The Citizeness Gamelin greeted him: ‘I trust you will have an enjoyable journey, Monsieur Blaise! Since you’re going to paint landscapes, why don’t you take Monsieur Brotteaux with you? He, too, is an artist.’
‘Indeed!’ Jean Blaise replied. ‘Will you come with us, Citizen Brotteaux?’
Being of a sociable nature and fond of enjoying himself, Brotteaux accepted the invitation, after being assured he would not be intruding.
The Citizeness Élodie arrived, having climbed the four staircases in order to embrace the Widow Gamelin, whom she called her dear mother. Dressed in white from head to foot, she smelt of lavender.
An old travelling berline, with two horses, its hood lowered, stood waiting in the square. Rose Thévenin sat in the back with Julienne Hasard. Élodie had given precedence to the actress and seated herself on the left, putting the thin Julienne between them both. Brotteaux seated himself at the back, facing the Citizeness Hasard, with Évariste opposite Élodie. As for Philippe Desmahis, he placed his athletic frame on the seat next to the coachman whom he astonished by informing him that in certain American countries trees flowered with chitterlings and sausages.
The Citizen Blaise, an excellent rider, was mounted on his own horse and rode in front to avoid the dust thrown up by the berline.
As the wheels clattered along the road out of Paris, the travellers forgot their cares; and, at the sight of the fields, of the trees and the sky, gay and pleasant thoughts filled their minds. Élodie decided that she had been born to rear chickens, helped by Évariste, who would become the mayor of a little village beside a river, near a wood. The elm trees bordering the road flew by as they raced along. As they entered villages, the peasants’ dogs hurled themselves along beside the carriage, barking at the legs of the horses, and a large spaniel lying in the middle of the road got out of the way reluctantly. Fowls scattered and fled; geese in huddled groups waddled slowly to safety. Children, their faces fresh as the morning, gazed at the passing coach. The day was hot and cloudless; the earth parched and thirsting for rain. They stopped just outside Ville-juif and walked through the little town. Desmahis entered a fruiterers to buy some cherries for the ladies who were feeling the heat uncomfortably. The shopkeeper was a pretty woman, and Desmahis appeared reluctant to emerge. Philippe Dubois shouted to him, using the nickname his friends always gave him:
‘Hi, there, Barbaroux!… Barbaroux!’
At the sound of this detested name, the passers-by stopped and faces appeared at every window. Then, when they saw a handsome young man come out of the shop, his coat flung open, his neckerchief flying loose over his broad chest and carrying his coat and a basket of cherries on the end of a stick over his shoulder, a gang of sans-culottes rushed at him and seized violent hold of him. Ignoring his indignant protests they would have dragged him to the Hôtel de Ville, if old Brotteaux, Gamelin and the three young women had not testified that the citizen was named Philippe Desmahis, a copperplate engraver and a good Jacobin. Even then the suspect was made to show his carte de civisme which luckily he had in his pocket, for he was very careless over such things. Thus he escaped from the hands of these patriotic villagers with nothing worse than the loss of one of his lace ruffles, which had been torn off. But this was a comparative trifle, and he even received the apologies of the National Guards, who had been the most savage in their handling of him but who now wanted, as recompense, to carry him in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville.
A free man once more, and with the Citizenesses Élodie, Rose and Julienne fussing around him, Desmahis looked at Philippe Dubois – he did not like the man and suspected him of deliberately playing a practical joke – and said with a wry smile, towering head and shoulders above him:
‘Dubois, if you ever call me Barbatoux again I’ll call you Brissot. He’s a little fat man with a foolish face, greasy hair, oily skin and clammy hands. Everybody will have no doubt at all that you are that scoundrel Brissot, the enemy of the people. All good Republicans will be filled with horror and loathing at the sight of you, and will hang you from the nearest lamppost. Do you understand me?’
The Citizen Blaise, who had been watering his horse, announced that he had arranged the matter satisfactorily, though it was quite clear to all that it had been arranged without him.
The company got in again and as they drove on across the Plain of Longjumeau, Desmahis informed the coachman that it was in this very place that several inhabitants from the moon had once landed, very like frogs in shape and colour, only much, much bigger. Philippe Dubois, who was a pupil of Regnault, had been to Rome where he had seen Raphael’s tapestries, which he maintained were unsurpassable. He admired the colouring of Correggio, the drawing of Domen-ichino, the invention of Caracci, but considered the paintings of Pompeio Battoni incomparable with regard to style. He had met Monsieur Menageot and Madame Le Brun in Rome but as they had both declared themselves against the Revolution, the less said of them the better. However, he spoke highly of Angelica Kauffmann, whose taste was refined and who had an excellent knowledge of the Antique.
Gamelin deplored the prematurely rapid decline of the belated flowering of French painting, since it dated only from Lesner, Claude and Poussin and corresponded with the decline of the Italian and Flemish schools. He attributed this to the decay in manners and to the Academy which reflected social opinion too much in matters of art. However, the Academy had now happily been abolished and under the influence of new canons of taste, David and his school were creating an art worthy of a free people. Without a trace of envy, Gamelin assigned first place among the young painters to Hennequin and Topino-Lebrun. Philippe Dubois indicated his preference for his own master Regnault to David, and based his hopes for the future of painting upon that rising artist Gérard.
Meanwhile, Élodie was complimenting the Citizeness Thévenin on her red velvet toque and white gown. The actress repaid the compliment by congratulating her two companions on their dresses and advised them how to do better still; the art, she said, lay in avoiding ornaments and trimmings.
‘A woman can never be dressed too simply,’ she declared. ‘You can see this on the stage where the costumes are made so that every pose is appreciated. That is their true beauty and they need no embellishments.’
‘You are right, my dear’ Élodie replied. ‘But there is nothing more expensive in a dress than simplicity. It’s not always through bad taste that we add frills and furbelows. Sometimes it’s to save money.’
There followed a lively discussion about the autumn fashions – completely plain, tight-waisted dresses.
‘So many women put themselves at a disadvantage by following the fashion!’ Rose Thévenin declared. ‘Every woman should study her own figure’.
Gamelin joined in:
‘The only beauty in a dress lies in having the draperies follow the lines of the figure and fall in folds. Cutting and sewing only make a dress hideous.’
These sentiments, more suited to a treatise by Winkelmann than to a man speaking to Parisiennes, met with the scorn they deserved: they were completely ignored.
‘For this winter’ Élodie observed, ‘they are making quilted dresses of taffeta and muslin in the Lapland style, and coats à la Zuline, loose waisted and opening over a stomacher à la Turque.’
‘Horrible, cheap things,’ the actress interrupted. ‘You can get them ready-made. I have a little seamstress whose work is positively angelic. I’ll send her to visit you, my dear.’
So they chattered on lightly, eagerly discussing and appraising various fine fabrics – striped taffeta, china-silk, muslin, gauze, nankeen.
And to old Brotteaux, as he listened to them, there came pensive, pleasant thoughts of these veils which hide the charms of women’s bodies and how they are forever changing – how they last for a few years only, to be renewed eternally like the flowers of the field. And his eyes, as they gazed back and forth from these three beautiful women to the cornflowers and the poppies among the wheat, were wet with smiling tears.
They arrived at Orangis about nine o’clock and halted in front of the inn, L’ Auberge de la Cloche, where the Poitrines, man and wife, offered accommodation for man and beast. The Citizen Blaise, all disorder in his dress now repaired, helped the citizenesses to alight. After ordering lunch for midday, they all set off, preceded by a village lad carrying their paint-boxes, drawing-boards, easels and parasols, to the meadow near the confluence of the Orge and the Yvette, where there was a charming view over the green plain of Longjumeau bounded by the Seine and the forest of Sainte-Geneviève.
Jean Blaise, the leader of this troop of artists, was exchanging humorous anecdotes with the ci-devant aristocrat, stories that inconsequentially passed from Verboquet the open-handed, to Catherine Cuissot the pedlar, from the demoiselles Chandron to the fortune-teller Galichet, as well as to characters of later days such as Cadet-Rouselle and Madame Angot.
Évariste, seeing a band of harvesters binding their sheaves, was moved by a sudden love of Nature; tears filled his eyes and his heart became overwhelmed with a feeling of content and concord with all things. Desmahis, on the other hand, was busy blowing the light down from the dandelions on to the hair of the citizenesses. All three, as town girls always do, loved gathering posies, and they were busy in the meadows plucking the mullein, whose blossom, the campanula, grows close to the stem, little blue bells hanging one above the other, together with the slender twigs of the scented vervain and all the wild flowers of late summer – wallwort, mint, dyer’s weed, milfoil. Rousseau had made botany the fashion among towns-women, so all three knew the name and meaning of every flower. The delicate petals, drooping for lack of moisture, wilted in Élodie’s hand and fell about her feet, and she sighed:
‘Poor flowers, they are dying already!’
All eventually set to work and attempted to express nature as each of them saw her; but all saw her through the eyes of the master who had influenced them. Philippe Dubois quickly sketched a deserted farm in the style of Hubert Robert, including a-clump of storm-battered trees and the dried-up bed of a stream. There on the banks of the Yvette, Évariste Gamelin found a landscape by Poussin waiting for him to sketch. Philippe Desmahis discovered a pigeon-cote to render in the picturesque style of Callot and Duplessis. Old Brotteaux, who self-mockingly prided himself on his imitations of the Flemish school, was soon engaged in drawing a cow with infinite care. Élodie was sketching a peasant’s hut, while her friend Julienne, who was a colourist’s daughter, was using her palette. A crowd of children swarmed round her, watching her paint, and at intervals she would tell them scoldingly to get out of her light, calling them pestering little flies and giving them lollipops. The Citizeness Thévenin picked out the pretty ones, washed their faces, kissed them and twined flowers in their hair. She held them to her with an air of gentle sadness, because she had never known the joys of motherhood, and also to increase her charms by a show of tender sentiment and to give herself practice in the art of posing and grouping.
She was the only member of the party neither sketching not painting. So she passed the time partially by learning her part in a play but still more by entertaining her companions, moving gracefully from one to another with her book in her hand, an entrancing, charming creature. Women said of her: ‘No complexion, no figure, no voice, no nothing.’ Yet she gave life, colour and harmony wherever she went. Faded yet beautiful, tired but indefatigable, she was the life and soul of the expedition. Sad, gay, sensitive, quick-tempered, tolerant, yet with a tongue like a polished rapier, vain yet modest, honourable when most dishonourable, wholly delightful: and if Rose Thévenin was accorded no acclaim for triumphant success, if she was not worshipped as a goddess, it was because she had been born out of her time in a Paris which lacked incense and altars for the Graces. Élodie herself, who pulled a face whenever she spoke of her and always referred to her as ‘my stepmother’, nevertheless always succumbed to her charms whenever she was with her.
The play she was rehearsing at the Théâtre Feydeau was Les Visitandines and Rose was full of self-congratulation at having been given a part full of ‘naturalness’. This was the quality she always aimed at and always achieved.
‘Shan’t we be seeing Pamela, then?’ inquired Desmahis.
The Théâtre de la Nation had been closed and the actors sent off to the Madelonettes and to Pélagie.
‘And that’s what you call liberty?’ Rose Thévenin demanded, opening her beautiful eyes wide in indignant protest.
‘The actors and actresses of the Théâtre de la Nation are aristocrats, and Pamela tends to make people regret the privileges of the old nobility.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Rose Thévenin, ‘are you prepared only to listen to those who flatter you?’
As midday approached everybody began to feel hungry and the little group walked back to the inn.
Évariste attached himself to Élodie and smilingly recalled memories of their first meetings:
‘Two young birds had fallen from their nests on the roof down on to your window-sill. You looked after the little creatures. One of them lived and later flew away. The other one died in the nest of cotton-wool you had made him. I remember you said: “That was the one I loved best.” You were wearing a red bow in your hair that day, Élodie.’
A little behind the others, Philippe Dubois and Brotteaux were talking about Rome, which they had both visited, Brotteaux in 1772 and Dubois during the last days of the Academy. Brotteaux had never forgotten the Princess Mondragone, to whom he would have poured out his complaints but for the Count Altieri who followed her everywhere like her shadow. Philippe Dubois made a point of recalling that he had been invited to dine with Cardinal de Bernis and found him to be a most obliging host.
‘Yes, I knew him,’ Brotteaux said, ‘and it is quite without boasting that I can add that I was one of his most intimate friends for a time: he had a taste for low society but he was an amiable companion, and, in spite of his tendency to exaggerate, there was more sound philosophy in his little finger than in the heads of all you Jacobins who are determined to make us virtuous by Government decrees. I truly prefer our simple-minded God-eaters* who neither know what they’re saying not what they’re doing, to your mad law-menders, who take it upon themselves to send us to the guillotine to force us to become good and wise and worshippers of some Supreme Being who has created them in His likeness. In the old days I used to have Mass said in the Chapel at Les Iletters by a poor devil of a Curé who used to shout when he’d had a drop too much: “No criticism of sinners, if you please! Unworthy as we are, we priests make our living out of sinners!” I think you must agree that that purveyor of prayers had sound ideas. We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we’d like them to be.’
Rose Thévenin had come closer to the old man to listen to what he was saying. She knew he had lived in the grand style and the thought of this made her sentimentalize the ci-devant aristocrat’s present poverty, which she considered the less humiliating since it was not his fault but the result of general causes. She saw him, with a mixture of curiosity and respect, as a surviving example of those generous, wealthy aristocrats about whom her older theatrical friends spoke with deep regret. Also, the old man in his puce-coloured coat, so worn yet so well cared for, pleased her by his amiable manner.
‘Monsieur Brotteaux,’ she said to him, ‘we know how in days gone by, on moonlit nights in a noble park, you would wander in the shade of myrtle groves with actresses and dancers to the music of distant flutes and violins… They were more beautiful, your goddesses of the Opéra and the Comédie-Française, weren’t they, than we poor little National actresses of today?’
‘Not one iota, mademoiselle,’ Brotteaux replied. ‘Believe me, if anyone such as you had been known in those days, she would have moved alone (not that she would have wished such solitude), in the park which you ate kind enough to describe so flatteringly…’
The Hôtel de la Cloche was quite a rustic inn. A branch of holly hung over th
e large wagon doors which opened on to a courtyard where poultry pecked about in the damp soil. On the far side stood the house, two storeys crowned by a high-pitched tiled roof and whose walls were almost hidden under old, climbing rose-trees covered with roses. To the right, pruned fruit trees showed their tops above the low garden wall. To the left was the stable, with a manger outside and a barn supported by wooden beams. A ladder leant against the wall of a shed full of agricultural implements and stumps of trees. A white cock kept an eye on his hens from the top of a broken-down cabriolet. Beyond the barn were the cow sheds, in front of which a dunghill rose in mountainous grandeur. As they entered, a girl, as broad as she was high and with straw-coloured hair was busy turning it over with a pitchfork. The liquid manure filled her wooden shoes and bathed her bare feet, her heels rising every now and then out of her shoes, as yellow as saffron. Her petticoat was kilted and revealed the filth on her enormous calves and thick ankles. Philippe Desmahis was staring at her, amusedly astonished at this whimsical example of Nature’s oddness, when the landlord called out
‘Now then, Tronche, my lass! Go and fetch some water!’
She turned her head, revealing a red face and a huge mouth with a proportionately huge tooth missing. Nothing less than a bull’s horn had been needed to cause such a gap in that powerful jaw. She stood there grinning, pitchfork on her shoulder. Her sleeves were rolled back and her arms, as thick as any other woman’s thighs, shone in the sun.
The table was laid in the farm kitchen, where a brace of fowl, almost done to a turn, was roasting under the hood of an open fireplace, above which were hung, by way of ornament, a few old fowling pieces. The bare, whitewashed room, almost twenty feet long, was lit only by panes of greenish glass in the door and by one window, framed in roses, beside which the grandmother sat turning her spinning-wheel. She wore a coif and a lace frilling in the fashion of the Regency. The distaff was gripped by her twisted, earth-stained fingers, and she made no attempt to drive away the flies which clustered around her eyelids. Long, long ago, as a child in her mother’s arms, she had seen Louis XIV pass by in his coach.
The Gods Will Have Blood Page 12