His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

that somewhat unamiable exclamation, which was a cry from the heart itself. At first he had certainly thought of her; then, as the days went by for nearly a couple of months without sign of life from her, she had become for him merely a fleeting, regretted vision, a charming silhouette which had melted away in space, and would never be seen again.

“Yes, monsieur, it’s I. I wished to come. I thought it was wrong not to come and thank you⁠—”

She blushed and stammered, at a loss for words. She was out of breath, no doubt through climbing the stairs, for her heart was beating fast. What! was this long-debated visit out of place after all? It had ended by seeming quite natural to her. The worst was that, in passing along the quay, she had bought that bunch of roses with the delicate intention of thereby showing her gratitude to the young fellow, and the flowers now dreadfully embarrassed her. How was she to give them to him? What would he think of her? The impropriety of the whole proceeding had only struck her as she opened the door.

But Claude, more embarrassed still, resorted to exaggerated politeness. He had thrown aside his palette and was turning the studio upside down in order to clear a chair.

“Pray be seated, mademoiselle. This is really a surprise. You are too kind.”

Once seated, Christine recovered her equanimity. He looked so droll with his wild sweeping gestures, and she felt so conscious of his shyness that she began to smile, and bravely held out the bunch of roses.

“Look here; I wished to show you that I am not ungrateful.”

At first he said nothing, but stood staring at her, thunderstruck. When he saw, though, that she was not making fun of him, he shook both her hands, with almost sufficient energy to dislocate them. Then he at once put the flowers in his water-jug, repeating:

“Ah! now you are a good fellow, you really are. This is the first time I pay that compliment to a woman, honour bright.”

He came back to her, and, looking straight into her eyes, he asked:

“Then you have not altogether forgotten me?”

“You see that I have not,” she replied, laughing.

“Why, then, did you wait two months before coming to see me?”

Again she blushed. The falsehood she was about to tell revived her embarrassment for a moment.

“But you know that I am not my own mistress,” she said. “Oh, Madame Vanzade is very kind to me, only she is a great invalid, and never leaves the house. But she grew anxious as to my health and compelled me to go out to breathe a little fresh air.”

She did not allude to the shame which she had felt during the first few days after her adventure on the Quai de Bourbon. Finding herself in safety, beneath the old lady’s roof, the recollection of the night she had spent in Claude’s room had filled her with remorse; but she fancied at last that she had succeeded in dismissing the matter from her mind. It was no longer anything but a bad dream, which grew more indistinct each day. Then, how it was she could not tell, but amidst the profound quietude of her existence, the image of that young man who had befriended her had returned to her once more, becoming more and more precise, till at last it occupied her daily thoughts. Why should she forget him? She had nothing to reproach him with; on the contrary, she felt she was his debtor. The thought of seeing him again, dismissed at first, struggled against later on, at last became an all-absorbing craving. Each evening the temptation to go and see him came strong upon her in the solitude of her own room. She experienced an uncomfortable irritating feeling, a vague desire which she could not define, and only calmed down somewhat on ascribing this troubled state of mind to a wish to evince her gratitude. She was so utterly alone, she felt so stifled in that sleepy abode, the exuberance of youth seethed so strongly within her, her heart craved so desperately for friendship!

“So I took advantage of my first day out,” she continued. “And besides, the weather was so nice this morning after all the dull rain.”

Claude, feeling very happy and standing before her, also confessed himself, but he had nothing to hide.

“For my part,” said he, “I dared not think of you any more. You are like one of the fairies of the storybooks, who spring from the floor and disappear into the walls at the very moment one least expects it; aren’t you now? I said to myself, ‘It’s all over: it was perhaps only in my fancy that I saw her come to this studio.’ Yet here you are. Well, I am pleased at it, very pleased indeed.”

Smiling, but embarrassed, Christine averted her head, pretending to look around her. But her smile soon died away. The ferocious-looking paintings which she again beheld, the glaring sketches of the South, the terrible anatomical accuracy of the studies from the nude, all chilled her as on the first occasion. She became really afraid again, and she said gravely, in an altered voice:

“I am disturbing you; I am going.”

“Oh! not at all, not at all,” exclaimed Claude, preventing her from rising. “It does me good to have a talk with you, for I was working myself to death. Oh! that confounded picture; it’s killing me as it is.”

Thereupon Christine, lifting her eyes, looked at the large picture, the canvas that had been turned to the wall on the previous occasion, and which she had vainly wished to see.

The background⁠—the dark glade pierced by a flood of sunlight⁠—was still only broadly brushed in. But the two little wrestlers⁠—the fair one and the dark⁠—almost finished by now, showed clearly in the light. In the foreground, the gentleman in the velveteen jacket, three times begun afresh, had now been left in distress. The painter was more