Эмиль Золя
His Masterpiece
Claude, however, was wondering and searching his memory. Where had he previously seen those heads, so typical of bourgeois degeneracy, those flattened, crabbed faces reeking of millions earned at the expense of the poor? It was assuredly in some important circumstance of his life. And all at once he remembered; they were the Margaillans, the man was that building contractor whom Dubuche had promenaded through the Salon of the Rejected, and who had laughed in front of his picture with the roaring laugh of a fool. A couple of hundred steps further on, as he and Christine emerged from the lane and found themselves in front of a large estate, where a big white building stood, girt with fine trees, they learnt from an old peasant woman that La Richaudiere, as it was called, had belonged to the Margaillans for three years past. They had paid fifteen hundred thousand francs for it, and had just spent more than a million in improvements.
‘That part of the country won’t see much of us in future,’ said Claude, as they returned to Bennecourt. ‘Those monsters spoil the landscape.’
Towards the end of the summer, an important event changed the current of their lives. Christine was enceinte. At first, both she and Claude felt amazed and worried. Now for the first time they seemed to dread some terrible complications in their life. Later on, however, they gradually grew accustomed to the thought of what lay before them and made all necessary preparations. But the winter proved a terribly inclement one, and Christine was compelled to remain indoors, whilst Claude went walking all alone over the frost-bound, clanking roads. And he, finding himself in solitude during these walks, after months of constant companionship, wondered at the way his life had turned, against his own will, as it were. He had never wished for home life even with her; had he been consulted, he would have expressed his horror of it; it had come about, however, and could not be undone, for – without mentioning the child – he was one of those who lack the courage to break off. This fate had evidently been in store for him, he felt; he had been destined to succumb to the first woman who did not feel ashamed of him. The hard ground resounded beneath his wooden-soled shoes, and the blast froze the current of his reverie, which lingered on vague thoughts, on his luck of having, at any rate, met with a good and honest girl, on how cruelly he would have suffered had it been otherwise. And then his love came back to him; he hurried home to take Christine in his trembling arms as if he had been in danger of losing her.
The child, a boy, was born about the middle of February, and at once began to revolutionise the home, for Christine, who had shown herself such an active housewife, proved to be a very awkward nurse. She failed to become motherly, despite her kind heart and her distress at the sight of the slightest pimple. She soon grew weary, gave in, and called for Melie, who only made matters worse by her gaping stupidity. The father had to come to the rescue, and proved still more awkward than the two women. The discomfort which needlework had caused Christine of old, her want of aptitude as regards the usual occupations of her sex, revived amid the cares that the baby required. The child was ill-kept, and grew up anyhow in the garden, or in the large rooms left untidy in sheer despair, amidst broken toys, uncleanliness and destruction. And when matters became too bad altogether, Christine could only throw herself upon the neck of the man she loved. She was pre-eminently an amorosa and would have sacrificed her son for his father twenty times over.
It was at this period, however, that Claude resumed work a little. The winter was drawing to a close; he did not know how to spend the bright sunny mornings, since Christine could no longer go out before mid-day on account of Jacques, whom they had named thus after his maternal grandfather, though they neglected to have him christened. Claude worked in the garden, at first, in a random way: made a rough sketch of the lines of apricot trees, roughed out the giant rose-bushes, composed some bits of ‘still life,’ out of four apples, a bottle, and a stoneware jar, disposed on a table-napkin. This was only to pass his time. But afterwards he warmed to his work; the idea of painting a figure in the full sunlight ended by haunting him; and from that moment his wife became his victim, she herself agreeable enough, offering herself, feeling happy at affording him pleasure, without as yet understanding what a terrible rival she was giving herself in art. He painted her a score of times, dressed in white, in red, amidst the verdure, standing, walking, or reclining on the grass, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, or bare-headed, under a parasol, the cherry-tinted silk of which steeped her features in a pinky glow. He never felt wholly satisfied; he scratched out the canvases after two or three sittings, and at once began them afresh, obstinately sticking to the same subject. Only a few studies, incomplete, but charmingly indicated in a vigorous style, were saved from the palette-knife, and hung against the walls of the dining-room.
And after Christine it became Jacques’ turn to pose. They stripped him to the skin, like a little St. John the Baptist, on warm days, and stretched him on a blanket, where he was told not to stir. But devil a bit could they make him keep still. Getting frisky, in the sunlight, he crowed and kicked with his tiny pink feet in the air, rolling about and turning somersaults. The father, after laughing, became angry, and swore at the tiresome mite, who would not keep quiet for a minute. Who ever heard of trifling with painting? Then the mother made big eyes at the little one, and held him while the painter quickly sketched an arm or a leg. Claude obstinately kept at it for weeks, tempted as he felt by the pretty tones of that childish skin. It was not as a father, but as an artist, that he gloated over the boy as the subject for a masterpiece, blinking his eyes the while, and dreaming of some wonderful picture he would paint. And he renewed the experiment again and again, watching the lad for days, and feeling furious when the little scamp would not go to sleep at times when he, Claude, might so well have painted him.
One day, when Jacques was sobbing, refusing to keep still, Christine gently remarked:
‘My dear, you tire the poor pet.’
At this Claude burst forth, full of remorse:
‘After all! you are right; I’m a fool with this painting of mine. Children are not intended for that sort of thing.’
The spring and summer sped by amidst great quietude. They went out less often; they had almost given up the boat, which finished rotting against the bank, for it was quite a job to take the little one with them among the islets. But they often strolled along the banks of the Seine, without, however, going farther afield than a thousand yards or so. Claude, tired of the everlasting views in the garden, now attempted some sketches by the river-side, and on such days Christine went to fetch him with the child, sitting down to watch him paint, until they all three returned home with flagging steps, beneath the ashen dusk of waning daylight. One afternoon Claude was surprised to see Christine bring with her the old album which she had used as a young girl. She joked about it, and explained that to sit behind him like that had roused in her a wish to work herself. Her voice was a little unsteady as she spoke; the truth was that she felt a longing to share his labour, since this labour took him away from her more and more each day. She drew and ventured to wash in two or three water-colours in the careful style of a school-girl. Then, discouraged by his smiles, feeling that no community of ideas would be arrived at on that ground, she once more put her album aside, making him promise to give her some lessons in painting whenever he should have time.
Besides, she thought his more recent pictures very pretty. After that year of rest in the open country, in the full sunlight, he painted with fresh and clearer vision, as it were, with a more harmonious and brighter colouring. He had never before been able to treat reflections so skilfully, or possessed a more correct perception of men and things steeped in diffuse light. And henceforth, won over by that feast of colours, she would have declared it all capital if he would only have condescended to finish his work a little more, and if she had not remained nonplussed now and then before a mauve ground or a blue tree, which upset all her preconceived notions of colour. One day when she ventured upon a bit of criticism, precisely about an azure-tinted poplar, he made her go to nature and note for herself the delicate bluishness of the foliage. It was true enough, the tree was blue; but in her inmost heart she did not surrender, and condemned reality; there ought not to be any blue trees in nature.
She no longer spoke but gravely of the studies hanging in the dining-room. Art was returning into their lives, and it made her muse. When she saw him go off with his bag, his portable easel, and his sunshade, it often happened that she flung herself upon his neck, asking:
‘You love me, say?’
‘How silly you are! Why shouldn’t I love you?’
‘Then kiss me, since you love me, kiss me a great deal, a great deal.’
Then accompanying him as far as the road, she added:
‘And mind you work; you know that I have never prevented you from working. Go, go; I am very pleased when you work.’
Anxiety seemed to seize hold of Claude, when the autumn of the second year tinged the leaves yellow, and ushered in the cold weather. The season happened to be abominable; a fortnight of pouring rain kept him idle at home; and then fog came at every moment, hindering his work. He sat in front of the fire, out of sorts; he never spoke of Paris, but the city rose up over yonder, on the horizon, the winter city, with its gaslamps flaring already at five o’clock, its gatherings of friends, spurring each other on to emulation, and its life of ardent production, which even the frosts of December could not slacken. He went there thrice in one month, on the pretext of seeing Malgras, to whom he had, again, sold a few small pictures. He no longer avoided passing in front of Faucheur’s inn; he even allowed himself to be waylaid at times by old Porrette, and to accept a glass of white wine at the inn, and his glance scoured the room as if, despite the season, he had been looking for some comrades of yore, who had arrived there, perchance, that morning. He lingered as if awaiting them; then, in despair at his solitude, he returned home, stifling with all that was fermenting within him, ill at having nobody to whom he might shout the thoughts which made his brain almost burst.
However, the winter went by, and Claude had the consolation of being able to paint some lovely snow scenes. A third year was beginning, when, towards the close of May, an unexpected meeting filled him with emotion. He had that morning climbed up to the plateau to find a subject, having at last grown tired of the banks of the Seine; and at the bend of a road he stopped short in amazement on seeing Dubuche, in a silk hat, and carefully-buttoned frock coat, coming towards him, between the double row of elder hedges.
‘What! is it you?’
The architect stammered from sheer vexation:
‘Yes, I am going to pay a visit. It’s confoundedly idiotic in the country, eh? But it can’t be helped. There are certain things one’s obliged to do. And you live near here, eh? I knew – that is to say, I didn’t. I had been told something about it, but I thought it was on the opposite side, farther down.’
Claude, very much moved at seeing him, helped him out of his difficulty.
‘All right, all right, old man, there is no need to apologise. I am the most guilty party. Ah! it’s a long while since we saw one another! If you knew what a thump my heart gave when I saw your nose appear from behind the leaves!’
Then he took his arm and accompanied him, giggling with pleasure, while the other, in his constant worry about his future, which always made him talk about himself, at once began speaking of his prospects. He had just become a first-class pupil at the School, after securing the regulation ‘honourable mentions,’ with infinite trouble. But his success left him as perplexed as ever. His parents no longer sent him a penny, they wailed about their poverty so much that he might have to support them in his turn. He had given up the idea of competing for the Prix de Rome, feeling certain of being beaten in the effort, and anxious to earn his living. And he was weary already; sick at scouring the town, at earning twenty-five sous an hour from ignorant architects, who treated him like a hodman. What course should he adopt? How was he to guess at the shortest route? He might leave the School; he would get a lift from his master, the influential Dequersonniere, who liked him for his docility and diligence; only what a deal of trouble and uncertainty there would still be before him! And he bitterly complained of the Government schools, where one slaved away for years, and which did not even provide a position for all those whom they cast upon the pavement.
Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the path. The elder hedges were leading to an open plain, and La Richaudiere appeared amid its lofty trees.
‘Hold hard! of course,’ exclaimed Claude, ‘I hadn’t thought about it – you’re going to that shanty. Oh! the baboons; there’s a lot of ugly mugs, if you like!’
Dubuche, looking vexed at this outburst of artistic feeling, protested stiffly. ‘All the same, Papa Margaillan, idiot as he seems to you, is a first-rate man of business. You should see him in his building-yards, among the houses he runs up, as active as the very fiend, showing marvellous good management, and a wonderful scent as to the right streets to build and what materials to buy! Besides, one does not earn millions without becoming a gentleman. And then, too, it would be very silly of me not to be polite to a man who can be useful to me.’
While talking, he barred the narrow path, preventing his friend from advancing further – no doubt from a fear of being compromised by being seen in his company, and in order to make him understand that they ought to separate there.
Claude was on the point of inquiring about their comrades in Paris, but he kept silent. Not even a word was said respecting Christine, and he was reluctantly deciding to quit Dubuche, holding out his hand to take leave, when, in spite of himself, this question fell from his quivering lips:
‘And is Sandoz all right?’
‘Yes, he’s pretty well. I seldom see him. He spoke to me about you last month. He is still grieved at your having shown us the door.’
‘But I didn’t show you the door,’ exclaimed Claude, beside himself. ‘Come and see me, I beg of you. I shall be so glad!’
‘All right, then, we’ll come. I’ll tell him to come, I give you my word – good-bye, old man, good-bye; I’m in a hurry.’
And Dubuche went off towards La Richaudiere, whilst Claude watched his figure dwindle as he crossed the cultivated plain, until nothing remained but the shiny silk of his hat and the black spot of his coat. The young man returned home slowly, his heart bursting with nameless sadness. However, he said nothing about this meeting to Christine.
A week later she had gone to Faucheur’s to buy a pound of vermicelli, and was lingering on her way back, gossiping with a neighbour, with her child on her arm, when a gentleman who alighted from the ferry-boat approached and asked her:
‘Does not Monsieur Claude Lantier live near here?’
She was taken aback, and simply answered:
‘Yes, monsieur; if you’ll kindly follow me – ’
They walked on side by side for about a hundred yards. The stranger, who seemed to know her, had glanced at her with a good-natured smile; but as she hurried on, trying to hide her embarrassment by looking very grave, he remained silent. She opened the door and showed the visitor into the studio, exclaiming:
‘Claude, here is somebody for you.’
Then a loud cry rang out; the two men were already in each other’s arms.
‘Oh, my good old Pierre! how kind of you to come! And Dubuche?’
‘He was prevented at the last moment by some business, and he sent me a telegram to go without him.’
‘All right, I half expected it; but you are here. By the thunder of heaven, I am glad!’
And, turning towards Christine, who was smiling, sharing their delight:
‘It’s true, I didn’t tell you. But the other day I met Dubuche, who was going up yonder, to the place where those monsters live – ’
But he stopped short again, and then with a wild gesture shouted:
‘I’m losing my wits, upon my word. You have never spoken to each other, and I leave you there like that. My dear, you see this gentleman? He’s my old chum, Pierre Sandoz, whom I love like a brother. And you, my boy; let me introduce my wife. And you have got to give each other a kiss.’
Christine began to laugh outright, and tendered her cheek heartily. Sandoz had pleased her at once with his good-natured air, his sound friendship, the fatherly sympathy with which he looked at her. Tears of emotion came to her eyes as he kept both her hands in his, saying:
‘It is very good of you to love Claude, and you must love each other always, for love is, after all, the best thing in life.’
Then, bending to kiss the little one, whom she had on her arm, he added: ‘So there’s one already!’
While Christine, preparing lunch, turned the house up-side down, Claude retained Sandoz in the studio. In a few words he told him the whole of the story, who she was, how they had met each other, and what had led them to start housekeeping together, and he seemed to be surprised when his friend asked him why they did not get married. In faith, why? Because they had never even spoken about it, because they would certainly be neither more nor less happy; in short it was a matter of no consequence whatever.
‘Well,’ said the other, ‘it makes no difference to me; but, if she was a good and honest girl when she came to you, you ought to marry her.’
‘Why, I’ll marry her whenever she likes, old man. Surely I don’t mean to leave her in the lurch!’
Sandoz then began to marvel at the studies hanging on the walls. Ha, the scamp had turned his time to good account! What accuracy of colouring! What a dash of real sunlight! And Claude, who listened to him, delighted, and laughing proudly, was just going to question him about the comrades in Paris, about what they were all doing, when Christine reappeared, exclaiming: ‘Make haste, the eggs are on the table.’
They lunched in the kitchen, and an extraordinary lunch it was; a dish of fried gudgeons after the boiled eggs; then the beef from the soup of the night before, arranged in salad fashion, with potatoes, and a red herring. It was delicious; there was the pungent and appetising smell of the herring which Melie had upset on the live embers, and the song of the coffee, as it passed, drop by drop, into the pot standing on the range; and when the dessert appeared – some strawberries just gathered, and a cream cheese from a neighbour’s dairy – they gossiped and gossiped with their elbows squarely set on the table. In Paris? Well, to tell the truth, the comrades were doing nothing very original in Paris. And yet they were fighting their way, jostling each other in order to get first to the front. Of course, the absent ones missed their chance; it was as well to be there if one did not want to be altogether forgotten. But was not talent always talent? Wasn’t a man always certain to get on with strength and will? Ah! yes, it was a splendid dream to live in the country, to accumulate masterpieces, and then, one day, to crush Paris by simply opening one’s trunks.
In the evening, when Claude accompanied Sandoz to the station, the latter said to him:
‘That reminds me, I wanted to tell you something. I think I am going to get married.’
The painter burst out laughing.
‘Ah, you wag, now I understand why you gave me a lecture this morning.’
While waiting for the train to arrive, they went on chatting. Sandoz explained his ideas on marriage, which, in middle-class fashion, he considered an indispensable condition for good work, substantial orderly labour, among great modern producers. The theory of woman being a destructive creature – one who killed an artist, pounded his heart, and fed upon his brain – was a romantic idea against which facts protested. Besides, as for himself, he needed an affection that would prove the guardian of his tranquillity, a loving home, where he might shut himself up, so as to devote his whole life to the huge work which he ever dreamt of. And he added that everything depended upon a man’s choice – that he believed he had found what he had been looking for, an orphan, the daughter of petty tradespeople, without a penny, but handsome and intelligent. For the last six months, after resigning his clerkship, he had embraced journalism, by which he gained a larger income. He had just moved his mother to a small house at Batignolles, where the three would live together – two women to love him, and he strong enough to provide for the household.
‘Get married, old man,’ said Claude. ‘One should act according to one’s feelings. And good-bye, for here’s your train. Don’t forget your promise to come and see us again.’
Sandoz returned very often. He dropped in at odd times whenever his newspaper work allowed him, for he was still free, as he was not to be married till the autumn. Those were happy days, whole afternoons of mutual confidences when all their old determination to secure fame revived.
One day, while Sandoz was alone with Claude on an island of the Seine, both of them lying there with their eyes fixed on the sky, he told the painter of his vast ambition, confessed himself aloud.
‘Journalism, let me tell you, is only a battle-ground. A man must live, and he has to fight to do so. Then, again, that wanton, the Press, despite the unpleasant phases of the profession, is after all a tremendous power, a resistless weapon in the hands of a fellow with convictions. But if I am obliged to avail myself of journalism, I don’t mean to grow grey in it! Oh, dear no! And, besides, I’ve found what I wanted, a machine that’ll crush one with work, something I’m going to plunge into, perhaps never to come out of it.’
Silence reigned amid the foliage, motionless in the dense heat. He resumed speaking more slowly and in jerky phrases:
‘To study man as he is, not man the metaphysical puppet but physiological man, whose nature is determined by his surroundings, and to show all his organism in full play. That’s my idea! Is it not farcical that some should constantly and exclusively study the functions of the brain on the pretext that the brain alone is the noble part of our organism? Thought, thought, confound it all! thought is the product of the whole body. Let them try to make a brain think by itself alone; see what becomes of the nobleness of the brain when the stomach is ailing! No, no, it’s idiotic; there is no philosophy nor science in it! We are positivists, evolutionists, and yet we are to stick to the literary lay-figures of classic times, and continue disentangling the tangled locks of pure reason! He who says psychologist says traitor to truth. Besides, psychology, physiology, it all signifies nothing. The one has become blended with the other, and both are but one nowadays, the mechanism of man leading to the sum total of his functions. Ah, the formula is there, our modern revolution has no other basis; it means the certain death of old society, the birth of a new one, and necessarily the upspringing of a new art in a new soil. Yes, people will see what literature will sprout forth for the coming century of science and democracy.’
His cry uprose and was lost in the immense vault of heaven. Not a breath stirred; there was nought but the silent ripple of the river past the willows. And Sandoz turned abruptly towards his companion, and said to him, face to face:
‘So I have found what I wanted for myself. Oh, it isn’t much, a little corner of study only, but one that should be sufficient for a man’s life, even when his ambition is over-vast. I am going to take a family, and I shall study its members, one by one, whence they come, whither they go, how they re-act one upon another – in short, I shall have mankind in a small compass, the way in which mankind grows and behaves. On the other hand, I shall set my men and women in some given period of history, which will provide me with the necessary surroundings and circumstances, – you understand, eh? a series of books, fifteen, twenty books, episodes that will cling together, although each will have a separate framework, a series of novels with which I shall be able to build myself a house for my old days, if they don’t crush me!’
He fell on his back again, spread out his arms on the grass, as if he wanted to sink into the earth, laughing and joking all the while.
‘Oh, beneficent earth, take me unto thee, thou who art our common mother, our only source of life! thou the eternal, the immortal one, in whom circulates the soul of the world, the sap that spreads even into the stones, and makes the trees themselves our big, motionless brothers! Yes, I wish to lose myself in thee; it is thou that I feel beneath my limbs, clasping and inflaming me; thou alone shalt appear in my work as the primary force, the means and the end, the immense ark in which everything becomes animated with the breath of every being!’
Though begun as mere pleasantry, with all the bombast of lyrical emphasis, the invocation terminated in a cry of ardent conviction, quivering with profound poetical emotion, and Sandoz’s eyes grew moist; and, to hide how much he felt moved, he added, roughly, with a sweeping gesture that took in the whole scene around:
‘How idiotic it is! a soul for every one of us, when there is that big soul there!’
Claude, who had disappeared amid the grass, had not stirred. After a fresh spell of silence he summed up everything:
‘That’s it, old boy! Run them through, all of them. Only you’ll get trounced.’
‘Oh,’ said Sandoz, rising up and stretching himself, ‘my bones are too hard. They’ll smash their own wrists. Let’s go back; I don’t want to miss the train.’
Christine had taken a great liking to him, seeing him so robust and upright in his doings, and she plucked up courage at last to ask a favour of him: that of standing godfather to Jacques. True, she never set foot in church now, but why shouldn’t the lad be treated according to custom? What influenced her above all was the idea of giving the boy a protector in this godfather, whom she found so serious and sensible, even amidst the exuberance of his strength. Claude expressed surprise, but gave his consent with a shrug of the shoulders. And the christening took place; they found a godmother, the daughter of a neighbour, and they made a feast of it, eating a lobster, which was brought from Paris.
That very day, as they were saying good-bye, Christine took Sandoz aside, and said, in an imploring voice:
‘Do come again soon, won’t you? He is bored.’
In fact, Claude had fits of profound melancholy. He abandoned his work, went out alone, and prowled in spite of himself about Faucheur’s inn, at the spot where the ferry-boat landed its passengers, as if ever expecting to see all Paris come ashore there. He had Paris on the brain; he went there every month and returned desolate, unable to work. Autumn came, then winter, a very wet and muddy winter, and he spent it in a state of morose torpidity, bitter even against Sandoz, who, having married in October, could no longer come to Bennecourt so often. Claude only seemed to wake up at each of the other’s visits; deriving a week’s excitement from them, and never ceasing to comment feverishly about the news brought from yonder. He, who formerly had hidden his regret of Paris, nowadays bewildered Christine with the way in which he chatted to her from morn till night about things she was quite ignorant of, and people she had never seen. When Jacques fell asleep, there were endless comments between the parents as they sat by the fireside. Claude grew passionate, and Christine had to give her opinion and to pronounce judgment on all sorts of matters.
Was not Gagniere an idiot for stultifying his brain with music, he who might have developed so conscientious a talent as a landscape painter? It was said that he was now taking lessons on the piano from a young lady – the idea, at his age! What did she, Christine, think of it? And Jory had been trying to get into the good graces of Irma Becot again, ever since she had secured that little house in the Rue de Moscou! Christine knew those two; two jades who well went together, weren’t they? But the most cunning of the whole lot was Fagerolles, to whom he, Claude, would tell a few plain truths and no mistake, when he met him. What! the turn-coat had competed for the Prix de Rome, which, of course, he had managed to miss. To think of it. That fellow did nothing but jeer at the School, and talked about knocking everything down, yet took part in official competitions! Ah, there was no doubt but that the itching to succeed, the wish to pass over one’s comrades and be hailed by idiots, impelled some people to very dirty tricks. Surely Christine did not mean to stick up for him, eh? She was not sufficiently a philistine to defend him. And when she had agreed with everything Claude said, he always came back with nervous laughter to the same story – which he thought exceedingly comical – the story of Mahoudeau and Chaine, who, between them, had killed little Jabouille, the husband of Mathilde, that dreadful herbalist woman. Yes, killed the poor consumptive fellow with kindness one evening when he had had a fainting fit, and when, on being called in by the woman, they had taken to rubbing him with so much vigour that he had remained dead in their hands.
