Complete Works of Emile Zola (892 page)

Isolated, and quite at his ease, amidst the general curiosity, Chambouvard stood there wondering, with the stupefied air of a man who is surprised at having produced such a masterpiece. He seemed to behold it for the first time, and was unable to get over his astonishment. Then an expression of delight gradually stole over his broad face, he nodded his head, and burst into soft, irresistible laughter, repeating a dozen times, ‘It’s comical, it’s really comical!’

His train of followers went into raptures, while he himself could find nothing more forcible to express how much he worshipped himself. All at once there was a slight stir. Bongrand, who had been walking about with his hands behind his back, glancing vaguely around him, had just stumbled on Chambouvard, and the public, drawing back, whispered, and watched the two celebrated artists shaking hands; the one short and of a sanguine temperament, the other tall and restless. Some expressions of good-fellowship were overheard. ‘Always fresh marvels.’ ‘Of course! And you, nothing this year?’ ‘No, nothing; I am resting, seeking—’ ‘Come, you joker! There’s no need to seek, the thing comes by itself.’ ‘Good-bye.’ ‘Good-bye.’ And Chambouvard, followed by his court, was already moving slowly away among the crowd, with the glances of a king, who enjoys life, while Bongrand, who had recognised Claude and his friends, approached them with outstretched feverish hands, and called attention to the sculptor with a nervous jerk of the chin, saying, ‘There’s a fellow I envy! Ah! to be confident of always producing masterpieces!’

He complimented Mahoudeau on his ‘Vintaging Girl’; showed himself paternal to all of them, with that broad-minded good-nature of his, the free and easy manner of an old Bohemian of the romantic school, who had settled down and was decorated. Then, turning to Claude:

‘Well, what did I tell you? Did you see upstairs? You have become the chief of a school.’

‘Ah! yes,’ replied Claude. ‘They are giving it me nicely. You are the master of us all.’

But Bongrand made his usual gesture of vague suffering and went off, saying, ‘Hold your tongue! I am not even my own master.’

For a few moments longer the band wandered through the garden. They had gone back to look at the ‘Vintaging Girl,’ when Jory noticed that Gagniere no longer had Irma Becot on his arm. Gagniere was stupefied; where the deuce could he have lost her? But when Fagerolles had told him that she had gone off in the crowd with two gentlemen, he recovered his composure, and followed the others, lighter of heart now that he was relieved of that girl who had bewildered him.

People now only moved about with difficulty. All the seats were taken by storm; groups blocked up the paths, where the promenaders paused every now and then, flowing back around the successful bits of bronze and marble. From the crowded buffet there arose a loud buzzing, a clatter of saucers and spoons which mingled with the throb of life pervading the vast nave. The sparrows had flown up to the forest of iron girders again, and one could hear their sharp little chirps, the twittering with which they serenaded the setting sun, under the warm panes of the glass roof. The atmosphere, moreover, had become heavy, there was a damp greenhouse-like warmth; the air, stationary as it was, had an odour as of humus, freshly turned over. And rising above the garden throng, the din of the first-floor galleries, the tramping of feet on their iron-girdered flooring still rolled on with the clamour of a tempest beating against a cliff.

Claude, who had a keen perception of that rumbling storm, ended by hearing nothing else; it had been let loose and was howling in his ears. It was the merriment of the crowd whose jeers and laughter swept hurricane-like past his picture. With a weary gesture he exclaimed:

‘Come, what are we messing about here for? I sha’n’t take anything at the refreshment bar, it reeks of the Institute. Let’s go and have a glass of beer outside, eh?’

They all went out, with sinking legs and tired faces, expressive of contempt. Once outside, on finding themselves again face to face with healthy mother Nature in her springtide season, they breathed noisily with an air of delight. It had barely struck four o’clock, the slanting sun swept along the Champs Elysees and everything flared: the serried rows of carriages, like the fresh foliage of the trees, and the sheaf-like fountains which spouted up and whirled away in golden dust. With a sauntering step they went hesitatingly down the central avenue, and finally stranded in a little cafe, the Pavillon de la Concorde, on the left, just before reaching the Place. The place was so small that they sat down outside it at the edge of the footway, despite the chill which fell from a vault of leaves, already fully grown and gloomy. But beyond the four rows of chestnut-trees, beyond the belt of verdant shade, they could see the sunlit roadway of the main avenue where Paris passed before them as in a nimbus, the carriages with their wheels radiating like stars, the big yellow omnibuses, looking even more profusely gilded than triumphal chariots, the horsemen whose steeds seemed to raise clouds of sparks, and the foot passengers whom the light enveloped in splendour.

And during nearly three hours, with his beer untasted before him, Claude went on talking and arguing amid a growing fever, broken down as he was in body, and with his mind full of all the painting he had just seen. It was the usual winding up of their visit to the Salon, though this year they were more impassioned on account of the liberal measure of the Emperor.

‘Well, and what of it, if the public does laugh?’ cried Claude. ‘We must educate the public, that’s all. In reality it’s a victory. Take away two hundred grotesque canvases, and our Salon beats theirs. We have courage and audacity — we are the future. Yes, yes, you’ll see it later on; we shall kill their Salon. We shall enter it as conquerors, by dint of producing masterpieces. Laugh, laugh, you big stupid Paris — laugh until you fall on your knees before us!’

And stopping short, he pointed prophetically to the triumphal avenue, where the luxury and happiness of the city went rolling by in the sunlight. His arms stretched out till they embraced even the Place de la Concorde, which could be seen slantwise from where they sat under the trees — the Place de la Concorde, with the plashing water of one of its fountains, a strip of balustrade, and two of its statues — Rouen, with the gigantic bosom, and Lille, thrusting forward her huge bare foot.

‘“In the open air” — it amuses them, eh?’ he resumed. ‘All right, since they are bent on it, the “open air” then, the school of the “open air!” Eh! it was a thing strictly between us, it didn’t exist yesterday beyond the circle of a few painters. But now they throw the word upon the winds, and they found the school. Oh! I’m agreeable. Let it be the school of the “open air!”’

Jory slapped his thighs.

‘Didn’t I tell you? I felt sure of making them bite with those articles of mine, the idiots that they are. Ah! how we’ll plague them now.’

Mahoudeau also was singing victory, constantly dragging in his ‘Vintaging Girl,’ the daring points of which he explained to the silent Chaine, the only one who listened to him; while Gagniere, with the sternness of a timid man waxing wroth over questions of pure theory, spoke of guillotining the Institute; and Sandoz, with the glowing sympathy of a hard worker, and Dubuche, giving way to the contagion of revolutionary friendship, became exasperated, and struck the table, swallowing up Paris with each draught of beer. Fagerolles, very calm, retained his usual smile. He had accompanied them for the sake of amusement, for the singular pleasure which he found in urging his comrades into farcical affairs that were bound to turn out badly. At the very moment when he was lashing their spirit of revolt, he himself formed the firm resolution to work in future for the Prix de Rome. That day had decided him; he thought it idiotic to compromise his prospects any further.

The sun was declining on the horizon, there was now only a returning stream of carriages, coming back from the Bois in the pale golden shimmer of the sunset. And the exodus from the Salon must have been nearly over; a long string of pedestrians passed by, gentlemen who looked like critics, each with a catalogue under his arm.

But all at once Gagniere became enthusiastic: ‘Ah! Courajod, there was one who had his share in inventing landscape painting! Have you seen his “Pond of Gagny” at the Luxembourg?’

‘A marvel!’ exclaimed Claude. ‘It was painted thirty years ago, and nothing more substantial has been turned out since. Why is it left at the Luxembourg? It ought to be in the Louvre.’

‘But Courajod isn’t dead,’ said Fagerolles.

‘What! Courajod isn’t dead! No one ever sees him or speaks of him now.’

There was general stupefaction when Fagerolles assured them that the great landscape painter, now seventy years of age, lived somewhere in the neighbourhood of Montmartre, in a little house among his fowls, ducks, and dogs. So one might outlive one’s own glory! To think that there were such melancholy instances of old artists disappearing before their death! Silence fell upon them all; they began to shiver when they perceived Bongrand pass by on a friend’s arm, with a congestive face and a nervous air as he waved his hand to them; while almost immediately behind him, surrounded by his disciples, came Chambouvard, laughing very loudly, and tapping his heels on the pavement with the air of absolute mastery that comes from confidence in immortality.

‘What! are you going?’ said Mahoudeau to Chaine, who was rising from his chair.

The other mumbled some indistinct words in his beard, and went off after distributing handshakes among the party.

‘I know,’ said Jory to Mahoudeau. ‘I believe he has a weakness for your neighbour, the herbalist woman. I saw his eyes flash all at once; it comes upon him like toothache. Look how he’s running over there.’

The sculptor shrugged his shoulders amidst the general laughter.

But Claude did not hear. He was now discussing architecture with Dubuche. No doubt, that plan of a museum gallery which he exhibited wasn’t bad; only there was nothing new in it. It was all so much patient marquetry of the school formulas. Ought not all the arts to advance in one line of battle? Ought not the evolution that was transforming literature, painting, even music itself, to renovate architecture as well? If ever the architecture of a period was to have a style of its own, it was assuredly the architecture of the period they would soon be entering, a new period when they would find the ground freshly swept, ready for the rebuilding of everything. Down with the Greek temples! there was no reason why they should continue to exist under our sky, amid our society! down with the Gothic cathedrals, since faith in legend was dead! down with the delicate colonnades, the lace-like work of the Renaissance — that revival of the antique grafted on mediaevalism — precious art-jewellery, no doubt, but in which democracy could not dwell. And he demanded, he called with violent gestures for an architectural formula suited to democracy; such work in stone as would express its tenets; edifices where it would really be at home; something vast and strong, great and simple at the same time; the something that was already being indicated in the new railway stations and markets, whose ironwork displayed such solid elegance, but purified and raised to a standard of beauty, proclaiming the grandeur of the intellectual conquests of the age.

‘Ah! yes, ah! yes,’ repeated Dubuche, catching Claude’s enthusiasm; ‘that’s what I want to accomplish, you’ll see some day. Give me time to succeed, and when I’m my own master — ah! when I’m my own master.’

Night was coming on apace, and Claude was growing more and more animated and passionate, displaying a fluency, an eloquence which his comrades had not known him to possess. They all grew excited in listening to him, and ended by becoming noisily gay over the extraordinary witticisms he launched forth. He himself, having returned to the subject of his picture, again discussed it with a deal of gaiety, caricaturing the crowd he had seen looking at it, and imitating the imbecile laughter. Along the avenue, now of an ashy hue, one only saw the shadows of infrequent vehicles dart by. The side-walk was quite black; an icy chill fell from the trees. Nothing broke the stillness but the sound of song coming from a clump of verdure behind the cafe; there was some rehearsal at the Concert de l’Horloge, for one heard the sentimental voice of a girl trying a love-song.

‘Ah! how they amused me, the idiots!’ exclaimed Claude, in a last burst. ‘Do you know, I wouldn’t take a hundred thousand francs for my day’s pleasure!’

Then he relapsed into silence, thoroughly exhausted. Nobody had any saliva left; silence reigned; they all shivered in the icy gust that swept by. And they separated in a sort of bewilderment, shaking hands in a tired fashion. Dubuche was going to dine out; Fagerolles had an appointment; in vain did Jory, Mahoudeau, and Gagniere try to drag Claude to Foucart’s, a twenty-five sous’ restaurant; Sandoz was already taking him away on his arm, feeling anxious at seeing him so excited.

‘Come along, I promised my mother to be back for dinner. You’ll take a bit with us. It will be nice; we’ll finish the day together.’

They both went down the quay, past the Tuileries, walking side by side in fraternal fashion. But at the Pont des Saints-Peres the painter stopped short.

‘What, are you going to leave me?’ exclaimed Sandoz.

‘Why, I thought you were going to dine with me?’

‘No, thanks; I’ve too bad a headache — I’m going home to bed.’

And he obstinately clung to this excuse.

‘All right, old man,’ said Sandoz at last, with a smile. ‘One doesn’t see much of you nowadays. You live in mystery. Go on, old boy, I don’t want to be in your way.’

Claude restrained a gesture of impatience; and, letting his friend cross the bridge, he went his way along the quays by himself. He walked on with his arms hanging beside him, with his face turned towards the ground, seeing nothing, but taking long strides like a somnambulist who is guided by instinct. On the Quai de Bourbon, in front of his door, he looked up, full of surprise on seeing a cab waiting at the edge of the foot pavement, and barring his way. And it was with the same automatical step that he entered the doorkeeper’s room to take his key.