His Masterpiece - Émile Zola (ebook reader 8 inch .txt) 📗

debating with himself, however, with ashen lips and downcast eyes. Deep silence reigned, and then footsteps were heard, making the stairs creak as they went down. Claude’s breast heaved with intense sadness; he felt it bursting with remorse at the sound of each retreating step, as if he had denied the friendship of his whole youth.

However, one afternoon there came another knock, and Claude had only just time to whisper despairingly, “The key has been left in the door.”

In fact, Christine had forgotten to take it out. She became quite scared and darted behind the screen, with her handkerchief over her mouth to stifle the sound of her breathing.

The knocks became louder, there was a burst of laughter, and the painter had to reply, “Come in.”

He felt more uncomfortable still when he saw Jory, who gallantly ushered in Irma Bécot, whose acquaintance he had made through Fagerolles, and who was flinging her youth about the Paris studios.

“She insisted upon seeing your studio, so I brought her,” explained the journalist.

The girl, however, without waiting, was already walking about and making remarks, with perfect freedom of manner. “Oh! how funny it is here. And what funny painting. Come, there’s a good fellow, show me everything. I want to see everything.”

Claude, apprehensively anxious, was afraid that she might push the screen aside. He pictured Christine behind it, and felt distracted already at what she might hear.

“You know what she has come to ask of you?” resumed Jory cheerfully. “What, don’t you remember? You promised that she might pose for something. And she’ll do so if you like.”

“Of course I will,” said Irma.

“The fact is,” replied Claude, in an embarrassed tone, “my picture here will take up all my time till the Salon. I have a figure in it that gives me a deal of trouble. It’s impossible to perfect it with those confounded models.”

Irma had stationed herself in front of the picture, and looked at it with a knowing air. “Oh! I see,” she said, “that woman in the grass, eh? Do you think I could be of any use to you?”

Jory flared up in a moment, warmly approving the idea, but Claude with the greatest energy replied, “No, no madame wouldn’t suit. She is not at all what I want for this picture; not at all.”

Then he went on stammering excuses. He would be only too pleased later on, but just now he was afraid that another model would quite complete his confusion over that picture; and Irma responded by shrugging her shoulders, and looking at him with an air of smiling contempt.

Jory, however, now began to chat about their friends. Why had not Claude come to Sandoz’s on the previous Thursday? One never saw him now. Dubuche asserted all sorts of things about him. There had been a row between Fagerolles and Mahoudeau on the subject whether evening dress was a thing to be reproduced in sculpture. Then on the previous Sunday Gagnière had returned home from a Wagner concert with a black eye. He, Jory, had nearly had a duel at the Café Baudequin on account of one of his last articles in The Drummer. The fact was he was giving it hot to the twopenny-halfpenny painters, the men with the usurped reputations! The campaign against the hanging committee of the Salon was making a deuce of a row; not a shred would be left of those guardians of the ideal, who wanted to prevent nature from entering their show.

Claude listened to him with impatient irritation. He had taken up his palette and was shuffling about in front of his picture. The other one understood at last.

“You want to work, I see; all right, we’ll leave you.”

Irma, however, still stared at the painter, with her vague smile, astonished at the stupidity of this simpleton, who did not seem to appreciate her, and seized despite herself with a whim to please him. His studio was ugly, and he himself wasn’t handsome; but why should he put on such bugbear airs? She chaffed him for a moment, and on going off again offered to sit for him, emphasising her offer by warmly pressing his hand.

“Whenever you like,” were her parting words.

They had gone at last, and Claude was obliged to pull the screen aside, for Christine, looking very white, remained seated behind it, as if she lacked the strength to rise. She did not say a word about the girl, but simply declared that she had felt very frightened; and⁠—trembling lest there should come another knock⁠—she wanted to go at once, carrying away with her, as her startled looks testified, the disturbing thought of many things which she did not mention.

In fact, for a long time that sphere of brutal art, that studio full of glaring pictures, had caused her a feeling of discomfort. Wounded in all her feelings, full of repugnance, she could not get used to it all. She had grown up full of affectionate admiration for a very different style of art⁠—her mother’s fine watercolours, those fans of dreamy delicacy, in which lilac-tinted couples floated about in bluish gardens⁠—and she quite failed to understand Claude’s work. Even now she often amused herself by painting tiny girlish landscapes, two or three subjects repeated over and over again⁠—a lake with a ruin, a water-mill beating a stream, a chalet and some pine trees, white with snow. And she felt surprised that an intelligent young fellow should paint in such an unreasonable manner, so ugly and so untruthful besides. For she not only thought Claude’s realism monstrously ugly, but considered it beyond every permissible truth. In fact, she thought at times that he must be mad.

One day Claude absolutely insisted upon seeing a small sketchbook which she had brought away from Clermont, and which she had spoken about. After objecting for a long while, she brought it with her, flattered at heart and feeling very curious to know what he would say. He turned over the leaves, smiling all the while,