated by all the dancing colours, and yet it was still necessary to march on, to look and judge, even until they broke down with fatigue. By four o’clock the march was like a rout⁠—the scattering of a defeated army. Some committeemen, out of breath, dragged themselves along very far in the rear; others, isolated, lost amid the frames, followed the narrow paths, renouncing all prospect of emerging from them, turning round and round without any hope of ever getting to the end! How could they be just and impartial, good heavens? What could they select from amid that heap of horrors? Without clearly distinguishing a landscape from a portrait, they made up the number they required in potluck fashion. Two hundred, two hundred and forty⁠—another eight, they still wanted eight more. That one? No, that other. As you like! Seven, eight, it was over! At last they had got to the end, and they hobbled away, saved⁠—free!

In one gallery a fresh scene drew them once more round The Dead Child, lying on the floor among other waifs. But this time they jested. A joker pretended to stumble and set his foot in the middle of the canvas, while others trotted along the surrounding little paths, as if trying to find out which was the picture’s top and which its bottom, and declaring that it looked much better topsy-turvy.

Fagerolles himself also began to joke.

“Come, a little courage, gentlemen; go the round, examine it, you’ll be repaid for your trouble. Really now, gentlemen, be kind, rescue it; pray do that good action!”

They all grew merry in listening to him, but with cruel laughter they refused more harshly than ever. “No, no, never!”

“Will you take it for your ‘charity’?” cried a comrade.

This was a custom; the committeemen had a right to a “charity”; each of them could select a canvas among the lot, no matter how execrable it might be, and it was thereupon admitted without examination. As a rule, the bounty of this admission was bestowed upon poor artists. The forty paintings thus rescued at the eleventh hour, were those of the beggars at the door⁠—those whom one allowed to glide with empty stomachs to the far end of the table.

“For my ‘charity,’ ” repeated Fagerolles, feeling very much embarrassed; “the fact is, I meant to take another painting for my ‘charity.’ Yes, some flowers by a lady⁠—”

He was interrupted by loud jeers. Was she pretty? In front of the women’s paintings the gentlemen were particularly prone to sneer, never displaying the least gallantry. And Fagerolles remained perplexed, for the “lady” in question was a person whom Irma took an interest in. He trembled at the idea of the terrible scene which would ensue should he fail to keep his promise. An expedient occurred to him.

“Well, and you, Bongrand? You might very well take this funny little dead child for your charity.”

Bongrand, wounded to the heart, indignant at all the bartering, waved his long arms:

“What! I? I insult a real painter in that fashion? Let him be prouder, dash it, and never send anything to the Salon!”

Then, as the others still went on sneering, Fagerolles, desirous that victory should remain to him, made up his mind, with a proud air, like a man who is conscious of his strength and does not fear being compromised.

“All right,