CHAPTER XXVI. IN DECHARTRE’S STUDIO

A fiacre brought her, the next day, to a populous street, half sad, half

gay, with walls of gardens in the intervals of new houses, and stopped

at the point where the sidewalk passes under the arcade of a mansion

of the Regency, covered now with dust and oblivion, and fantastically

placed across the street. Here and there green branches lent gayety to

that city corner. Therese, while ringing at the door, saw in the limited

perspective of the houses a pulley at a window and a gilt key, the sign

of a locksmith. Her eyes were full of this picture, which was new to

her. Pigeons flew above her head; she heard chickens cackle. A servant

with a military look opened the door. She found herself in a yard

covered with sand, shaded by a tree, where, at the left, was the

janitor’s box with bird-cages at the windows. On that side rose, under a

green trellis, the mansard of the neighboring house. A sculptor’s studio

backed on it its glass-covered roof, which showed plaster figures asleep

in the dust. At the right, the wall that closed the yard bore debris of

monuments, broken bases of columnettes. In the rear, the house, not very

large, showed the six windows of its facade, half hidden by vines and

rosebushes.

Philippe Dechartre, infatuated with the architecture of the

fifteenth century in France, had reproduced there very cleverly the

characteristics of a private house of the time of Louis XII. That house,

begun in the middle of the Second Empire, had not been finished. The

builder of so many castles died without being able to finish his own

house. It was better thus. Conceived in a manner which had then its

distinction and its value, but which seems to-day banal and outlandish,

having lost little by little its large frame of gardens, cramped now

between the walls of the tall buildings, Philippe Dechartre’s little

house, by the roughness of its stones, by the naive heaviness of its

windows, by the simplicity of the roof, which the architect’s widow had

caused to be covered with little expense, by all the lucky accidents of

the unfinished and unpremeditated, corrected the lack of grace of its

new and affected antiquity and archeologic romanticism, and harmonized

with the humbleness of a district made ugly by progress of population.

In fine, notwithstanding its appearance of ruin and its green drapery,

that little house had its charm. Suddenly and instinctively, Therese

discovered in it other harmonies. In the elegant negligence which

extended from the walls covered with vines to the darkened panes of the

studio, and even in the bent tree, the bark of which studded with its

shells the wild grass of the courtyard, she divined the mind of the

master, nonchalant, not skilful in preserving, living in the long

solitude of passionate men. She had in her joy a sort of grief at

observing this careless state in which her lover left things around

him. She found in it a sort of grace and nobility, but also a spirit of

indifference contrary to her own nature, opposite to the interested

and careful mind of the Montessuys. At once she thought that, without

spoiling the pensive softness of that rough corner, she would bring to

it her well-ordered activity; she would have sand thrown in the alley,

and in the angle wherein a little sunlight came she would put the gayety

of flowers. She looked sympathetically at a statue which had come there

from some park, a Flora, lying on the earth, eaten by black moss, her

two arms lying by her sides. She thought of raising her soon, of making

of her a centrepiece for a fountain. Dechartre, who for an hour had

been watching for her coming, joyful, anxious, trembling in his agitated

happiness, descended the steps. In the fresh shade of the vestibule,

wherein she divined confusedly the severe splendor of bronze and marble

statues, she stopped, troubled by the beatings of her heart, which

throbbed with all its might in her chest. He pressed her in his arms and

kissed her. She heard him, through the tumult of her temples, recalling

to her the short delights of the day before. She saw again the lion

of the Atlas on the carpet, and returned to Jacques his kisses with

delicious slowness. He led her, by a wooden stairway, into the vast hall

which had served formerly as a workshop, where he designed and modelled

his figures, and, above all, read; he liked reading as if it were opium.

Pale-tinted Gothic tapestries, which let one perceive in a marvellous

forest a lady at the feet of whom a unicorn lay on the grass, extended

above cabinets to the painted beams of the ceiling. He led her to

a large and low divan, loaded with cushions covered with sumptuous

fragments of Spanish and Byzantine cloaks; but she sat in an armchair.

“You are here! You are here! The world may come to an end.”

She replied “Formerly I thought of the end of the world, but I was not

afraid of it. Monsieur Lagrange had promised it to me, and I was waiting

for it. When I did not know you, I felt so lonely.” She looked at the

tables loaded with vases and statuettes, the tapestries, the confused

and splendid mass of weapons, the animals, the marbles, the paintings,

the ancient books. “You have beautiful things.”

“Most of them come from my father, who lived in the golden age of

collectors. These histories of the unicorn, the complete series of which

is at Cluny, were found by my father in 1851 in an inn.”

But, curious and disappointed, she said: “I see nothing that you have

done; not a statue, not one of those wax figures which are prized so

highly in England, not a figurine nor a plaque nor a medal.”

“If you think I could find any pleasure in living among my works! I know

my figures too well--they weary me. Whatever is without secret lacks

charm.” She looked at him with affected spite.

“You had not told me that one had lost all charm when one had no more

secrets.”

He put his arm around her waist.

“Ah! The things that live are only too mysterious; and you remain for

me, my beloved, an enigma, the unknown sense of which contains the light

of life. Do not fear to give yourself to me. I shall desire you always,

but I never shall know you. Does one ever possess what one loves? Are

kisses, caresses, anything else than the effort of a delightful despair?

When I embrace you, I am still searching for you, and I never have you;

since I want you always, since in you I expect the impossible and the

infinite. What you are, the devil knows if I shall ever know! Because I

have modelled a few bad figures I am not a sculptor; I am rather a sort

of poet and philosopher who seeks for subjects of anxiety and torment

in nature. The sentiment of form is not sufficient for me. My colleagues

laugh at me because I have not their simplicity. They are right. And

that brute Choulette is right too, when he says we ought to live without

thinking and without desiring. Our friend the cobbler of Santa

Maria Novella, who knows nothing of what might make him unjust and

unfortunate, is a master of the art of living. I ought to love you

naively, without that sort of metaphysics which is passional and makes

me absurd and wicked. There is nothing good except to ignore and to

forget. Come, come, I have thought of you too cruelly in the tortures of

your absence; come, my beloved! I must forget you with you. It is with

you only that I can forget you and lose myself.”

He took her in his arms and, lifting her veil, kissed her on the lips.

A little frightened in that vast, unknown hall, embarrassed by the look

of strange things, she drew the black tulle to her chin.

“Here! You can not think of it.”

He said they were alone.

“Alone? And the man with terrible moustaches who opened the door?”

He smiled:

“That is Fusellier, my father’s former servant. He and his wife take

charge of the house. Do not be afraid. They remain in their box. You

shall see Madame Fusellier; she is inclined to familiarity. I warn you.”

“My friend, why has Monsieur Fusellier, a janitor, moustaches like a

Tartar?”

“My dear, nature gave them to him. I am not sorry that he has the air of

a sergeant-major and gives me the illusion of being a country neighbor.”

Seated on the corner of the divan, he drew her to his knees and gave to

her kisses which she returned.

She rose quickly.

“Show me the other rooms. I am curious. I wish to see everything.”

He escorted her to the second story. Aquarelles by Philippe Dechartre

covered the walls of the corridor. He opened the door and made her enter

a room furnished with white mahogany:

It was his mother’s room. He kept it intact in its past. Uninhabited for

nine years, the room had not the air of being resigned to its solitude.

The mirror waited for the old lady’s glance, and on the onyx clock a

pensive Sappho was lonely because she did not hear the noise of the

pendulum.

There were two portraits on the walls. One by Ricard represented

Philippe Dechartre, very pale, with rumpled hair, and eyes lost in a

romantic dream. The other showed a middle-aged woman, almost beautiful

in her ardent slightness. It was Madame Philippe Dechartre.

“My poor mother’s room is like me,” said Jacques; “it remembers.”

“You resemble your mother,” said Therese; “you have her eyes. Paul Vence

told me she adored you.”

“Yes,” he replied, smilingly. “My mother was excellent, intelligent,

exquisite, marvellously absurd. Her madness was maternal love. She did

not give me a moment of rest. She tormented herself and tormented me.”

Therese looked at a bronze figure by Carpeaux, placed on the chiffonier.

“You recognize,” said Dechartre, “the Prince Imperial by his ears, which

are like the wings of a zephyr, and which enliven his cold visage.

This bronze is a gift of Napoleon III. My parents went to Compiegne.

My father, while the court was at Fontainebleau, made the plan of the

castle, and designed the gallery. In the morning the Emperor would come,

in his frock-coat, and smoking his meerschaum pipe, to sit near him like

a penguin on a rock. At that time I went to day-school. I listened to

his stories at table, and I have not forgotten them. The Emperor stayed

there, peaceful and quiet, interrupting his long silence with few words

smothered under his big moustache; then he roused himself a little and

explained his ideas of machinery. He was an inventor. He would draw

a pencil from his pocket and make drawings on my father’s designs. He

spoiled in that way two or three studies a week. He liked my father a

great deal, and promised works and honors to him which never came. The

Emperor was kind, but he had no influence, as mamma said. At that time

I was a little boy. Since then a vague sympathy has remained in me for

that man, who was lacking in genius, but whose mind was affectionate and

beautiful, and who carried through great adventures a simple courage

and a gentle fatalism. Then he is sympathetic to me because he has been

combated and insulted by people who were eager to take his place, and

who had not, as he had, in the depths of their souls, a love for the

people. We have seen them in power since then. Heavens, how ugly

they are! Senator Loyer, for instance, who at your house, in the

smoking-room, filled his pockets with cigars, and invited me to do

likewise. That Loyer is a bad man, harsh to the unfortunate, to the

weak, and to the humble. And Garain, don’t you think his mind is

disgusting? Do you remember the first time I dined at your house and we

talked of Napoleon? Your hair, twisted above your neck, and shot through

by a diamond arrow, was adorable. Paul Vence said subtle things. Garain

did not understand. You asked for my opinion.”

“It was to make you shine. I was already conceited for you.”

“Oh, I never could say a single phrase before people who are so serious.

Yet I had a great desire to say that Napoleon III pleased me more than

Napoleon I; that I thought him more touching; but perhaps that idea

would have produced a bad effect. But I am not so destitute of talent as

to care about politics.”

He looked around the room, and at the furniture with familiar

tenderness. He opened a drawer:

“Here are mamma’s eye-glasses. How she searched for these eye-glasses!

Now I will show you my room. If it is not in order you must excuse

Madame Fusellier, who is trained to respect my disorder.”

The curtains at the windows were down. He did not lift them. After an

hour she drew back the red satin draperies; rays of light dazzled her

eyes and fell on her floating hair. She looked for a mirror and found

only a looking-glass of Venice, dull in its wide ebony border. Rising on

the tips of her toes to see herself in it, she said:

“Is that sombre and far-away spectre I? The women who have looked at

themselves in this glass can not have complimented you on it.”

As she was taking pins from the table she noticed a little bronze figure

which she had not yet seen. It was an old Italian work of Flemish taste:

a nude woman, with short legs and heavy stomach, who apparently ran with

an arm extended. She thought the figure had a droll air. She asked what

she was doing.

“She is doing what Madame Mundanity does on the portal of the cathedral

at Basle.”

But Therese, who had been at Basle, did not know Madame Mundanity. She

looked at the figure again, did not understand, and asked:

“Is it something very bad? How can a thing shown on the portal of a

church be so difficult to tell here?”

Suddenly an anxiety came to her:

“What will Monsieur and Madame Fusellier think of me?”

Then, discovering on the wall a medallion wherein Dechartre had modelled

the profile of a girl, amusing and vicious:

“What is that?”

“That is Clara, a newspaper girl. She brought the Figaro to me every

morning. She had dimples in her cheeks, nests for kisses. One day I said

to her: ‘I will make your portrait.’ She came, one summer morning, with

earrings and rings which she had bought at the Neuilly fair. I never saw

her again. I do not know what has become of her. She was too instinctive

to become a fashionable demi-mondaine. Shall I take it out?”

“No; it looks very well in that corner. I am not jealous of Clara.”

It was time to return home, and she could not decide to go. She put her

arms around her lover’s neck.

“Oh, I love you! And then, you have been to-day good-natured and gay.

Gayety becomes you so well. I should like to make you gay always. I need

joy almost as much as love; and who will give me joy if you do not?”