Great French Short Stories

by Paul Negri

  The old man seemed to have become young again; his eyes shone and were full of life; his pale cheeks were mottled with a vivid red, and his hands were trembling. Pourbus, astonished at the passionate vehemence with which those words were uttered, had nothing to say in reply to a sentiment that was as novel as it was profound. Was Frenhofer in his right mind or mad? Was he under the spell of some artistic fancy, or were the ideas he had expressed the result of that indescribable fanaticism produced in us by the long gestation of a great work? Could one ever hope to come to terms with that odd passion?

  A prey to all these thoughts, Pourbus said to the old man:

  “But isn’t it one woman for another? Isn’t Poussin exposing his sweetheart to your eyes?”

  “Some sweetheart!” Frenhofer replied. “She’ll betray him sooner or later. Mine will always be faithful to me!”

  “All right,” Pourbus continued, “let’s drop the subject. But before you find, even in Asia, a woman as beautiful and perfect as the one I’m talking about, you may die without finishing your picture.”

  “Oh, it’s finished,” said Frenhofer. “Anyone who looked at it would imagine he saw a woman lying on a velvet bed beneath curtains. Near her, a golden tripod emits incense. You’d be tempted to take hold of the tassel of the cords that hold back the curtains, and you’d think you saw the bosom of Catherine Lescault, a beautiful courtesan nicknamed the Quarrelsome Beauty, heaving with her breath. And yet, I’d like to be sure . . .”

  “Well, go to Asia,” Pourbus replied, detecting a sort of hesitation in Frenhofer’s eyes.

  And Pourbus took a few steps toward the door of the room.

  At that moment, Gillette and Nicolas Poussin had arrived near Frenhofer’s dwelling. As the girl was about to go in, she freed herself from the painter’s arm and recoiled as if gripped by some sudden presentiment.

  “But what am I coming here for?” she asked her lover in deep tones, staring at him.

  “Gillette, I’ve left it all up to you, and I want to obey you in all ways. You are my conscience and my glory. Go back to our room; I’ll be happier, maybe, than if you . . .”

  “Am I my own mistress when you speak to me that way? Oh, no, I’m only a child.—Let’s go,” she added, seeming to make a violent effort; “if our love dies and I’m laying in long days of regret for myself, won’t your fame be the reward for my obedience to your wishes? Let’s go in; being a kind of eternal memory on your palette will be like being still alive.”

  On opening the door to the house, the two lovers came upon Pourbus; amazed at the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were full of tears at the moment, he took hold of her as she stood there trembling and, leading her in to the old man, said:

  “Now, isn’t she worth all the masterpieces in the world?”

  Frenhofer gave a start. There was Gillette, in the naïve, simple attitude of an innocent, frightened girl of Caucasian Georgia who has been kidnapped and is being presented by brigands to a slave dealer. A modest blush gave color to her face, she lowered her eyes, her hands hung at her sides, her strength seemed to desert her, and tears protested against the violence being done to her modesty. At that moment, Poussin, in despair at having let that beautiful treasure out of his garret, cursed himself. He became a lover foremost and an artist next; a thousand scruples tortured his heart when he saw the rejuvenated eyes of the old man, who, as painters do, was mentally undressing the girl, divining her most secret forms. Then he reverted to the fierce jealousy of true love.

  “Gillette, let’s go!” he cried.

  At that tone, at that cry, his joyful sweetheart raised her eyes in his direction, saw him, and rushed into his arms.

  “Oh, you do love me!” she replied, bursting into tears.

  After having had the energy to be silent about her suffering, she had no more strength left to conceal her happiness.

  “Oh, leave her with me for just a while,” said the old painter, “and you’ll compare her to my Catherine. Yes, I consent.”

  There was still love in Frenhofer’s cry. He seemed to have a lover’s vanity for his painted woman and to be enjoying in advance the victory that his virgin’s beauty would win over that of a real girl.

  “Don’t let him go back on his word!” cried Pourbus, tapping Poussin on the shoulder. “The fruits of love are quickly gone, those of art are immortal.”

  Looking hard at Poussin and Pourbus, Gillette replied, “Am I nothing more than a woman to him?” She raised her head proudly; but when, after darting a fierce glance at Frenhofer, she saw her lover busy contemplating once again the portrait he had recently taken for a Giorgione, she said:

  “Ah! Let’s go upstairs! He’s never looked at me that way.”

  “Old man,” Poussin resumed, torn from his meditation by Gillette’s voice, “do you see this blade? I’ll thrust it into your heart at the first word of complaint this girl utters; I’ll set fire to your house, and no one will get out alive. Understand?”

  Nicolas Poussin was somber, and his words were awesome. This attitude, and especially the young painter’s gesture, consoled Gillette, who almost forgave him for sacrificing her to the art of painting and his glorious future. Pourbus and Poussin remained at the studio door, looking at each other in silence. If at first the painter of St. Mary of Egypt permitted himself a few exclamations—“Ah, she’s getting undressed, he’s asking her to stand in the daylight! He’s comparing her!”—soon he fell silent at the sight of Poussin, whose face showed deep sadness. And, even though elderly painters no longer feel such petty scruples in the presence of art, he admired them for being so naïve and charming. The young man kept his hand on his dagger’s hilt and his ear almost glued to the door. The two of them, standing there in the darkness, they looked like two conspirators awaiting the moment when they would strike down a tyrant.

  “Come in, come in,” called the old man, beaming with happiness. “My picture is perfect, and now I can show it with pride. Never will a painter, brushes, paints, canvas, or light create any rival to Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtesan.”

  Prey to a keen curiosity, Pourbus and Poussin rushed into the midst of a vast studio covered with dust, in which everything was in disorder, in which they saw here and there pictures hung on the walls. They first stopped in front of a life-size woman’s figure, half draped, for which they were overcome with admiration.

  “Oh, don’t bother about that,” said Frenhofer, “it’s a canvas I daubed over to study a pose, it’s a worthless picture. Here are my mistakes,” he went on, showing them captivating compositions hanging on the walls all around them.

  At these words, Pourbus and Poussin, dumbfounded at this contempt for works of that merit, looked for the portrait they had been told about, but failed to catch sight of it.

  “Well, here it is!” said the old man, whose hair was mussed, whose face was inflamed with a preternatural excitement, whose eyes sparkled, and who was panting like a young man drunk with love. “Ah, ha!” he cried. “You weren’t expecting so much perfection! You’re standing in front of a woman, and looking for a picture. There’s such great depth to this canvas, the air in it is so real, that you can no longer distinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is art? Lost, vanished! Here are the very forms of a girl. Haven’t I really captured her coloring, the lifelikeness of the line that seems to bound her body? Isn’t it the same phenomenon that’s offered to us by objects that exist within the atmosphere just as fish live in water? Don’t you admire the way the contours stand out from the background? Don’t you imagine that you could run your hand down that back? Thus, for seven years, I studied the effects of the mating of daylight and objects. And that hair, doesn’t the light inundate it? . . . But she drew a breath, I think! . . . That bosom, see? Oh, who wouldn’t want to worship her on his knees? The flesh is throbbing. She’s going to stand up, just wait.”

  “Can you make out anything?” Poussin asked Pourbus.

  “No. What about you?”

  “Not a
thing.”

  The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and looked to see whether the light, falling vertically onto the canvas he was showing them, wasn’t neutralizing all its effects. Then they examined the painting, placing themselves to the right, to the left, straight in front of it, stooping down and getting up again in turns.

  “Yes, yes, it’s really a canvas,” Frenhofer said to them, misunderstanding the purpose of that careful scrutiny. “Look, here’s the stretcher, the easel; finally, here are my paints, my brushes.”

  And he took hold of a brush that he showed them in a naïve gesture.

  “The sly old fox is having a joke with us,” said Poussin, coming back in front of the so-called painting. All I see there is colors in a jumbled heap, contained within a multitude of peculiar lines that form a wall of paint.”

  “We’re wrong. See?” Pourbus said.

  Coming closer, they could discern in a corner of the canvas the tip of a bare foot emerging from that chaos of colors, tints, and vague nuances, a sort of shapeless mist; but a delicious foot, a living foot! They stood awestruck with admiration before that fragment which had escaped from an unbelievable, slow, and progressive destruction. That foot appeared there like the torso of some Parisian marble Venus rising up out of the ruins of a city that had been burned to the ground.

  “There’s a woman underneath all this!” cried Pourbus, indicating to Poussin the layers of paint that the old painter had set down one over the other, in the belief that he was making his painting perfect.

  The two painters spontaneously turned toward Frenhofer, beginning to understand, though only vaguely, the state of ecstasy in which he existed.

  “He’s speaking in good faith,” said Pourbus.

  “Yes, my friend,” replied the old man, awakening, “one must have faith, faith in art, and one must live with one’s work for a long time in order to produce a creation like this. Some of these shadows cost me many labors. Look, on the cheek, beneath the eyes, there’s a light penumbra that, if you observe it in nature, will seem all but uncapturable to you. Well, do you think that that effect didn’t cost me unheard-of pains to reproduce? But also, dear Pourbus, look at my piece attentively and you’ll understand more fully what I was telling you about the way to handle modeling and contours. Look at the light on the bosom and see how, by a series of strokes and highlights done in heavy impasto, I succeeded in catching true daylight and combining it with the gleaming whiteness of the illuminated areas; and how, to achieve the converse effect, eliminating the ridges and grain of the paint, I was able, by dint of caressing the figure’s contour, which is submerged in demitints, to remove the very notion of a drawn line and such artificial procedures, and to give it the very look and solidity of nature. Come close, you’ll see better how I worked. From a distance, it can’t be seen. There! In this spot, I think, it’s highly remarkable.”

  And with the tip of his brush he pointed out a blob of bright paint to the two artists.

  Pourbus tapped the old man on the shoulder, turning toward Poussin. “Do you know that we have a very great painter in him?” he said.

  “He’s even more of a poet than a painter,” Poussin replied gravely.

  “This,” continued Pourbus, touching the canvas, “is the extreme limit of our art on earth.”

  “And from there it gets lost in the skies,” said Poussin.

  “How many pleasures in this bit of canvas!” exclaimed Pourbus.

  The old man, absorbed, wasn’t listening to them but was smiling at that imaginary woman.

  “But sooner or later he’ll notice that there’s nothing on his canvas!” cried Poussin.

  “Nothing on my canvas!” said Frenhofer, looking by turns at the two painters and at his so-called picture.

  “What have you done?” Pourbus replied to Poussin.

  The old man gripped the young man’s arm violently, saying: “You see nothing, vagabond, good-for-nothing, cad, catamite! Why did you come up here, anyway?—My dear Pourbus,” he went on, turning to that painter, “could you too be making fun of me? Answer me! I’m your friend; tell me, have I really spoiled my picture?”

  Pourbus, undecided, didn’t dare say a thing; but the anxiety depicted on the old man’s pallid face was so cruel that he pointed to the canvas and said: “Just look!”

  Frenhofer studied his picture for a moment and tottered.

  “Nothing, nothing! And after working ten years on it!”

  He sat down and began weeping.

  “So I’m just an imbecile, a lunatic! So I have no talent, no ability; I’m just a rich man who, when he does something, merely does it! So I haven’t created anything!”

  He studied his canvas through his tears. Suddenly he stood up with pride, and darted a furious glance at the two painters.

  “By the blood, body, and head of Christ, you are envious men trying to make me believe that she’s ruined, so you can steal her from me! I can see her!” he cried. “She’s wonderfully beautiful.”

  At that moment, Poussin heard the weeping of Gillette, who had been forgotten in a corner.

  “What’s wrong, angel?” the painter asked her, suddenly becoming a lover again.

  “Kill me!” she said. “I’d be a low creature if I still loved you, because I have contempt for you. I admire you, and you horrify me. I love you, and I think I hate you already.”

  While Poussin was listening to Gillette, Frenhofer was covering up his Catherine with a green serge, as gravely calm as a jeweler locking up his drawers because he thinks that skillful thieves are present. He threw the two painters a profoundly crafty look, full of scorn and suspicion, and silently turned them out of his studio, with convulsive haste. Then, on the threshold of his home, he said to them: “Farewell, my little friends.”

  That leavetaking chilled the heart of the two painters. The next day, Pourbus, worried, came to see Frenhofer again, and was informed that he had died during the night after burning his canvases.

  Paris, February 1832.

  Emile Zola

  THE ATTACK ON THE MILL

  L’Attaque du Moulin

  I

  Old Merlier’s mill, that fine summer evening, was extremely festive. In the courtyard three tables had been laid, placed end to end, and were awaiting the guests. Everyone in the vicinity knew that on that day Merlier’s daughter Françoise was to be betrothed to Dominique, a young man who was reproached for laziness, but whom the women for three leagues around looked upon with a gleam in their eyes, he was so handsome.

  This mill of old Merlier’s was a real treat. It was located right in the center of Rocreuse, in the spot where the highway makes a bend. The village has only one street, two rows of cottages, one row on each side of the road; but there, at the bend, meadows open out, and tall trees, following the course of the Morelle, cover the bottom of the valley with magnificent shade. In all of Lorraine, there isn’t a more charming corner of nature. To the right and to the left, dense forests and centuries-old woods climb gentle slopes, filling the horizon with an ocean of greenery; while, toward the south, the plain stretches, wonderfully fertile, unfurling to infinity plots of ground divided by quickset hedges. But the charm of Rocreuse is chiefly due to the coolness of this pocket of greenery on the hottest days of July and August. The Morelle comes down from the forests, beneath which it flows for leagues; it brings along the murmuring sounds, the chilly and meditative shade of the woods. And that stream isn’t the only source of coolness; all sorts of running streams sing beneath the trees; at each step, springs gush forth; when you follow the narrow paths, you feel as if underground lakes are penetrating the moss and taking advantage of the slightest cracks, at the foot of the trees, between the rocks, to pour out in crystal fountains. The whispering voices of these brooks are raised so loud and in such numbers that they drown out the song of the bullfinches. You’d think you were in some enchanted park, with cascades falling everywhere.

  Farther down, the grasslands are soaked. Gigantic chestnut tree
s cast black shadows. Along the edges of the meadows, long curtains of poplars align their rustling tapestries. There are two avenues of enormous plane trees that cross the fields as they ascend to the old Château de Gagny, today in ruins. In this continually watered land, the grass grows luxuriantly. It forms a sort of garden plot between the two wooded hills, but a natural garden, with the meadows for lawns and the giant trees constituting the colossal flower beds. When the noonday sun beams down vertically, the shadows grow blue and the illuminated grass sleeps in the heat, while a chilly shudder runs through the foliage.