feeling qualmish after a cigar. And when Dubuche was stretched on his back, his eyes turned towards the clouds of smoke he raised, he began to talk about himself in an interminable monotonous fashion. Ah! that confounded Paris, how one had to work one’s fingers to the bone in order to get on. He recalled the fifteen months of apprenticeship he had spent with his master, the celebrated Dequersonniere, a former grand-prize man, now architect of the Civil Branch of Public Works, an officer of the Legion of Honour and a member of the Institute, whose chief architectural performance, the church of St. Mathieu, was a cross between a pastry-cook’s mould and a clock in the so-called First Empire style. A good sort of fellow, after all, was this Dequersonniere whom Dubuche chaffed, while inwardly sharing his reverence for the old classical formulas. However, but for his fellow-pupils, the young man would not have learnt much at the studio in the Rue du Four, for the master only paid a running visit to the place some three times a week. A set of ferocious brutes, were those comrades of his, who had made his life jolly hard in the beginning, but who, at least, had taught him how to prepare a surface, outline, and wash in a plan. And how often had he had to content himself with a cup of chocolate and a roll for dejeuner in order to pay the necessary five-and-twenty francs to the superintendent! And the sheets of paper he had laboriously smudged, and the hours he had spent in poring over books before he had dared to present himself at the School! And he had narrowly escaped being plucked in spite of all his assiduous endeavours. He lacked imagination, and the drawings he submitted, a caryatide and a summer dining-room, both extremely mediocre performances, had classed him at the bottom of the list. Fortunately, he had made up for this in his oral examination with his logarithms, geometry, and history of architecture, for he was very strong in the scientific parts. Now that he was attending the School as a second-class student, he had to toil and moil in order to secure a first-class diploma. It was a dog’s life, there was no end to it, said he.
He stretched his legs apart, high upon the cushions, and smoked vigorously and regularly.
‘What with their courses of perspective, of descriptive geometry, of stereotomy, of building, and of the history of art—ah! upon my word, they do make one blacken paper with notes. And every month there is a competitive examination in architecture, sometimes a simple sketch, at others a complete design. There’s no time for pleasure if a fellow wishes to pass his examinations and secure the necessary honourable mentions, especially if, besides all that, he has to find time to earn his bread. As for myself, it’s almost killing me.’
One of the cushions having slipped upon the floor, he fished it up with his feet. ‘All the same, I’m lucky. There are so many of us scouring the town every day without getting the smallest job. The day before yesterday I discovered an architect who works for a large contractor. You can have no idea of such an ignoramus of an architect—a downright numskull, incapable even of tracing a plan. He gives me twenty-five sous an hour, and I set his houses straight for him. It came just in time, too, for my mother sent me word that she was quite cleared out. Poor mother, what a lot of money I have to refund her!’
As Dubuche was evidently talking to himself, chewing the cud of his everyday thoughts—his constant thoughts of making a rapid fortune—Sandoz did not even trouble to listen to him. He had opened the little window, and seated himself on a level with the roof, for he felt oppressed by the heat in the studio. But all at once he interrupted the architect.
‘I say, are you coming to dinner on Thursday? All the other fellows will be there—Fagerolles, Mahoudeau, Jory, Gagniere.’
Every Thursday, quite a band met at Sandoz’s: friends from Plassans and others met in Paris—revolutionaries to a man, and all animated by the same passionate love of art.
‘Next Thursday? No, I think not,’ answered Dubuche.
‘I am obliged to go to a dance at a family’s I know.’
‘Where you expect to get hold of a dowry, I suppose?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be such a bad spec.’
He shook the ashes from his pipe on to his left palm, and then, suddenly raising his voice—‘I almost forgot. I have had a letter from Pouillaud.’
‘You, too!—well, I think he’s pretty well done for, Pouillaud. Another good fellow gone wrong.’
‘Why gone wrong? He’ll succeed his father; he’ll spend his money quietly down there. He writes rationally enough. I always said he’d show us a thing or two, in spite of all his practical jokes. Ah! that beast of a Pouillaud.’
Sandoz, furious, was about to reply, when a despairing oath from Claude stopped him. The latter had not opened his lips since he had so obstinately resumed his work. To all appearance he had not even listened.
‘Curse it—I have failed again. Decidedly, I’m a brute, I shall never do anything.’ And in a fit of mad rage he wanted to rush at his picture and dash his fist through it. His friends had to hold him back. Why, it was simply childish to get into such a passion. Would matters be improved when, to his mortal regret, he had destroyed his work? Still shaking, he relapsed into silence, and stared at the canvas with an ardent fixed gaze that blazed with all the horrible agony born of his powerlessness. He could no longer produce anything clear or life-like; the woman’s breast was growing pasty with heavy colouring; that flesh which, in his fancy, ought to have glowed, was simply becoming grimy; he could not even succeed in getting a correct focus. What on earth was the matter with his brain that he heard it bursting asunder, as it were, amidst his vain efforts? Was he losing his sight that he was no longer able to see correctly? Were his hands no longer his own that they refused to obey him? And thus he went on winding himself up, irritated by the strange hereditary lesion which sometimes so greatly assisted his creative powers, but at others reduced him to a state of sterile despair, such as to make him forget the first elements of drawing. Ah, to feel giddy with vertiginous nausea, and yet to remain there full of a furious passion to create, when the power to do so fled with everything else, when everything seemed to founder around him—the pride of work, the dreamt-of glory, the whole of his existence!
‘Look here, old boy,’ said Sandoz at last, ‘we don’t want to worry you, but it’s half-past six, and we are starving. Be reasonable, and come down with us.’
Claude was cleaning a corner of his palette. Then he emptied some more tubes on it, and, in a voice like thunder, replied with one single word, ‘No.’
For the next ten minutes nobody spoke; the painter, beside himself, wrestled with his picture, whilst his friends remained anxious at this attack, which they did not know how to allay. Then, as there came a knock at the door, the architect went to open it.
‘Hallo, it’s Papa Malgras.’
Malgras, the picture-dealer, was a thick-set individual, with close-cropped, brush-like, white hair, and a red splotchy face. He was wrapped in a very dirty old green coat, that made him look like an untidy cabman. In a husky voice, he exclaimed: ‘I happened to pass along the quay, on the other side of the way, and I saw that gentleman at the window. So I came up.’
Claude’s continued silence made him pause. The painter had turned to his picture again with an impatient gesture. Not that this silence in any way embarrassed the new comer, who, standing erect on his sturdy legs and feeling quite at home, carefully examined the new picture with his bloodshot eyes. Without any ceremony, he passed judgment upon it in one phrase—half ironic, half affectionate: ‘Well, well, there’s a machine.’
Then, seeing that nobody said anything, he began to stroll round the studio, looking at the paintings on the walls.
Papa Malgras, beneath his thick layer of grease and grime, was really a very cute customer, with taste
