His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

for all those poor beggars who were so utterly deficient in shrewdness that they clung, like simpletons, to their crude style, when it was so easy to conquer the crowd. Had it not sufficed for him to break with them, after pillaging them, to make his own fortune? He benefited by all the hatred that folks had against them; his pictures, of a softened, attenuated style, were held up in praise, so as to deal the deathblow to their ever obstinately violent works.

“Have you read Vernier’s article?” asked Jory of Gagnière. “Doesn’t he say exactly what I said?”

For the last few moments Gagnière had been absorbed in contemplating his glass, the wine in which cast a ruddy reflection on the white tablecloth. He started:

“Eh, what, Vernier’s article?”

“Why, yes; in fact, all those articles which appear about Fagerolles.”

Gagnière in amazement turned to the painter.

“What, are they writing articles about you? I know nothing about them, I haven’t seen them. Ah! they are writing articles about you, but whatever for?”

There was a mad roar of laughter. Fagerolles alone grinned with an ill grace, for he fancied himself the butt of some spiteful joke. But Gagnière spoke in absolute good faith. He felt surprised at the success of a painter who did not even observe the laws regulating the value of tints. Success for that trickster! Never! For in that case what would become of conscientiousness?

This boisterous hilarity enlivened the end of the dinner. They all left off eating, though the mistress of the house still insisted upon filling their plates.

“My dear, do attend to them,” she kept saying to Sandoz, who had grown greatly excited amidst the din. “Just stretch out your hand; the biscuits are on the sideboard.”

They all declined anything more, and rose up. As the rest of the evening was to be spent there, round the table, drinking tea, they leaned back against the walls and continued chatting while the servant cleared away. The young couple assisted, Henriette putting the saltcellars in a drawer, and Sandoz helping to fold the cloth.

“You can smoke,” said Henriette. “You know that it doesn’t inconvenience me in the least.”

Fagerolles, who had drawn Claude into the window recess, offered him a cigar, which was declined.

“True, I forgot; you don’t smoke. Ah! I say, I must go to see what you have brought back with you. Some very interesting things, no doubt. You know what I think of your talent. You are the cleverest of us all.”

He showed himself very humble, sincere at heart, and allowing his admiration of former days to rise once more to the surface; indeed, he forever bore the imprint of another’s genius, which he admitted, despite the complex calculations of his cunning mind. But his humility was mingled with a certain embarrassment very rare with him⁠—the concern he felt at the silence which the master of his youth preserved respecting his last picture. At last he ventured to ask, with quivering lips:

“Did you see my actress at the Salon? Do you like it? Tell me candidly.”

Claude hesitated for a moment; then, like the good-natured fellow he was, said:

“Yes; there are some very good bits in it.”

Fagerolles already repented having asked that stupid question, and he ended by altogether floundering; he tried to excuse himself for his plagiarisms and his compromises. When with great difficulty he had got out of the mess, enraged with himself for his clumsiness, he for a moment became the joker of yore again, made even Claude laugh till he cried, and amused them all. At last he held out his hand to take leave of Henriette.

“What, going so soon?”

“Alas! yes, dear madame. This evening my father is entertaining the head of a department at one of the ministries, an official whom he’s trying to influence in view of obtaining a decoration; and, as I am one of his titles to that distinction, I had to promise that I would look in.”

When he was gone, Henriette, who had exchanged a few words in a low voice with Sandoz, disappeared; and her light footfall was heard on the first floor. Since her marriage it was she who tended the old, infirm mother, absenting herself in this fashion several times during the evening, just as the son had done formerly.

Not one of the guests, however, had noticed her leave the room. Mahoudeau and Gagnière were now talking about Fagerolles; showing themselves covertly bitter, without openly attacking him. As yet they contented themselves with ironical glances and shrugs of the shoulders⁠—all the silent contempt of fellows who don’t wish to slash a chum. Then they fell back on Claude; they prostrated themselves before him, overwhelmed him with the hopes they set in him. Ah! it was high time for him to come back, for he alone, with his great gifts, his vigorous touch, could become the master, the recognised chief. Since the Salon of the Rejected the “school of the open air” had increased in numbers; a growing influence was making itself felt; but unfortunately, the efforts were frittered away; the new recruits contented themselves with producing sketches, impressions thrown off with a few strokes of the brush; they were awaiting the necessary man of genius, the one who would incarnate the new formula in masterpieces. What a position to take! to master the multitude, to open up a century, to create a new art! Claude listened to them, with his eyes turned to the floor and his face very pale. Yes, that indeed was his unavowed dream, the ambition he dared not confess to himself. Only, with the delight that the flattery caused him, there was mingled a strange anguish, a dread of the future, as he heard them raising him to the position of dictator, as if he had already triumphed.

“Don’t,” he exclaimed at last; “there are others as good as myself. I am still seeking my real line.”

Jory, who felt annoyed, was smoking in silence. Suddenly, as the others obstinately kept at it, he could not refrain