THE afternoon of the same day, Évariste paid a visit to the shop of Citizen Jean Blaise, print-seller and also dealer in ornamental boxes, book-binding materials and games of all kinds, in the Rue Honoré, opposite the Oratoire, near the Messageries, under the sign of the Amour Peintre. The shop, on the ground floor of a sixty-year-old house, was entered beneath a vaulted archway whose keystone bore a grotesque horned mask. The semi-circular opening below the arch was filled with an oil painting representing Le Sicilien ou l’ Amour Peintre after a composition by Boucher, which Jean Blaise’s father had placed there in 1770 and which the sun and the rain had been wearing away ever since. On either side of the door similar openings, glazed with the largest panes obtainable and with a nymph’s head on the keystone arches, offered to the public gaze the prints then in fashion together with the latest novelties in coloured engravings. On that particular day there could be seen ‘gallant’ scenes by Boilly, treated in his graceful if rather stiff manner, Leçons d’amour conjugal and Douces résistances, which used to scandalize the Jacobins and which the purists had denounced to the Society of Arts; the Promenade publique of Debucourt, with a fop in canary-coloured breeches stretched out languidly the length of three chairs, a group of horses by the young Carle Vernet, air-balloons, the Bain de Virginie, and figures after the Antique.
Among the citizens passing and repassing in front of the shop, only the most ragged and tattered stopped before the beautiful windows, quick to seize any chance to share, if only with their eyes, in the good things of this world. Their mouths wide open, they paid their homage, while the aristocrats merely glanced, frowned, and passed on.
As soon as he came in sight of it, Évariste fixed his eyes on one of the windows above the shop, the one on the left, where there was a pot of red carnations behind a balcony of twisted ironwork. This was the window of the bedroom of Élodie, Jean Blaise’s daughter. The print-dealer lived, with his only child, on the first floor of the house.
After stopping for a moment in front of the Amour Peintr, as if to take a deep breath, Évariste lifted the hasp on the door. He found the Citizeness Élodie, having just sold a couple of engravings by Fragonard fils and by Naigeon, carefully chosen from many others, anxiously holding up to the light the assignats received in payment, to examine with her beautiful eyes the delicate and intricate curves and lines of the watermark before locking them up in the cash-box, for business was being ruined by the large number of forged notes that were being circulated. As under the old régime, counterfeiters of the national currency, any who forged the King’s signature, were punished by death; yet plates for printing assignats were to be found in every cellar; thousands of counterfeit notes were smuggled in by the Swiss, whole packets being put into circulation in inns; every day the English were landing bales of them on the coasts to ruin the Republic’s credit and reduce patriots to destitution; and so Élodie was continually in fear of receiving bad money and in even greater fear of passing it on and so being treated as an accomplice of Pitt, though by nature she was optimistic, and certain she would be able to extricate herself should such a contingency arise.
Évariste stood gazing at her with a grave expression which conveyed deep love more strongly than any smile could. She looked at him with a little mocking pout and a coy glance from her sloe-black eyes, an expression she had adopted now that she knew he loved her, for she did not mind his knowing she knew, since such an expression provokes a lover, arouses him to feel sorry for himself and so forces him to declare his love, if he has not done so already – as Évariste had not.
Having put the assignats in the cash-box, she took a white scarf out of her work-basket and continued with some embroidery she had begun on it. Industrious and coquettish, as if by instinct she knew how to fascinate with her needle and at the same time make some pretty thing for herself; her manner of sewing differed according to the onlooker: she sewed capriciously before those whom it amused her to see made a little miserable. She now began to sew carefully in front of Évariste, in whom she desired to arouse a serious affection.
Élodie was neither very young nor very pretty. She could have been considered plain at a first glance. A brunette, olive-skinned, from beneath the wide, white handerchief knotted negligently round her head, and from under which escaped ringlets of gleaming blue-black hair, her eyes of fire glowed as though scorching their sockets. Her round, laughing, slightly snub-nosed, almost peasant-like face with its prominent cheekbones and voluptuous appeal, reminded the artist of the Borghese fawn, which, though seen only in a plaster-cast, he worshipped as the epitome of god-like mischief. A faint down accentuated the full curve of her lips. Her rounded breasts, held taut by the crossed fichu in fashion that year, seemed made for love. Her lissom waist, her lithe slender legs, her whole body moved with a primitive and delicious charm. Her glance, her breath, the quivering delight of her flesh, all of her cried out for love and gave promise of its passionate fulfilment. Behind the counter of that shop, she seemed like a nymph of the dance, a bacchante of the opera, shorn of her lynx skin, of her bacchanalian staff, of her garlands of ivy, checked, concealed by magic beneath the common exterior of a housewife by Chardin.
‘My father isn’t here,’ she said. ‘Wait a little for him; he won’t be long.’
Her small brown hands made the needle fly over the fine linen.
‘Is this pattern to your liking, Monsieur Gamelin?’
Gamelin was incapable of pretence. And love, boosting his courage, increased his frankness.
‘You embroider skilfully, citizeness, but, if you wish me to speak frankly, the pattern you’ve made isn’t simple enough or plain enough; it’s inflated by the affected taste which lasted too long in France in the art of dress, furniture and wainscoting; all these clusters and garlands recall that pitiful, paltry style everybody favoured under the tyranny. Taste is undergoing a renaissance. Oh, I know we’ve a long way to go yet! In the days of the infamous Louis XV the art of decoration had something Chinese about it. They used to make potbellied chests of drawers, with ridiculously contorted handles, fit only for putting on the fire to warm good patriots. It’s simple things that are beautiful. We must go back to antiquity. David designs beds and armchairs from scenes on Etruscan vases and from wall-paintings of Herculaneum.’
‘I’ve seen those beds and armchairs,’ said Élodie. ‘They are beautiful! Everybody will soon be wanting them. I do adore the Antique like you.’
‘In that case, citizeness,’ Évariste replied, ‘if you had trimmed the scarf with a Greek border, with ivy leaves, with serpents or crossed arrows, it would have been worthy of any Spartan girl… or of you. But you can still keep this design by simplifying it, reducing it to straight lines.’
She asked him what she should leave out.
He bent over the scarf: his face brushed against the blue-black ringlets of Élodie’s hair. Their hands came together on the linen; their breath brushed each other’s cheeks. At that moment, Évariste tasted bliss infinite and measureless; yet, as he felt his lips approaching Élodie’s lips he was filled with fear lest the young woman should feel offended, and he drew back brusquely.
The Citizeness Blaise was in love with Évariste Gamelin. To her he was magnificent, with his great ardent eyes, his fine oval face, his pallor, his long, black hair parted in the middle and falling on to his shoulders, his grave demeanour, his cold reserve, his unapproachableness, his severe manner of speech, always devoid of flattery. And, because she loved him, she endowed him with all the pride of an artistic genius who would one day blaze forth masterpieces and make his name famous; and since she believed this she loved even the more. The Citizeness Blaise had no liking for masculine purity; her morals were never offended by a man yielding to his passions, to his tastes, to his desires. She was in love with Évariste, who was virtuous; she was not in love with him because he was virtuous; but she appreciated the advantage it gave her in that she would never have cause for jealousy, suspicion, or fear of rivals.
All the same, at the mom
ent she did consider him a little too reserved. If Racine’s Aricie, who loved Hippolyte, admired that young hero’s aggressive virtue, it was in the hope of triumphing over it, and she would have been quick to complain at a moral severity which refused to yield for her sake. And as soon as the opportunity arose, she more than half declared her love, to force him to declare his. Like the tenderhearted Aricie, the Citizeness Blaise was not disinclined to believe that in some matters of love it was up to the woman to make the advances. ‘The most loving natures,’ she was fond of telling herself, ‘are the most timid; they have need of help and encouragement. Besides, they are so guileless, a woman can go half-way and even further without their realizing it, if she is tactful enough to make it appear that it is they who are making the bold attack and gaining the glorious victory.’ What made her more confident of the outcome was that she knew very well (there was indeed no doubt about the matter) that Évariste, before the Revolution had given him the aura of a hero, had like any other mortal been in love with a woman, a quite ordinary creature, the concierge at the Academy of Arts.
Élodie, who was far from being an ingenuous girl, knew quite well there were different kinds of love. And the feeling she had for Évariste was sufficiently strong to make her consider him as a possible partner for life. She was quite ready to marry him, but did not expect her father would approve the union of his daughter with a poor and unknown artist. Game-lin had nothing; the print-dealer’s business transactions entailed huge sums of money. The Amour Peintre brought him a great deal, the share-market even more, and he was in partnership with an army contractor who supplied the Republic’s cavalry with inferior hay and damp oats. In other words, the cutler’s son was a very insignificant person compared with a publisher of prints and engravings known throughout Europe, related to the Blaizots, to the Basans, to the Didots, and a frequent guest in the houses of the Citizens Saint-Pierre and Florian. It was not that she held her father’s consent to be indispensable, as any obedient daughter would have. Her father, widowed early in life, easy-going and carefree by disposition, as great a runner after women as he was after business, had never taken much interest in her, had allowed her to grow up in complete freedom, without advice, without affection, careful not to supervise, indeed rather to ignore, the conduct of this girl in whom, as a connoisseur, he recognized that mettlesome spirit and those powers of seduction which are far more potent than a pretty face. Too warm-hearted to be over-prudent, too intelligent to be over-rash, circumspect even in her pleasures, her love affairs had never made her forget the social proprieties. Her father had continued to be infinitely grateful for this prudence, and as she had inherited from him a good business sense and a liking for making money, he remained un-worried as to why so marriageable a daughter still stayed at home, where she was worth a housekeeper and four clerks to him. At twenty-seven, she felt experienced and old enough to manage her own life, and in no need of asking the advice or following the wishes of her still-young, easy-going and carefree father. But if she were to marry Gamelin, it would be necessary for Monsieur Blaise to find an opening for such an impoverished son-in-law, an interest in the business, a guarantee of regular work such as he already gave to a number of artists; in other words, provide him with a means of livelihood. And that the one would offer and the other accept, she deemed impossible, so little sympathy was there between the two men.
This difficulty was giving the fond and prudent Élodie some thought. The idea of a secret union with her lover caused her no alarm. Her philosophy saw nothing to be condemned in such a union: something which would be quite possible in view of her independent way of life, and to which Gamelin’s honourable and virtuous character would give a binding and reassuring strength; but Gamelin was having difficulty in providing for himself and in supporting his old mother: it hardly seemed likely that in so straightened an existence there would be room for a love-affair, reduced even to its most primitive level. Moreover, Gamelin had still not spoken of his feelings nor of his intentions. The Citizeness Blaise had strong hopes of compelling him to do so shortly.
She brought her thoughts and her needle to a sudden halt.
‘Citizen Évariste,’ she said, ‘this scarf doesn’t please me so long as it doesn’t please you. Draw me a pattern please. And whilst you’re making it, like Penelope I’ll undo what I’ve done during your absence.’
He replied with grave enthusiasm:
‘It is as good as done, citizeness. I will draw for you the blade of Harmodius: a sword entwined in a garland.’
And, taking his pencil, he sketched swords and flowers in the sober, unadorned style he loved. And, at the same time, he expounded his tenets.
‘The French are a reformed people,’ he said, ‘and they must repudiate all their legacy of servitude: bad taste, bad drawings, bad design. Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard worked for tyrants and slaves. Their paintings reveal a complete absence of clear style and clear line; a complete unawareness of nature and of truth. Masks, dolls, fripperies, childish nonsense. Posterity will despise their frivolous works. A hundred years hence all Watteau’s paintings will have rotted away in attics. By 1893 art students will be covering the canvases of Boucher with their own rough sketches. David has shown the way: he is going back to the Antique; but even he has still not attained true simplicity and greatness. Our artists have still many secrets to learn from the friezes of Herculaneum, from Roman bas-reliefs, from Etruscan vases.’
He spoke long on Antique beauty, then returned to Fragonard, whom he pursued with irrepressible hatred.
‘Do you know him, citizeness?’
Élodie signified with a nod that she did.
‘You know also the splendid Greuze. No doubt he looks rather ridiculous with his scarlet coat and his sword. But, beside Fragonard, he could be taken for a philosopher of ancient Greece. I met that senile old dodderer Fragonard not long ago, tottering along under the arcades of the Palais-Égalité, wagging his tail, elegantly powdered, lecherous, hideous. The very sight of him made me long for some strong-armed friend of the arts to string him up on a tree and flay him alive like Apollo did to Marsyas, as an eternal eternal warning to all bad painters.’
Élodie looked up and gazed steadily at him with her bright sensual eyes.
‘You know how to hate, Monsieur Gamelin. Does that mean you know also how to lo–’
‘Is that you Gamelin?’ interrupted the light, tenor voice of the Citizen Blaise as he entered the shop, high-boots squeaking, watch-charms tinkling, coat-tails flying, the corners of an enormous cocked hat descending to his shoulders.
Élodie put her embroidery back into her work-basket and went up to her bedroom.
‘Well, Gamelin! Have you brought me something new?’ demanded the Citizen Blaise.
‘Possibly,’ replied the artist.
And he outlined his plan.
‘Our playing-cards are a disgraceful contrast to the new order. The very names of king and knave offend patriots’ ears. I’ve planned and designed a pack of new Revolutionary playing-cards in which kings, queens and knaves are replaced by Liberties, Equalities and Fraternities. The aces are called Laws. When a player makes his call he says Liberty of clubs, Equality of spades, Fraternity of diamonds, Law of hearts. I think the designs are quite inspiring. I intend having them engraved in copperplate by Desmahis, and to patent them.’
And taking some of the finished designs in water-colour from his portfolio, the artist held them out to the print-dealer.
The Citizen Blaise turned his head, ignoring them.
‘Take them along to the Convention, lad. They’ll give you a vote of thanks. But don’t think you’ll ever make a sou out of your new invention, which isn’t new. You’ll have to get up earlier in the morning. Yours is the third pack of Revolutionary playing-cards I’ve had brought to me. Your friend Dugourc offered me one last week, a piquet set with four Geniuses, four Liberties, four Equalities. Somebody else suggested a set with philosopher heroes, Cato, Rousseau, Hannibal, and heaven knows w
ho else!… And theirs had the advantage over yours, my friend, in being poorly drawn and cut in wood with a pen-knife. It shows how little you know the world if you think card players want cards designed in the style of David or with engravings in the manner of Bartolozzi! And you’re under an even bigger illusion if you think it’s necessary to go to all that trouble to make playing-cards conform with modern ideas. The good sans-culotte does that for himself. He simply says “The Tyrant!” or “The big pig!” and goes on using his dirty old cards and never thinks of buying a new pack. The best market for playing cards is at the Palais-Égalité: my advice is to go to the gambling houses there and offer the croupiers and punters your Liberties, Equalities, your… how d’you call them?… your Law of hearts – then come back and tell me what sort of reception you got!’
The Citizen Blaise seated himself on the counter, flipped some grains of snuff off his yellow nankeen breeches and looked at Gamelin with gentle pity.
‘Do allow me to give you a word of advice, citizen. If you want to make something of your life, give up your packs of patriotic cards, forget about your revolutionary symbols, your Hercules, your Hydras, your Furies pursuing traitors, your geniuses of Liberty – and paint me some pretty girls. Citizens’ enthusiasm for self-reformation diminishes with time; men’s love for women never. Paint me some rosy-fleshed women with small feet and little hands. And get into that thick head of yours that nobody cares a damn anymore about the Revolution; everybody’s sick to death with the sound of the word.’
At last, Gamelin struck back:
‘Sick to death! Of the Revolution? Of events that will reverberate down the ages – the establishment of liberty, the victories of our armies, the fall of tyrants? Who could not but be inspired by such happenings? The creed of the sans-culotte Jesus lasted almost eighteen hundred years – and the religion of Liberty will have been done away with after barely four years’ existence?’
The Gods Will Have Blood Page 5