The Masterpiece

by Émile Zola

  Claude’s compliment gave Mahoudeau something to think about, for although power was what he aimed at in his work it was not really his natural bent, and he despised grace, though it sprang from his rough, uneducated workman’s fingers, invincible and persistent as a flower sown in hard ground by the wind.

  Fagerolles, smart as usual, was not exhibiting, in case his teachers did not like it, so he poured out all his contempt on the Salon—‘a filthy old junk-shop where good painting went as mouldy as the bad.’ Though he would never admit it, what he wanted was the Prix de Rome, though he ridiculed that along with the rest.

  Jory planted himself in the middle of the floor, his glass of beer clutched in his fist, and punctuated his remarks with sips.

  ‘I’ve had just as much as I can stand of that famous Selection Committee!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s got to be smashed, and I’m going to smash it! I shall open the attack in our next number, and I’ll give it hell, so don’t forget to let me have a note or two, and between us we’ll do for it. It’ll be fun.’

  Amid the general enthusiasm Claude regained his self-esteem completely. The battle was on, and he was in it! They were all in it, elbow to elbow, to march to the fray. Not one among them at that moment had any thought of his own personal glory, for as yet nothing had come between them, neither their fundamental disparities, which they had not yet realized, nor the spirit of rivalry which was one day to set them at variance. The success of one, surely, meant success for them all! Bubbling over with youth and brotherly devotion, they were launched again into the old, old dream of banding together to conquer the earth, each making his own contribution, each supporting the other, the whole band in a firm and serried rank to the very end. Claude, as acknowledged leader, was already distributing the victors’ laurels. Even Fagerolles, in spite of his Parisian cynicism, believed in the need for banding together, while Jory, duller in appetite than his friends, still not quite free of his slough of provincialism, was nevertheless doing all in his power to help them, making mental notes of what they said and already planning his articles in his mind. Mahoudeau, deliberately exaggerating, was making violent, convulsive gestures, like a baker kneading the whole world like a lump of dough; Gagnière, now freed from the shackles of his pale grey painting, was rhapsodizing about subtleties of feeling, tracing them to disappearing point in the remotest realms of intelligence, while Dubuche, with his solid convictions, amid the general hubbub, placed an occasional word here and there, but every word smashed through its obstacle like the blow of a club. Sandoz himself was so happy, beaming with pleasure at seeing his friends so united, ‘all in the same shirt’, as he put it, that he opened another bottle of beer. He would have given them the last drop in the house.

  ‘Now we know what we’re after,’ he cried, ‘let’s see that we get it! There’s nothing better in the whole wide world than understanding each other when you’ve got ideas in your noddle, and letting fools go to the devil!’

  He was cut short, much to his amazement, by a ring at the door-bell. All the rest stopped talking too, and in the sudden silence he went on:

  ‘Who on earth can that be? It’s eleven o’clock!’

  He ran to open the door, and the others heard him give a shout of joy. He was back in a moment, flinging the door wide open as he said:

  ‘Now that is decent of you, to give us such a pleasant surprise! … Gentlemen, Bongrand!’

  The great painter, announced with such respectful familiarity by the host, came in holding out both hands to greet the party. They were all on their feet in a second, pleased and touched by his cordial gesture. Bongrand was a big man with a deeply-lined face and long grey hair. He was forty-five and had just been made a Member of the Institut, and in the button-hole of his plain alpaca jacket he was wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honour. He was fond of young people, and there was nothing he liked better than to drop in now and again and smoke a pipe with these friendly novices and share the warmth of their enthusiasm.

  ‘I’ll go and make the tea,’ cried Sandoz.

  And when he came back from the kitchen with the cups and the teapot, he found Bongrand settled in, sitting astride a chair smoking his short clay pipe in the middle of a renewed outburst of chatter, and talking himself in a voice like thunder. His grandfather was a farmer from the Beauce; his father a middle-class townsman of peasant stock refined by his mother’s sound artistic taste. He was rich, so he had no need to sell and had remained a true Bohemian both in taste and opinions.

  ‘Selection Committee!’ he was saying, ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead on it.’ And he emphasized his assertions by vigorous gestures. ‘I couldn’t be so inhuman as to turn down a lot of poor beggars who almost certainly have their living to earn.’

  ‘Still,’ said Claude, ‘you could do us a jolly good turn by standing up for our pictures.’

  ‘Not I! All I should do would be to compromise you! I cut no ice really, you know. I’m a mere nobody.’

  There was an outburst of protest, and Fagerolles fairly shrieked: ‘You can’t tell us the man who painted “The Village Wedding” cuts no ice!’

  Bongrand was on his feet in a moment, his face flushed with temper.

  ‘Don’t even mention “The Wedding” to me! I’ve heard just as much as I can stand about “The Wedding”, so now you’re warned. Ever since the thing was put in the Luxembourg it’s haunted me like a bad dream.’

  His ‘Village Wedding’ was, nevertheless, his masterpiece. It represented a wedding party straggling across a cornfield, a series of closely studied peasant types to whom he had managed to impart an epic quality worthy of Homer himself. It was an artistic landmark, a turning-point in the evolution of painting; it presented a new formula. Following Delacroix, and parallel with Courbet, it was Romanticism tempered by logic, more precise in observation, more perfect in treatment, although it did not make a frontal attack on nature in the full crudity of the open air. And yet the younger school of painting claimed descent from Bongrand’s painting.

  ‘I don’t know anything lovelier,’ said Claude, ‘than the two first groups, the fiddler and the bridge and the old peasant.’

  ‘What about the big peasant woman,’ cried Mahoudeau, ‘the one that’s turning round and beckoning to the others? … I wanted to do it as a statue.’

  ‘And the wind blowing through the corn,’ Gagnière added, ‘and those two lovely patches of colour away in the distance, the boy and the girl cuffing each other.’

  Bongrand listened, looking embarrassed and with a long-suffering smile. When Fagerolles asked him what he was doing at the moment he replied with a casual shrug of the shoulders:

  ‘Nothing much really. A little thing here and there … not for exhibition. I’m trying something out. … If only you knew how lucky you all are to be able to be still at the bottom of the slope. While you’re still climbing, you’ve plenty of both strength and courage. But when you’ve got to the top it’s then the trouble begins. Torture, that’s what it is; one long struggle, one effort after another to keep yourself from coming a cropper before your time. … Oh, believe me, I’d rather be at the bottom again, with the grade still to make. … Oh, you can laugh now, but you’ll see, you’ll see one day, take my word for it!’

  They were laughing, too, thinking it was just one of Bongrand’s paradoxes, the great man posing, which they were ready to forgive. No joy could be greater, they knew, than that of being acknowledged a master, as he was. So he gave up trying to make himself understood and sat listening to them, without a word, resting his arms on the back of his chair and puffing slowly away at his pipe.

  Dubuche meanwhile, as he had his domestic side, was helping Sandoz serve the tea, while all the others went on talking at once. Fagerolles was telling a priceless story about old Malgras, who used to lend out his wife’s cousin as a model to anyone who agreed to do a nude for him. From that the conversation turned to models. Mahoudeau was furious because good bellies were a thing of the past; it was impossible, he said, to find
a girl with a belly worth looking at. The din became suddenly louder when they began to congratulate Gagnière on the collector he’d met while listening to the band in the Palais Royal, a crank with a little money whose one vice was buying pictures. Laughingly everyone asked for his address. Dealers they had no use for. It was a pity collectors had so little faith in painters that they insisted on buying through a dealer, in the hope of getting a discount. The daily-bread question led to further arguments. Claude was supremely contemptuous; if they rooked you, he said, what did it matter so long as you knew you’d produced a masterpiece, even if you had to live on nothing but water? Jory’s avowed interest in filthy lucre was received with indignant shouts of ‘Journalist!’ and ‘Throw him out!’ followed by a volley of ticklish questions. Would he sell his pen for money? Would he cut off his right hand rather than write the opposite of what he believed to be true? His answers were not listened to, however, as the general excitement now worked up to fever-pitch in the fine frenzy of twenty-year-olds pouring out their scorn on the world in general, unanimous in their passion for the work of art unmarred by any human frailties and set high in their heaven like a sun. They would willingly have flung themselves into the fire they were starting.

  Bongrand had not stirred for some time, but faced with all this boundless confidence, all the joyful clamour of attack, he made a vague gesture of forbearance. Forgetting all the scores of paintings that had established his reputation, thinking only of the birth pangs of the sketch he had just left standing on his easel, he took out his little pipe and, with tears in his eyes, murmured quietly:

  ‘What it is to be young!’

  Until two o’clock in the morning Sandoz kept on plying his guests with tea. Outside, the only sound that rose from the sleeping streets was the angry wailing of an amorous cat. Inside, everyone was talking at random, carried away by the flow of their own words, though throats were hoarse and eyes burning from lack of sleep. When, at last, the party did decide to break up, Sandoz picked up the lamp and lighted them down the stairs, leaning over the banister to whisper:

  ‘Don’t make a noise, mother’s asleep.’

  And when they had picked their way stealthily down the stairs and the sound of their footsteps had died away, the house was silent.

  When it struck four, Claude, who was seeing Bongrand home through the deserted streets, was still talking. He had no desire to go to bed, he was burning with impatience for the sun to come up so that he could get back to his picture. This time, warmed by his day of good fellowship, his head aching and seething with ideas, he was certain to produce a masterpiece. He felt he could paint now and saw himself going back to his studio, as to a woman he loved, his heart pounding with excitement, regretting he had left her even for a day which he now felt was like total desertion. He was going straight back to his picture, and after one sitting his dream would have come true. Bongrand meanwhile kept stopping him every few yards, under the fading glimmer of the street-lamps and, holding him by one jacket button, telling him that if ever there was a god-forsaken job it was painting. He, Bongrand, might think he was smart, but he still hadn’t got to the bottom of it. Every picture he painted was like starting again from scratch. It was like bashing one’s head against a stone wall. And they wandered along side by side, each talking at the top of his voice, for his own benefit, as the stars grew paler and paler in the morning sky.

  Chapter 4

  One morning, six weeks later, Claude was painting in the sunshine that came streaming in through his studio window. The middle of August had been dull and wet, but now the sky was blue again his heart was back in his work. His big canvas was making only slow progress, but he was putting up a determined fight and spending long, silent mornings working on it.

  There was a knock at the door. He thought it was the concierge, Madame Joseph, bringing up his lunch, so, as the key was always in the lock, he simply called out:

  ‘Come in!’

  The door opened; he was aware of a faint, barely perceptible movement, and that was all. He went on painting without even turning to look. But after a time the tense silence, broken only by the soft sound of somebody breathing, began to disturb him, so he looked to see what it was. He was dumbfounded, for there stood a woman he did not recognize, wearing a light dress, her face half hidden under a white veil and, what was most amazing, she was carrying a bunch of roses.

  Suddenly he realized who it was.

  ‘It’s you, mademoiselle! … The very last person I should have thought of!’

  It was Christine. His last, hardly complimentary remark, though it had slipped out almost before he was aware of it, was really perfectly true. For a time her memory had occupied his thoughts incessantly; then, as two months went by without her giving any sign of life, she had become merely a fleeting vision, a pleasant face unfortunately never to be seen again.

  ‘Yes, it’s me, monsieur,’ she said. ‘I thought it was not nice of me not to have thanked you.’

  She blushed, and her speech was hesitant, as if she could not find her words. Maybe the long climb up the stairs from the street had made her out of breath, for her heart was beating very fast. Had she done the wrong thing, she wondered, to pay this call which she had discussed with herself so often until at last it had appeared to her quite a natural thing to do? What made things worse was her having bought those roses as she came along the embankment, to give the young man as a kind of thank-offering. Now she found them simply embarrassing. How should she give them to him? What was he going to think of her? The indecorousness of all these things had only dawned on her once she had opened the door.

  But Claude was even more embarrassed than she, and his politeness was exaggerated in consequence. He put down his palette and practically turned the studio upside-down in his efforts to produce a chair for her.

  ‘Do sit down, mademoiselle, please. … This is such a surprise. … It really is charming of you …’

  Having sat down, Christine regained her calm, and Claude looked so funny, making his floundering gestures, which she recognized as a sign of his shyness, that she had to smile. Then, her own shyness forgotten, she offered him the flowers.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘they’re for you, to show you I’m not ungrateful.’

  He said nothing for a moment, but simply stood looking at her. Then, when he saw she was quite serious, he seized both her hands and almost crushed them in his own as he said:

  ‘Now I know what you are, you’re a real good sort! A real good sort, do you hear?’ And he added as he was putting the flowers in his water-jug, ‘And believe me, it’s the first time I’ve paid that compliment to a woman!’

  Coming back to her, he asked, looking straight into her eyes:

  ‘Is it true, you hadn’t forgotten me?’

  ‘Why, of course I hadn’t,’ she answered with a laugh.

  ‘Then why did you wait two months?’

  That made her blush again, embarrassed for a moment by the lie she had just told.

  ‘Because I’m not free to do as I like, you know. … Oh, Madame Vanzade is very kind to me, but she’s a helpless invalid and never goes out. It was she who had to make me come out for an airing today, as she thought it would do me good.’

  She did not tell him of the shame she had suffered for days after their encounter on the Quai de Bourbon, or how, when she found herself in the shelter of the old lady’s household, the memory of the night she had spent in a strange man’s room tortured her with remorse, like a sin, or how, at last, she had managed to put the man out of her mind and the whole episode, like the aftermath of an unpleasant dream, had gradually melted away. Then, she did not know how, through the measured calm of her new life, the image had risen again from the shadows and grown clearer and more precise until it obsessed her every moment of the day. Why should she have forgotten him? She had nothing to hold against him. On the contrary, she had reason to be grateful to him. The thought of seeing him again, completely repressed at first and held at bay for a
long time later, had gradually become an idée fixe. Every evening when she was alone in her room temptation had haunted her in the form of an irritating, unsettled feeling, a vague, unacknowledged desire; and she had only been able to ease her mind a little by explaining away her restlessness as the need to express her gratitude. She felt so alone, so stifled in that sleepy household, while the pulse of youth was beating fast within her, and her heart was so eager for friendship.

  ‘So I thought I would make the most of my first outing,’ she said. ‘Besides, it was so lovely this morning, after all that depressing rain!’

  Claude, still standing looking at her, was very happy; he, too, made his confession, for he had nothing to hide.

  ‘I didn’t dare go on thinking about you,’ he said. ‘You see, you were like one of those fairies who come up through the floor, or melt into the wall, just when you least expect them to. So I said to myself: “It’s all over; perhaps it isn’t even true that she came into this studio.” But here you are, and I’m so pleased! More pleased than I can possibly tell you!’

  Smiling, but rather ill at ease, Christine turned away, pretending to look about her. Her smile soon disappeared, however, for the savage-looking painting she saw all around her, the flamboyant sketches of Provence, the terrifying anatomical precision of the studies from the nude made her blood run cold, as they had done the first time she saw them. She suddenly felt afraid again, really afraid, and in a different, much more serious voice, said:

  ‘I’m afraid I’m in your way. I must go.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Claude at once. ‘You mustn’t go!’ He gently pushed her back on her chair. ‘I’d just about worked myself to a standstill, so it’ll do me good to talk to you… The torments I suffer for that wretched picture!’

  Christine looked up and saw the big canvas, the one that had been turned to the wall the last time she was there, and which she had so badly wanted to see.