His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

music is a communion⁠—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to understand him and give way⁠—”

“And Schumann, madame, and Wagner, madame⁠—Schumann’s ‘Reverie,’ nothing but the stringed instruments, a warm shower falling on acacia leaves, a sunray which dries them, barely a tear in space. Wagner! ah, Wagner! the overture of the Flying Dutchman, are you not fond of it?⁠—tell me you are fond of it! As for myself, it overcomes me. There is nothing left, nothing left, one expires⁠—”

Their voices died away; they did not even look at each other, but sat there elbow to elbow, with their faces turned upward, quite overcome.

Sandoz, who was surprised, asked himself where Mathilde could have picked up that jargon. In some article of Jory’s, perhaps. Besides, he had remarked that women talk music very well, even without knowing a note of it. And he, whom the bitterness of the others had only grieved, became exasperated at sight of Mathilde’s languishing attitude. No, no, that was quite enough; the men tore each other to bits; still that might pass, after all; but what an end to the evening it was, that feminine fraud, cooing and titillating herself with thoughts of Beethoven’s and Schumann’s music! Fortunately, Gagnière suddenly rose. He knew what o’clock it was even in the depths of his ecstasy, and he had only just time left him to catch his last train. So, after exchanging nerveless and silent handshakes with the others, he went off to sleep at Melun.

“What a failure he is!” muttered Mahoudeau. “Music has killed painting; he’ll never do anything!”

He himself had to leave, and the door had scarcely closed behind his back when Jory declared:

“Have you seen his last paperweight? He’ll end by sculpturing sleeve-links. There’s a fellow who has missed his mark! To think that he prided himself on being vigorous!”

But Mathilde was already afoot, taking leave of Christine with a curt little inclination of the head, affecting social familiarity with Henriette, and carrying off her husband, who helped her on with her cloak in the anteroom, humble and terrified at the severe glance she gave him, for she had an account to settle.

Then, the door having closed behind them, Sandoz, beside himself, cried out: “That’s the end! The journalist was bound to call the others abortions⁠—yes, the journalist who, after patching up articles, has fallen to trading upon public credulity! Ah! luckily there’s Mathilde the Avengeress!”

Of the guests Christine and Claude alone were left. The latter, since the drawing-room had been growing empty, had remained ensconced in the depths of an armchair, no longer speaking, but overcome by that species of magnetic slumber which stiffened him, and fixed his eyes on something far away beyond the walls. He protruded his face, a convulsive kind of attention seemed to carry it forward; he certainly beheld something invisible, and heard a summons in the silence.

Christine having risen in her turn, and apologised for being the last to leave, Henriette took hold of her hands, repeated how fond she was of her, begged her to come and see her frequently, and to dispose of her in all things as she would with a sister. But Claude’s sorrowful wife, looking so sadly charming in her black dress, shook her head with a pale smile.

“Come,” said Sandoz in her ear, after giving a glance at Claude, “you mustn’t distress yourself like that. He has talked a great deal, he has been gayer this evening. He’s all right.”

But in a terrified voice she answered:

“No, no; look at his eyes⁠—I shall tremble as long as he has his eyes like that. You have done all you could, thanks. What you haven’t done no one will do. Ah! how I suffer at being unable to hope, at being unable to do anything!”

Then in a loud tone she asked:

“Are you coming, Claude?”

She had to repeat her question twice, for at first he did not hear her; he ended by starting, however, and rose to his feet, saying, as if he had answered the summons from the horizon afar off:

“Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

When Sandoz and his wife at last found themselves alone in the drawing-room, where the atmosphere now was stifling⁠—heated by the lights and heavy, as it were, with melancholy silence after all the outbursts of the quarrelling⁠—they looked at one another and let their arms fall, quite heart-rent by the unfortunate issue of their dinner party. Henrietta tried to laugh it off, however, murmuring:

“I warned you, I quite understood⁠—”

But he interrupted her with a despairing gesture. What! was that, then, the end of his long illusion, that dream of eternity which had made him set happiness in a few friendships, formed in childhood, and shared until extreme old age? Ah! what a wretched band, what a final rending, what a terrible balance-sheet to weep over after that bankruptcy of the human heart! And he grew astonished on thinking of the friends who had fallen off by the roadside, of the great affections lost on the way, of the others unceasingly changing around himself, in whom he found no change. His poor Thursdays filled him with pity, so many memories were in mourning, it was the slow death of all that one loves! Would his wife and himself have to resign themselves to live as in a desert, to cloister themselves in utter hatred of the world? Ought they rather to throw their doors wide open to a throng of strangers and indifferent folk? By degrees a certainty dawned in the depths of his grief: everything ended and nothing began again in life. He seemed to yield to evidence, and, heaving a big sigh, exclaimed:

“You were right. We won’t invite them to dinner again⁠—they would devour one another.”

As soon as Claude and Christine reached the Place de la Trinité on their way home, the painter let go of his wife’s arm; and, stammering that he had to go somewhere, he begged her to return to the Rue Tourlaque