His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

Sandoz shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of despair. He also bewailed the fact that he had been born at what he called the confluence of Hugo and Balzac. Nevertheless, Claude remained satisfied, full of the happy excitement of a successful sitting. If his friend could give him two or three more Sundays the man in the jacket would be all there. He had enough of him for the present. Both began to joke, for, as a rule, Claude almost killed his models, only letting them go when they were fainting, half dead with fatigue. He himself now very nigh dropped, his legs bending under him, and his stomach empty. And as the cuckoo clock struck five, he snatched at his crust of bread and devoured it. Thoroughly worn out, he broke it with trembling fingers, and scarcely chewed it, again standing before his picture, pursued by his passion to such a degree as to be unconscious even that he was eating.

“Five o’clock,” said Sandoz, as he stretched himself, with his arms upraised. “Let’s go and have dinner. Ah! here comes Dubuche, just in time.”

There was a knock at the door, and Dubuche came in. He was a stout young fellow, dark, with regular but heavy features, close-cropped hair, and moustaches already full-blown. He shook hands with both his friends, and stopped before the picture, looking nonplussed. In reality that harum-scarum style of painting upset him, such was the even balance of his nature, such his reverence as a steady student for the established formulas of art; and it was only his feeling of friendship which, as a rule, prevented him from criticising. But this time his whole being revolted visibly.

“Well, what’s the matter? Doesn’t it suit you?” asked Sandoz, who was watching him.

“Yes, oh yes, it’s very well painted⁠—but⁠—”

“Well, spit it out. What is it that ruffles you?”

“Not much, only the gentleman is fully dressed, and the women are not. People have never seen anything like that before.”

This sufficed to make both the others wild. Why, were there not a hundred pictures in the Louvre composed in precisely the same way? Hadn’t all Paris and all the painters and tourists of the world seen them? And besides, if people had never seen anything like it, they would see it now. After all, they didn’t care a fig for the public!

Not in the least disconcerted by these violent replies, Dubuche repeated quietly: “The public won’t understand⁠—the public will think it indecorous⁠—and so it is!”

“You wretched bourgeois philistine!” exclaimed Claude, exasperated. “They are making a famous idiot of you at the School of Arts. You weren’t such a fool formerly.”

These were the current amenities of his two friends since Dubuche had attended the School of Arts. He thereupon beat a retreat, rather afraid of the turn the dispute was taking, and saved himself by belabouring the painters of the School. Certainly his friends were right in one respect, the School painters were real idiots. But as for the architects, that was a different matter. Where was he to get his tuition, if not there? Besides his tuition would not prevent him from having ideas of his own, later on. Wherewith he assumed a very revolutionary air.

“All right,” said Sandoz, “the moment you apologise, let’s go and dine.”

But Claude had mechanically taken up a brush and set to work again. Beside the gentleman in the velveteen jacket the figure of the recumbent woman seemed to be fading away. Feverish and impatient, he traced a bold outline round her so as to bring her forward.

“Are you coming?”

“In a minute; hang it, what’s the hurry? Just let me set this right, and I’ll be with you.”

Sandoz shook his head and then remarked very quietly, lest he should still further annoy him: “You do wrong to worry yourself like that, old man. Yes, you are knocked up, and have had nothing to eat, and you’ll only spoil your work, as you did the other day.”

But the painter waved him off with a peevish gesture. It was the old story⁠—he did not know when to leave off; he intoxicated himself with work in his craving for an immediate result, in order to prove to himself that he held his masterpiece at last. Doubts had just driven him to despair in the midst of his delight at having terminated a successful sitting. Had he done right, after all, in making the velveteen jacket so prominent, and would he not afterwards fail to secure the brilliancy which he wished the female figure to show? Rather than remain in suspense he would have dropped down dead on the spot. Feverishly drawing the sketch of Christine’s head from the portfolio where he had hidden it, he compared it with the painting on the canvas, assisting himself, as it were, by means of this document derived from life.

“Hallo!” exclaimed Dubuche, “where did you get that from? Who is it?”

Claude, startled by the questions, did not answer; then, without reflecting, he who usually told them everything, brusquely lied, prompted by a delicate impulse to keep silent respecting the adventure of the night.

“Tell us who it is?” repeated the architect.

“Nobody at all⁠—a model.”

“A model! a very young one, isn’t she? She looks very nice. I wish you would give me her address. Not for myself, but for a sculptor I know who’s on the lookout for a Psyche. Have you got the address there?”

Thereupon Dubuche turned to a corner of the greyish wall on which the addresses of several models were written in chalk, haphazard. The women particularly left their cards in that way, in awkward, childish handwriting. Zoé Piédefer, 7 Rue Campagne-Première, a big brunette, who was getting rather too stout, had scrawled her sign manual right across the names of little Flore Beauchamp, 32 Rue de Laval, and Judith Vaquez, 69 Rue du Rocher, a Jewess, both of whom were too thin.

“I say, have you got the address?” resumed Dubuche.

Then Claude flew into a