His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

others? Their youth was fermenting, they were brimming over with mutual devotion; they indulged anew in their everlasting dream of gathering into a phalanx to conquer the world, each contributing his individual effort; this one helping that one forward, and the whole band reaching fame at once in one row. Claude, as the acknowledged chief, was already sounding the victory, distributing laurels with such lyrical abundance that he overlooked himself. Fagerolles himself, gibing Parisian though he might be, believed in the necessity of forming an army; while even Jory, although he had a coarser appetite, with a deal of the provincial still about him, displayed much useful comradeship, catching various artistic phrases as they fell from his companions’ lips, and already preparing in his mind the articles which would herald the advent of the band and make them known. And Mahoudeau purposely exaggerated his intentional roughness, and clasped his hands like an ogre kneading human flesh; while Gagnière, in ecstasy, as if freed from the everlasting greyishness of his art, sought to refine sensation to the utmost limits of intelligence; and Dubuche, with his matter-of-fact convictions, threw in but a word here and there; words, however, which were like club-blows in the very midst of the fray. Then Sandoz, happy and smiling at seeing them so united, “all in one shirt,” as he put it, opened another bottle of beer. He would have emptied everyone in the house.

“Eh?” he cried, “we’re agreed, let’s stick to it. It’s really pleasant to come to an understanding among fellows who have something in their nuts, so may the thunderbolts of heaven sweep all idiots away!”

At that same moment a ring at the bell stupefied him. Amidst the sudden silence of the others, he inquired⁠—“Who, to the deuce, can that be⁠—at eleven o’clock?”

He ran to open the door, and they heard him utter a cry of delight. He was already coming back again, throwing the door wide open as he said⁠—“Ah! it’s very kind indeed to think of us and surprise us like this! Bongrand, gentlemen.”

The great painter, whom the master of the house announced in this respectfully familiar way, entered, holding out both hands. They all eagerly rose, full of emotion, delighted with that manly, cordial handshake so willingly bestowed. Bongrand was then forty-five years old, stout, and with a very expressive face and long grey hair. He had recently become a member of the Institute, and wore the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honour in the top buttonhole of his unpretentious alpaca jacket. He was fond of young people; he liked nothing so much as to drop in from time to time and smoke a pipe among these beginners, whose enthusiasm warmed his heart.

“I am going to make the tea,” exclaimed Sandoz.

When he came back from the kitchen, carrying the teapot and cups, he found Bongrand installed astride a chair, smoking his short cutty, amidst the din which had again arisen. Bongrand himself was holding forth in a stentorian voice. The grandson of a farmer of the Beauce region, the son of a man risen to the middle classes, with peasant blood in his veins, indebted for his culture to a mother of very artistic tastes, he was rich, had no need to sell his pictures, and retained many tastes and opinions of Bohemian life.

“The hanging committee? Well, I’d sooner hang myself than belong to it!” said he, with sweeping gestures. “Am I an executioner to kick poor devils, who often have to earn their bread, out of doors?”

“Still, you might render us great service by defending our pictures before the committee,” observed Claude.

“Oh, dear, no! I should only make matters worse for you⁠—I don’t count; I’m nobody.”

There was a chorus of protestations; Fagerolles objected, in a shrill voice:

“Well, if the painter of The Village Wedding does not count⁠—”

But Bongrand was getting angry; he had risen, his cheeks afire.

“Eh? Don’t pester me with The Wedding; I warn you I am getting sick of that picture. It is becoming a perfect nightmare to me ever since it has been hung in the Luxembourg Museum.”

This Village Wedding⁠—a party of wedding guests roaming through a cornfield, peasants studied from life, with an epic look of the heroes of Homer about them⁠—had so far remained his masterpiece. The picture had brought about an evolution in art, for it had inaugurated a new formula. Coming after Delacroix, and parallel with Courbet, it was a piece of romanticism tempered by logic, with more correctness of observation, more perfection in the handling. And though it did not squarely tackle nature amidst the crudity of the open air, the new school claimed connection with it.

“There can be nothing more beautiful,” said Claude, “than the two first groups, the fiddler, and then the bride with the old peasant.”

“And the strapping peasant girl, too,” added Mahoudeau; “the one who is turning round and beckoning! I had a great mind to take her for the model of a statue.”

“And that gust of wind among the corn,” added Gagnière, “and the pretty bit of the boy and girl skylarking in the distance.”

Bongrand sat listening with an embarrassed air, and a smile of inward suffering; and when Fagerolles asked him what he was doing just then, he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders:

“Well, nothing; some little things. But I shan’t exhibit this time. I should like to find a telling subject. Ah, you fellows are happy at still being at the bottom of the hill. A man has good legs then, he feels so plucky when it’s a question of getting up. But when once he is atop, the deuce take it! the worries begin. A real torture, fisticuffs, efforts which must be constantly renewed, lest one should slip down too quickly. Really now, one would prefer being below, for the pleasure of still having everything to do⁠—Ah, you may laugh, but you’ll see it all for yourselves some day!”

They were indeed laughing, thinking it a paradox, or