Little French Masterpieces

"Do I belong to myself when you speak to me thus? Oh no! I am nothing more than a child. Come," she added, apparently making a mighty effort; "if our love dies, and if I plant in my heart a never-ending regret, will not your fame be the reward of my compliance with your wishes? Let us go in; it will be like living again to be always present as a memory on your palette."

As they opened the door of the house, the two lovers met Porbus, who, startled by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were then filled with tears, seized her, trembling from head to foot as she was, and said, leading her into the old man's presence:

"Look! is she not above all the masterpieces on earth?"

Frenhofer started. Gillette stood there in the ingenuous and unaffected attitude of a young Georgian girl, innocent and timid, abducted by brigands and offered for sale to a slave-merchant. A modest flush tinged her cheeks, she lowered her eyes, her hands were hanging at her side, her strength seemed to abandon her, and tears protested against the violence done to her modesty. At that moment Poussin, distressed beyond words because he had taken that lovely pearl from his garret, cursed himself. He became more lover than artist, and innumerable scruples tortured his heart when he saw the old man's kindling eye, as, in accordance with the habit of painters, he mentally disrobed the girl, so to speak, divining her most secret forms. Thereupon the young man reverted to the savage jealousy of true love.

"Let us go, Gillette," he cried.

At that tone, at that outcry, his mistress looked up at him in rapture, saw his face and ran into his arms.

"Ah! you do love me then?" she replied, melting into tears.

Although she had mustered energy to impose silence upon her suffering, she lacked strength to conceal her joy.

"Oh! leave her with me for a moment," said the old painter, "and you may compare her to my Catherine. Yes, I consent."

There was love in Frenhofer's cry, too. He seemed to be acting the part of a coquette for his counterfeit woman, and to enjoy in advance the triumph which the beauty of his creation would certainly win over that of a girl of flesh and blood.

"Do not let him retract!" cried Porbus, bringing his hand down on Poussin's shoulder. "The fruits of love soon pass away, those of art are immortal."

"In his eyes," retorted Gillette, looking earnestly at Poussin and Porbus, "in his eyes am I nothing more than a woman?"

She tossed her head proudly; but when, after a flashing glance at Frenhofer, she saw her lover gazing at the portrait which he had formerly mistaken for a Giorgione, she said:

"Ah! let us go up! He never looked at me like that."

"Old man," said Poussin, roused from his meditation by Gillette's voice, "look at this sword: I will bury it in your heart at the first word of complaint that this girl utters; I will set fire to your house and no one shall leave it! Do you understand?"

Nicolas Poussin's face was dark, and his voice was terrible. The young painter's attitude, and above all his gesture, comforted Gillette, who almost forgave him for sacrificing her to painting and to his glorious future. Porbus and Poussin remained at the door of the studio, looking at each other in silence. Although, at first, the painter of Mary the Egyptian indulged in an exclamation or two: "Ah! she is undressing; he is telling her to stand in the light; now he is comparing her with the other!" he soon held his peace at the aspect of Poussin, whose face was profoundly wretched; and although the old painters had none of those scruples which seem so trivial in the presence of art, he admired them, they were so attractive and so innocent. The young man had his hand on the hilt of his dagger and his ear almost glued to the door. The two men, standing thus in the darkness, resembled two conspirators awaiting the moment to strike down a tyrant.

"Come in, come in," cried the old man, radiant with joy. "My work is perfect, and now I can show it with pride. Never will painter, brushes, colours, canvas, and light produce a rival to Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtesan!"

Impelled by the most intense curiosity, Porbus and Poussin hurried to the centre of an enormous studio covered with dust, where everything was in disorder, and where they saw pictures hanging on the walls here and there. They paused at first in front of a life-size figure of a woman, half nude, which aroused their admiration.

"Oh, don't pay any attention to that," said Frenhofer; "that is a sketch that I dashed off to study a pose; it is worth nothing as a picture. There are some of my mistakes," he continued, pointing to a number of fascinating compositions hanging on the walls about them.

At those words, Porbus and Poussin, thunderstruck by his contempt for such works, looked about for the famous portrait, but could not discover it.

"Well, there it is!" said the old man, whose hair was dishevelled, whose face was inflamed by superhuman excitement, whose eyes sparkled, and who panted like a young man drunk with love. "Aha!" he cried, "you did not expect such absolute perfection! You are before a woman, and you are looking for a picture. There is so much depth on this canvas, the air is so real, that you cannot distinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is art? Lost, vanished! Behold the actual form of a young girl. Have I not obtained to perfection the colour, the sharpness of the line which seems to bound the body? Is it not the same phenomenon presented by objects in the atmosphere, as well as by fishes in the water? Observe how the outlines stand out from the background! Does it not seem to you that you could pass your hand over that back? Why, for seven years I studied the effects of the conjunction of light and of objects. And that hair, does not the light fairly inundate it? Why, she actually breathed, I believe! – Look at that bosom! Ah! who would not adore her on his knees? The flesh quivers. She is going to rise – wait!"

"Can you see anything?" Poussin asked Porbus.

"No. And you?"

"Nothing."

The two painters left the old man to his dreams, and looked to see whether the light, falling straight upon the canvas to which he was pointing, did not efface all the lines. They examined the picture from the right, from the left, and in front, alternately stooping and rising.

"Yes, yes, it's really canvas," said Frenhofer, mistaking the purpose of that careful scrutiny. "See, here is the frame and the easel, and here are my colours and my brushes."

And he seized a brush and handed it to them with an artless gesture.

"The old villain is making sport of us," said Poussin, returning to his position in front of the alleged picture. "I can see nothing but a confused mass of colours, surrounded by a multitude of curious lines which form a wall of painting."

"We were mistaken; look!" replied Porbus.

On going nearer, they saw in the corner of the canvas the end of a bare foot emerging from that chaos of vague colours and shades, that sort of shapeless mist; but a most lovely, a living foot! They stood speechless with admiration before that fragment, which had escaped a slow, relentless, incomprehensible destruction. That foot was like a bust of Venus in Parian marble, rising amid the ruins of a burned city.

"There is a woman underneath!" cried Porbus, calling Poussin's attention to the coats of paint which the old painter had laid on one after another, thinking that he was perfecting his work.

The two artists turned impulsively towards Frenhofer, beginning to understand, although but vaguely, the state of ecstasy in which he lived.

"He acts in perfect good faith," said Porbus.

"Yes, my friend," said the old man, rousing himself, "one must have faith, faith in art, and must live a long while with his work, to produce such a creation. Some of those shadows have cost me many hours of toil. See, on the cheek, just below the eye, there is a faint penumbra, which, if you notice it in nature, will seem to you almost beyond reproduction. Well, do you think that that effect did not cost me unheard-of trouble? But look closely at my work, my dear Porbus, and you will understand better what I said to you as to the method of treating modelling and outlines. Look at the light on the breast, and see how, by a succession of strongly emphasised touches and retouches, I have succeeded in reproducing the real light, and in combining it with the polished whiteness of the light tones; and how by the opposite means, by effacing the lumps and the roughness of the colours, I have been able, by softly retouching the outline of my figure, drowned in the half-tint, to take away even a suggestion of drawing and of artificial means, and to give it the aspect and the roundness of nature itself. Go nearer, and you will see the work better. At a distance it is imperceptible. Look, just here it is very remarkable, I think."

And with the end of his brush he pointed out to the two painters a layer of light paint.

Porbus laid his hand on the old man's shoulder and said, turning to Poussin:

"Do you know that we have before us a very great painter?"

"He is even more poet than painter," replied Poussin, gravely.

"Here," rejoined Porbus, pointing to the canvas, "here ends our art on earth."

"And from here it soars upwards and disappears in the skies," said Poussin.

"How much pleasure is concentrated on this piece of canvas!" cried Porbus.

The old man, completely distraught, did not listen to them; he was smiling at that ideal woman.

"But sooner or later he will discover that there is nothing on his canvas!" exclaimed Poussin.

"Nothing on my canvas!" cried Frenhofer, gazing at the two painters and at his alleged picture in turn.

"What have you done?" whispered Porbus to Poussin.

The old man grasped the young man's arm violently, and said to him:

"You see nothing, you clown! you boor! you idiot! you villain! Then why did you come up here? – My dear Porbus," he continued, turning towards the painter; "is it possible that you too would mock at me? I am your friend; tell me, have I spoiled my picture?"

Porbus hesitated, not daring to say anything; but the anxiety depicted on the old man's pale face was so heartrending that he pointed to the canvas, saying:

"Look!"

Frenhofer gazed at his picture for a moment, and staggered.