Bohemians of the Latin Quarter Part 37

The interrupted conversation was renewed.

"Candidly now," said Musette to Marcel, "where were you going just now?"

"I told you, to see Laura."

"Is she pretty?"

"Her mouth is a nest of smiles."

"Oh! I know all that sort of thing."

"But you yourself," said Marcel, "whence came you on the wings of this four-wheeler?"

"I came back from the railway station where I had been to see off Alexis, who is going on a visit to his family."

"What sort of man is Alexis?"

In turn Musette sketched a charming portrait of her present lover.

Whilst walking along Marcel and Musette continued thus on the open Boulevard the comedy of reawakening love. With the same simplicity, in turn tender and jesting, they went verse by verse through that immortal ode in which Horace and Lydia extol with such grace the charms of their new loves, and end by adding a postscript to their old ones. As they reached the corner of the street a rather strong picket of soldiers suddenly issued from it.

Musette struck an att.i.tude of alarm, and clutching hold of Marcel's arm said, "Ah! Good heavens! Look there, soldiers; there is going to be another revolution. Let us bolt off, I am awfully afraid. See me indoors."

"But where shall we go?" asked Marcel.

"To my place," said Musette. "You shall see how nice it is. I invite you to supper. We will talk politics."

"No," replied Marcel, who thought of Monsieur Alexis. "I will not go to your place, despite your offer of a supper. I do not like to drink my wine out of another's gla.s.s."

Musette was silent in face of this refusal. Then through the mist of her recollections she saw the poor home of the artist, for Marcel had not become a millionaire. She had an idea, and profiting by meeting another picket she manifested fresh alarm.

"They are going to fight," she exclaimed. "I shall never dare go home.

Marcel, my dear fellow, take me to one of my lady friends, who must be living in your neighborhood."

As they were crossing the Pont Neuf Musette broke into a laugh.

"What is it?" asked Marcel.

"Nothing," replied Musette, "only I remember that my friend has moved.

She is living at Batignolles."

On seeing Marcel and Musette arrive arm in arm Rodolphe was not astonished.

"It is always so," said he, "with these badly buried loves."

CHAPTER XVI

The Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea

For five or six years Marcel had worked at the famous painting which (he said) represented the Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea; and for five or six years, this masterpiece of color had been obstinately refused by the jury. In fact, by dint of going and returning so many times from the artist's study to the Exhibition, and from the Exhibition to the study, the picture knew the road to the Louvre well enough to have gone thither of itself, if it had been put on wheels. Marcel, who had repainted the canvas ten times over, from top to bottom, attributed to personal hostility on the part of the jury the ostracism which annually repulsed him from the large saloon; nevertheless he was not totally discouraged by the obstinate rejection which greeted him at every Exhibition. He was comfortably established in the persuasion that his picture was, on a somewhat smaller scale, the pendant required by "The Marriage of Cana,"

that gigantic masterpiece whose astonis.h.i.+ng brilliancy the dust of three centuries has not been able to tarnish. Accordingly, every year at the epoch of the Exhibition, Marcel sent his great work to the jury of examiners; only, to deceive them, he would change some details of his picture, and the t.i.tle of it, without disturbing the general composition.

Thus, it came before the jury once, under the name of "The Pa.s.sage of the Rubicon," but Pharaoh, badly disguised under the mantle of Caeser, was recognized and rejected with all the honors due him. Next year, Marcel threw a coat of white over the foreground, to imitate snow, planted a fir tree in one corner, and dressing an Egyptian like a grenadier of the Imperial Guard, christened his picture, "The Pa.s.sage of the Beresina."

But the jury had wiped its gla.s.ses that day, and were not to be duped by this new stratagem. It recognized the pertinacious picture by a thundering big pie-bald horse that was prancing on top of a wave of the Red Sea. The skin of this horse served Marcel for all his experiments in coloring; he used to call it, familiarly, his "synoptic table of fine tones," because it reproduced the most varied combinations of color, with the different plays of light and shade. Once again, however, the jury could not find black b.a.l.l.s enough to refuse "The Pa.s.sage of Beresina."

"Very well," said Marcel, "I thought so! Next year, I shall send it under the t.i.tle of 'The Pa.s.sage of the Panoramas.'"

"They're going to be jolly caught--caught!"

sang Schaunard to a new air of his own composition; a terrible air, like a gamut of thunder-claps, the accompaniment whereof was a terror to all pianos within hearing.

"How can they refuse it, without all the vermilion of my Red Sea mounting to their cheeks, and covering them with the blush of shame?"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the artist, as he gazed on his picture. "When I think that there is five hundred francs' worth of color there, and at least a million of genius, without counting my lovely youth, now as bald as my old hat! But they shan't get the better of me! Till my dying day, I will send them my picture. It shall be engraved on their memories."

"The surest way of ever having it engraved," said Colline, in a plaintive tone, and then added to himself, "very neat, that; I shall repeat it in society!"

Marcel continued his imprecations, which Schaunard continued to put to music.

"Ah they won't admit me! The government pays them, lodges them, and gives them decorations, on purpose to refuse me once a year; every first of March! I see their idea! I see it clearly! They want to make me burn my brushes. They hope that when my Red Sea is refused, I will throw myself out of the window of despair. But they little know the heart of man, if they think to take me thus. I will not wait for the opening of the Exhibition. From today, my work shall be a picture of Damocles, eternally suspended over their existence. I will send it once a week to each of them, at his home in the bosom of his family; in the very heart of his private life. It shall trouble their domestic joys; they shall find their roasts burnt, their wines sour, and their wives bitter! They will grow mad rapidly, and go to the Inst.i.tute in strait-waistcoats. Ha!

Ha! The thought consoles me."

Some days later, when Marcel had already forgotten his terrible plans of vengeance against his persecutors, he received a visit from Father Medicis. So the club called a Jew, named Salomon, who at that time was well known to all the vagabond of art and literature, and had continual transactions with them. Father Medicis traded in all sorts of trumpery.

He sold complete sets of furniture from twelve francs up to five thousand; he bought everything, and knew how to dispose of it again, at a profit. Proudhon's bank of exchange was nothing in comparison with the system practiced by Medicis, who possessed the genius of traffic to a degree at which the ablest of his religion had never before arrived. His shop was a fairy region where you found anything you wished for. Every product of nature, every creation of art; whatever issued from the bowels of the earth or the head of man, was an object of commerce for him. His business included everything; literally everything that exists; he even trafficked in the ideal. He bought ideas to sell or speculate in them. Known to all literary men and all artists, intimate with the palette and familiar with the desk, he was the very Asmodeus of the arts. He would sell you cigars for a column of your newspaper, slippers for a sonnet, fresh fish for paradoxes; he would talk, for so much an hour, with the people who furnished fas.h.i.+onable gossip to the journals.

He would procure you places for the debates in the Chambers, and invitations to parties. He lodged wandering artistlings by the day, week, or month, taking for pay, copies of the pictures in the Louvre.

The green room had no mysteries for him. He would get your pieces into the theater, or yourself into the boudoir of an actress. He had a copy of the "Almanac of Twenty Five Thousand Addresses" in his head, and knew the names, residences, and secrets of all celebrities, even those who were not celebrated.

A few pages copied from his waste book, will give a better idea of the universality of his operations than the most copious explanation could.

"March 20, 184--."

"Sold to M. L----, antiquary, the compa.s.s which Archimedes used at the siege of Syracuse. 75 fr.

Bought of M. V----, journalist, the entire works, uncut, of M. X----, Member of the Academy. 10 fr.

Sold to the same, a criticism of the complete works of M. X----, of the Academy. 30 fr.

Bought of M. R----, literary man, a critical article on the complete works of M. Y----, of the Academy. 10 fr., plus half a cwt. of charcoal and 4 lbs. of coffee.

Sold to M. Y----, of the Academy, a laudatory review (twelve columns) of his complete works. 250 fr.

Sold to M. G----, a porcelain vase which had belonged to Madame Dubarry.

18 fr.

Bought of little D----, her hair. 15 fr.