His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

The latter, who was about to swallow his first spoonful of soup, set it in his plate again.

“I was in the Rue de Lancry⁠—you know, where they have chamber music. Oh! my boy, some of Schumann’s machines! You haven’t an idea of them! They clutch hold of you at the back of your head just as if somebody were breathing down your back. Yes, yes, it’s something much more immaterial than a kiss, just a whiff of breath. ’Pon my honour, a fellow feels as if he were going to die.”

His eyes were moistening and he turned pale, as if experiencing some over-acute enjoyment.

“Eat your soup,” said Mahoudeau; “you’ll tell us all about it afterwards.”

The skate was served, and they had the vinegar bottle put on the table to improve the flavour of the black butter, which seemed rather insipid. They ate with a will, and the hunks of bread swiftly disappeared. There was nothing refined about the repast, and the wine was mere common stuff, which they watered considerably from a feeling of delicacy, in order to lessen their host’s expenses. They had just saluted the leg of mutton with a hurrah, and the host had begun to carve it, when the door opened anew. But this time there were furious protests.

“No, no, not another soul! Turn him out, turn him out.”

Dubuche, out of breath with having run, bewildered at finding himself amidst such howling, thrust his fat, pallid face forward, whilst stammering explanations.

“Really, now, I assure you it was the fault of the omnibuses. I had to wait for five of them in the Champs Élysées.”

“No, no, he’s lying!⁠—Let him go, he shan’t have any of that mutton. Turn him out, turn him out!”

All the same, he ended by coming in, and it was then noticed that he was stylishly attired, all in black, trousers and frock-coat alike, and cravated and booted in the stiff ceremonious fashion of some respectable member of the middle classes going out to dinner.

“Hallo! he has missed his invitation,” chaffed Fagerolles. “Don’t you see that his fine ladies didn’t ask him to stay to dinner, and so now he’s come to gobble up our leg of mutton, as he doesn’t know where else to go?”

At this Dubuche turned red, and stammered: “Oh! what an idea! How ill-natured you are! And, besides, just attend to your own business.”

Sandoz and Claude, seated next to each other, smiled, and the former, beckoning to Dubuche, said to him: “Lay your own place, bring a plate and a glass, and sit between us⁠—like that, they’ll leave you alone.”

However, the chaff continued all the time that the mutton was being eaten. When the charwoman had brought Dubuche a plate of soup and a piece of skate, he himself fell in with the jokes good-naturedly. He pretended to be famished, greedily mopped out his plate, and related a story about a mother having refused him her daughter because he was an architect. The end of the dinner thus became very boisterous; they all rattled on together. The only dessert, a piece of Brie cheese, met with enormous success. Not a scrap of it was left, and the bread almost ran short. The wine did run short, so they each swallowed a clear draught of water, smacking their lips the while amidst great laughter. And, with faces beaming, and well-filled paunches, they passed into the bedroom with the supreme content of folks who have fared very sumptuously indeed.

Those were Sandoz’s jolly evenings. Even at the times when he was hard up he had always had some boiled beef and broth to share with his comrades. He felt delighted at having a number of them around him, all friends, inspired by the same ideas. Though he was of their own age, he beamed with fatherly feelings and satisfied good-nature when he saw them in his rooms, around him, hand in hand, and intoxicated with hope. As he had but two rooms, the bedroom did duty as a drawing-room, and became as much theirs as his. For lack of sufficient chairs, two or three had to seat themselves on the bed. And on those warm summer evenings the window remained wide open to let in the air. From it two black silhouettes were to be seen rising above the houses, against the clear sky⁠—the tower of St. Jacques du Haut-Pas and the tree of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. When money was plentiful there was beer. Everyone brought his own tobacco, the room soon became full of smoke, and without seeing each other they ended by conversing far into the night, amidst the deep mournful silence of that deserted district.

On that particular evening, at about nine o’clock, the charwoman came in.

“Monsieur, I have done. Can I go?”

“Yes, go to bed. You have left the kettle on the fire, haven’t you? I’ll make the tea myself.”

Sandoz had risen. He went off at the heels of the charwoman, and only returned a quarter of an hour afterwards. He had no doubt been to kiss his mother, whom he tucked up every night before she dozed off.

Meanwhile the voices had risen to a high pitch again. Fagerolles was telling a story.

“Yes, old fellow; at the School they even correct Nature herself. The other day Mazel comes up to me and says: ‘Those two arms don’t correspond’; whereupon I reply: ‘Look for yourself, monsieur⁠—the model’s are like that.’ It was little Flore Beauchamp, you know. ‘Well,’ Mazel furiously replies, ‘if she has them like that, it’s very wrong of her.’ ”

They almost all shrieked, especially Claude, to whom Fagerolles told the story by way of paying court. For some time previously the younger artist had yielded to the elder’s influence; and although he continued to paint with purely tricky skill, he no longer talked of anything but substantial, thickly-painted work, of bits of nature thrown on to canvas, palpitating with life, such as they really were. This did not prevent