by Émile Zola
He made his excuses with a great show of gallantry, pretending he had been detained by a business engagement. He was very elegant these days in his well-fitting clothes, of English cut, so that he looked like a regular clubman, with, in addition, just that rakish artist touch which he was careful to preserve. As he took his seat he shook his neighbour by the hand most heartily, apparently overjoyed to see him again.
‘Dear old Claude!’ he cried. ‘I’ve been wanting to see you for ages! I intended to come and see you dozens of times when you were out at what’s-its-name, but you know what things are like … life, and all the rest of it!’
Claude, embarrassed by such fulsome protestations, tried to reply with equal cordiality. It was Henriette, in her desire to finish serving out the bouillabaisse, who saved him.
‘Listen, Fagerolles,’ she cried. ‘What do you take? Is it two pieces of toast?’
‘It is indeed, madame. Two pieces, please. I adore bouillabaisse. And you make it so well, it is sheer delight!’
All were loud in its praises, especially Mahoudeau and Jory, who said they had never eaten better in Marseilles. So the young wife, ladle in hand, beaming with pride and still flushed by the heat from the stove, was kept busy filling the empty plates as they were handed up to her. She even had to leave the table and hurry into the kitchen to fetch the rest of the soup, for the maid had completely lost her head.
‘Do sit down and get on with your own dinner. … And take your time; we’ll wait for you,’ said Sandoz.
But Henriette insisted on attending to her guests.
‘There’s really no need,’ Sandoz insisted. ‘You’d do much better to pass the bread. It’s there, behind you on the sideboard. … Jory prefers bread to toast in his soup,’ he went on, leaving the table himself to help with the service, while the others chaffed Jory about his weakness for ‘mash’.
In this atmosphere of cheerful comradeship Claude felt as if he was awakening from a dream as he looked round at them all and asked himself whether it was not as recently as yesterday that he was last with them, or whether four years could possibly have gone by since he last dined with them on a Thursday evening. They were not the same, of course, he felt they had changed; Mahoudeau, soured by poverty, Jory keener than ever on self-advancement, Gagnière more remote and elusive. His neighbour Fagerolles, he thought, seemed to exude coldness, in spite of his exaggerated cordiality. Their faces looked a little older too, a little more worn; but there was something else besides; he felt they were growing apart, he could see they were really strangers to one another, even though they did happen to be packed elbow to elbow round the same table. Besides, the atmosphere was new to him; a woman added to its charm, but her presence also kept a check on their exuberance. Why, then, as a witness of the inevitable sequence of things dying and being renewed, had he a distinct feeling that he had done all this before? Why could he have sworn that he had sat in this very same place last week at the same time? Then, suddenly, at last he thought he understood. It was Sandoz himself who had stayed as he was, just as confirmed in his habits of sentiment as in his habits of work, just as delighted to entertain them as a young husband as he had been to share his simple fare with them as a bachelor. He was immobilized in a dream of eternal friendship, with Thursdays like this one following each other in endless succession to the remotest outposts of time, with all the gang eternally together, having started out together, together attaining their coveted victory.
He must have guessed why Claude was silent, for he called to him across the table, with his frank, boyish laugh:
‘Well, here you are back again, old fellow! … And we’ve missed you, by God we have! … But nothing’s changed, as you can see. We’re all just exactly as you left us! Aren’t we?’ he added, turning to the others, who one and all nodded their assent. Of course they had not changed!
‘With the exception of one thing, of course,’ he went on, his face beaming with pleasure, ‘the cooking, which is rather better than it used to be in the Rue d’Enfer. … I daren’t think of all the ratatouille I served up to you in those days!’
The bouillabaisse was followed by jugged hare, and the meal was rounded off by a roast fowl with salad. They sat a long time over the dessert, though the talk was far less heated than it used to be. Everyone talked about himself and finally relapsed into silence when he realized that no one was listening. With the cheese, however, when they had all sampled the rather acidic light Burgundy from the cask Sandoz had ventured to acquire, and the conversation turned to the subject of authors’ royalties on a first novel, voices were raised and the old animation revived.
‘So you’ve come to an understanding with Naudet, have you?’ asked Mahoudeau, whose pinched, starved face looked bonier than ever. ‘Is it true he guarantees you fifty thousand francs the first year?’
‘That’s the figure,’ Fagerolles replied, not too convincingly. ‘But nothing’s settled yet, of course,’ he added. ‘I’m in no hurry to make up my mind. It’s risky to tie yourself up like that. Besides, I’m not exactly bowled over by the offer.’
‘You’re hard to please, I must say,’ remarked the sculptor. ‘For twenty francs a day I’d sign anything.’
By this time they were all of them listening to Fagerolles playing the part of the young man overwhelmed by the first fruits of success. He still had the disturbing look of a pretty but thoroughly unscrupulous girl, though with a certain added gravity imparted by the cut of his beard and the arrangement of his hair. He still kept in touch with Sandoz, though his visits were now few and far between, since he was gradually breaking away from the gang and launching himself on the boulevards where he assiduously frequented cafés, newspaper offices, and all the places where he could gain publicity or make useful contacts. It was deliberately and with the firm intention of building up his own personal success that he cultivated the notion that it was preferable to have nothing in common, professionally or socially, with such hot-headed revolutionaries. Rumour had it that he even included a number of society women as pawns in his game, treating them not, as Jory did, with the frank brutality of the male, but with the cold, passionless provocation of the man who has a way with duchesses a little past their prime.
‘I say, have you seen what Vernier’s written about you?’ asked Jory, simply to underline his own importance, as he now claimed to have ‘made’ Fagerolles as he once claimed to have ‘made’ Claude. ‘Echoing me, of course, like all the rest,’ he added.
‘He certainly gets into the papers these days,’ put in Mahoudeau with a sigh.
Fagerolles answered with a dismissive gesture and smiled to himself, full of scorn for these clumsy fools who persisted in their misguided stubbornness when it was really so easy to conquer the public. Once he had picked their brains it was a simple matter to cut adrift from them. Meanwhile he was the gainer; the public had nothing but praise to bestow on his own carefully subdued painting, while it vented its deadly hatred on the persistently violent canvases produced by the rest of the group.
‘Did you see Vernier’s article?’ Jory asked Gagnière. ‘He does repeat exactly what I said, doesn’t he?’
For the moment Gagnière was absorbed in contemplating his glass and the red shadow cast by the wine on the white tablecloth. Jory’s question made him start.
‘What did you say? Vernier’s article?’
‘Why yes, all this stuff that’s being written about Fagerolles!’
In his amazement, Gagnière turned towards Fagerolles and said:
‘Writing about you? Really? I didn’t know, I’ve never seen anything. … Writing about you are they? Whatever for?’
This provoked a general guffaw, while Fagerolles grinned rather sheepishly, suspecting Gagnière of making fun of him. But Gagnière was in deadly earnest. He could not believe that a painter who did not even observe the law of values could possibly be successful. A humbug like that a success? Impossible! Surely somebody had a conscience?
The outburst of merriment wh
ich followed these remarks brought the dinner to a lively end. Everybody had stopped eating some time ago, though the hostess insisted on offering them more.
‘Look after your guests,’ she kept saying to her husband, who was thoroughly enjoying the fun. ‘Hand them the biscuits from the sideboard, dear.’
The guests thanked her, however, and all left the table. But as they were going to spend the rest of the evening sitting round it drinking tea, they stood back against the wall and carried on their conversation while the little maid was clearing the remains of the meal, helped by host and hostess, the latter putting away the salt-cellars in a drawer, the former giving a hand with folding the tablecloth.
‘You may smoke,’ Henriette told them. ‘You know I don’t mind.’
Fagerolles, who had drawn Claude aside into the window recess, offered him a cigar, which he refused.
‘Of course, I’d forgotten. You don’t smoke!’ said Fagerolles. ‘I shall be coming to see the stuff you’ve brought back from the country. Very interesting, I should think. Besides, you know what I think about your work, there’s nobody like you. …’
He was very humble and genuinely sincere, as he always had been, in his admiration, bearing, as he was bound to do, the stamp of Claude’s genius, and having to acknowledge it in spite of all his cleverly calculated attempts to evade the obligation. His humility was coupled, however, with a certain uneasiness, very unusual in him, which sprang from his desire to know why the master of his youth had so far found nothing to say about his picture. At length, with quivering lips, he ventured to ask:
‘Have you seen my “Actress” at the Salon? Quite frankly, do you like it?’
For a second or so Claude hesitated, then answered amiably:
‘Yes. It has some very good points.’
Mortified already by having let himself ask such a question, Fagerolles began to make floundering excuses, trying to gloss over his borrowings and justify his concessions. When at last with great difficulty he had extricated himself, although he was still irritated by his own clumsiness, he switched back for a moment to being his old amusing self and set everybody laughing, including Claude, who laughed till he cried. Then he went to take leave of Henriette.
‘Must you go so early?’ she said as he held out his hand.
‘Alas, I must, dear lady. My father’s entertaining an influential personage—with a view to a decoration! And as I happen to be one of his titles to fame, I’ve sworn to put in an appearance.’
When he had gone Henriette withdrew, after a whispered exchange of words with Sandoz, and soon was heard moving gently about the room above. Since her marriage, it was she who attended to her invalid mother-in-law, which meant that she disappeared several times in the course of the evening, just as Sandoz used to do.
Her departure went unnoticed by any of the guests. Mahoudeau and Gagnière, now discussing Fagerolles, were both being quietly sour but avoiding a direct attack, limiting their disapproval to an exchange of sarcastic glances and eloquent shrugs, like schoolboys who are unwilling to condemn one of their fellows outright. Then from Fagerolles they turned to Claude and, prostrate with admiration, they poured out all their hopes, told him what great store they set by him. It was time he came back, they assured him; he alone, who had all the makings of a great painter and such a firm grasp of the requirements of his art, was worthy of being hailed as the master, acknowledged as a leader. Since the ‘Salon des Refusés’ the Open-Air School had developed considerably and its influence was being felt more and more. Unfortunately, its efforts lacked cohesion; its new recruits turned out little more than sketches and were easily satisfied with impressions tossed off on the spur of the moment. What was needed was the man of genius whose work would be the living image of their theories. What a fortress to storm, they said, and what a victory to win! To conquer the public, open a new period, create a new art! His eyes fixed on the ground and his face growing paler and paler, Claude sat and listened to them and admitted to himself that, although he had never openly expressed it, that had long been his dream and his secret ambition. Even now, flattered though he was to hear them exalt him as a dictator, as if his victory was already won, his heart was full of misgivings and fears for the future, and at last he had to cry:
‘Stop! You go too far! There are plenty of others as good as I am. I am still feeling my way!’
So far Jory had simply smoked and said nothing, in spite of his growing irritation, but now he could bear the arguments of the other two no longer and suddenly he found himself saying:
‘You’re saying all this, my young friends, because you can’t bear to see Fagerolles doing well.’
The others protested loudly. Fagerolles the budding leader? What a joke!
‘Oh, we know you’ve no use for us any more,’ Mahoudeau retorted. ‘There’s no danger of your writing us up now.’
‘Maybe not,’ replied Jory crossly, ‘because every line I write about you is spiked. Nobody has a good word for either of you, anywhere! … Oh, if it were my paper, of course. …’
At this point Henriette came in again. Her eyes answered an enquiring look from her husband and she smiled in the same gentle way as he used to smile when he had been in to see his mother. She called them all to order and sat them round the table again while she made and served the tea. But the warmth had gone from the party and the evening began to drag. Even the arrival of Bertrand, the dog, did not relieve the atmosphere; for a time he begged pitifully for lumps of sugar and then retired to sleep near the stove where he snored as heartily as any man. Since the discussion of Fagerolles had been closed, there had been long gaps in the conversation and the atmosphere, already heavy with tobacco smoke, seemed to have been made even heavier by a feeling of annoyance and frustration. At one point, even Gagnière left the table and sat at the piano quietly picking out bits of Wagner with the stiff unpractised fingers of someone who had turned thirty before he did his first five-finger exercise.
The arrival of Dubuche about eleven o’clock put the final damper on the proceedings. He had been to a dance and left early in order to pay this, his last duty-call of the day, on his old friends. His evening suit, his white tie and, above it, his pale round face were all expressive of his annoyance at having felt he had to come, of the importance he attached to his sacrifice, and of his dread of compromising in some way or other his recently acquired wealth. He was careful never to mention his wife, so that he would not have to take her with him to the Sandozes’. He shook hands with Claude with as little emotion as if he had met him only yesterday. He refused a cup of tea and, with much puffing out of his cheeks, talked with slow deliberation about the worries of moving into a newly-built house and about the overwhelming amount of work he had to get through since he joined his father-in-law in business; they were putting up a whole street of new houses near the Parc Monceau.
Claude felt plainly now that some link with the past was broken, and he wondered whether they were really gone for ever, those hectic, friendly meetings he used to enjoy before anything had come between them and none had desired to monopolize all the glory. Today, the battle was on, with each man fighting greedily for himself. The rift was there, though barely visible as yet, which had cracked apart the old sworn friendships and which one day would shatter them in a thousand pieces.
Sandoz, on the other hand, who still had faith in eternity, was oblivious to all this and still saw the gang as it had been in the Rue d’Enfer days, shoulder to shoulder, marching to conquest. Why should a good thing ever be altered? Did not happiness consist of the eternal enjoyment of one thing chosen in preference to all others?
When, an hour later, his friends, all suffering from the soporific effect of Dubuche’s dreary, self-centred talk about his own affairs, decided to leave, and Gagnière had been aroused from his trance at the piano, Sandoz, followed by his wife, insisted on seeing them all to the gate at the end of the garden, in spite of the cold night.
‘See you again Thursday, Claude! … S
ee you on Thursday, everybody!’ he said as he shook hands with them. ‘Don’t forget, eh! See you Thursday!’
‘See you Thursday!’ Henriette repeated as she held up the lamp to light the steps, and Gagnière and Mahoudeau replied gaily, much to everybody’s amusement.
‘Certainly, young master! … Good night, young master! … See you Thursday!’
In the Rue Nollet, Dubuche hailed a cab and drove away. The other four walked up to the boulevard, almost without exchanging a word, as if they were weary of each other’s company. When they reached the boulevard Jory made off after a girl who caught his eye, pretending he was going back to the office to look over some proofs. Then, when Gagnière automatically came to a standstill with Claude outside the Café Baudequin, where the lights were still burning, Mahoudeau refused to go in and went ahead alone, nursing his gloomy thoughts all the way back to the Rue du Cherche-Midi.
Almost before he realized it, Claude found himself sitting at their old table opposite the silent Gagnière. The café itself had not changed; they still foregathered there on Sundays, and with a certain keenness even, since Sandoz had come to live quite near. But the gang had been rather lost in the flood of newcomers and submerged in the rising tide of banality which characterized the latest recruits to the Open-Air School. At this time of night the café was emptying, anyhow; three young painters, whom Claude did not know, came over and shook hands with him on their way out, and the only other customer left was a local worthy, nodding in front of an empty saucer.
Gagnière settled in and made himself completely at home, paying no attention to the yawns of the last remaining waiter, and sat gazing blankly at Claude.
‘By the way,’ said the painter, ‘what was it you were expounding to Mahoudeau this evening? About the red on the flag turning yellow against the blue of the sky? … Do you mean to say you’re mugging up the theory of complementary colours?’
Gagnière did not answer. He picked up his glass, put it down again without drinking and murmured with an ecstatic smile: