Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (12 page)

The first topic that came up was the case of a girl named Apollonie, formerly a model, whom Burrieu alleged that he had seen on the boulevard in a carriage with four horses and two postilions. Hussonnet explained this metamorphosis through the succession of persons who had loved her.

“How well this sly dog knows the girls of Paris!” said Arnoux.

“After you, if there are any of them left, sire,” replied the Bohemian, with a military salute, in imitation of the grenadier offering his flask to Napoleon.

Then they talked about some paintings for which Apollonie had sat for the female figures. They criticised their absent brethren, expressing astonishment at the sums paid for their works; and they were all complaining of not having been sufficiently remunerated themselves, when the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a man of medium height, who had his coat fastened by a single button, and whose eyes glittered with a rather wild expression.

“What a bunch of shopkeepers you are!” said he. “God bless my soul! What does that signify? The old masters did not trouble their heads about the money—Correggio, Murillo—”

“Add Pellerin,” said Sombary.

But, without taking the slightest notice of this witticism, he went on talking with such vehemence, that Arnoux was forced to repeat twice to him:

“My wife needs you on Thursday. Don’t forget!”

This remark brought Madame Arnoux back to Frédéric’s thoughts. No doubt, one might be able to reach her through the little room near the sofa. Arnoux had just opened the door leading into it to get a pocket-handkerchief, and Frédéric had seen a wash-stand at the far end of the room. But at this point a kind of muttering sound came from the corner by the fireplace; it was caused by the person who sat in the armchair reading the newspaper. He was a man of five feet nine inches in height, with rather droopy eyelids, a head of grey hair, and an imposing appearance; and his name was Regimbart.

“What’s the matter now, citizen?” said Arnoux.

“Another rotten trick on the part of Government!”

The thing that he was referring to was the dismissal of a schoolmaster.

Pellerin again took up his parallel between Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. Dittmer was departing when Arnoux pulled him back in order to put two bank notes into his hand. Thereupon Hussonnet said, considering this an opportune time:

“Couldn’t you give me an advance, my dear master—?”

But Arnoux had resumed his seat, and was administering a severe reprimand to an old disheveled man who wore a pair of blue spectacles.

“A nice fellow you are, Père Isaac! Here are three works discredited, finished! Everybody is laughing at me! People know what they are now! What do you want me to do with them? I’ll have to send them off to California—or to the devil! No, shut up!”

The specialty of this old fellow consisted in attaching the signatures of the great masters to the bottom of these pictures. Arnoux refused to pay him, and dismissed him in a brutal fashion. Then, with an entire change of manner, he bowed to a gentleman of affectedly grave demeanour, with whiskers, a white tie and the cross of the Legion d
honneur over his chest.

With his elbow resting on the window-latch, he kept talking to him for a long time in honeyed tones. At last he burst out:

“Ah! well, it does not bother me to use brokers, Count.”

The nobleman gave way, and Arnoux gave him a reduction of twenty-five louis. As soon as he had gone out:

“What a plague these big lords are!”

“A lot of wretches!” muttered Regimbart.

As it grew later, Arnoux was much more busily occupied. He classified articles, tore open letters, set out accounts in a row; at the sound of hammering in the warehouse he went out to look after the packing; then he went back to his ordinary work; and, while he kept his steel pen running over the paper, he indulged in sharp witticisms. He had an invitation to dine with his lawyer that evening, and was starting next day for Belgium.

The others chatted about the topics of the day—Cherubini’s portrait, the hemicycle of the Fine Arts, and the next Exhibition. Pellerin railed at the Institute. Scandalous stories and serious discussions got mixed up together. The room with its low ceiling was so much stuffed up that one could scarcely move; and the light of the rose-coloured candles was obscured in the smoke of their cigars, like the sun’s rays in a fog.

The door near the sofa flew open, and a tall, thin woman entered with abrupt movements, which made all the trinkets of her watch rattle under her black taffeta gown.

It was the woman of whom Frédéric had caught a glimpse last summer at the Palais-Royal. Some of those present, addressing her by name, shook hands with her. Hussonnet had at last managed to extract from his employer the sum of fifty francs. The clock struck seven. All rose to go.

Arnoux told Pellerin to remain, and accompanied Mademoiselle Vatnaz into the dressing-room.

Frédéric could not hear what they said; they spoke in whispers. However, the woman’s voice was raised:

“I have been waiting ever since the job was done, six months ago.”

There was a long silence, and then Mademoiselle Vatnaz reappeared. Arnoux had again promised her something.

“Oh! oh! later, we shall see!”

“Good-bye! happy man,” said she, as she was going out.

Arnoux quickly re-entered the dressing-room, rubbed some pomade over his moustache, raised his braces to tighten his trouser-straps; and, while he was washing his hands:

“I would require two over the door panels at two hundred and fifty apiece, in Boucher’s style. Is that understood?”

“So be it,” said the artist, his face reddening.

“Good! and don’t forget my wife!”

Frédéric accompanied Pellerin to the top of the Faubourg Poissonnière, and asked his permission to come to see him sometimes, a favour which was graciously granted.

Pellerin read every work on æsthetics, in order to find out the true theory of Beauty, convinced that, when he had discovered it, he would produce masterpieces. He surrounded himself with every imaginable accessory—drawings, plaster-casts, models, engravings; and he kept searching about, and agonizing. He blamed the weather, his nerves, his studio, went out into the street to find inspiration there, quivered with delight at the thought that he had caught it, then abandoned the work in which he was engaged, and dreamed of another which would be more beautiful. Thus, tormented by the desire for glory, and wasting his days in discussions, believing in a thousand absurdities—in systems, in criticisms, in the importance of a regulation or a reform in the domain of Art—he had at fifty as yet turned out nothing save mere sketches. His robust pride prevented him from experiencing any discouragement, but he was always irritated, and in a state of excitement, at the same time artificial and natural, which is characteristic of comedians.

On entering his studio one’s attention was directed towards two large paintings, in which the first tones of colour laid on here and there made spots of brown, red, and blue on the white canvas. A network of lines in chalk stretched overhead, like stitches of thread repeated twenty times; it was impossible to understand what it meant. Pellerin explained the subject of these two compositions by pointing out with his thumb the portions that were lacking. The first was intended to represent “The Madness of Nebuchadnezzar,” and the second “The Burning of Rome by Nero.” Frédéric admired them.

He admired academies of women with dishevelled hair, landscapes in which trunks of trees, twisted by the storm, abounded, and above all ink sketches, imitations from memory of Callot, Rembrandt, or Goya, of which he did not know the models. Pellerin no longer placed any value on these works of his youth. He was now all in favour of the grand style; he pontificated eloquently about Phidias and Winckelmann. The objects around him strengthened the force of his language; one saw a death’s head on a priedieu, Turkish daggers, a monk’s habit. Frédéric put it on.

When he arrived early, he surprised the artist in his pathetic folding-bed, which was hidden from view by a strip of tapestry; for Pellerin went to bed late, being an assiduous theatre-goer. An old woman in tatters attended to him. He dined in cheap restaurants, and lived without a mistress. His knowledge, picked up in the most irregular fashion, rendered his paradoxes amusing. His hatred of the vulgar and the “bourgeois” overflowed in sarcasm, marked by a superb lyricism, and he had such religious reverence for the masters that it raised him almost to their level.

But why had he never spoken about Madame Arnoux? As for her husband, at one time he called him a decent fellow, at other times a charlatan. Frédéric was waiting for some disclosures on his part.

One day, while leafing through one of the portfolios in the studio, he thought he could trace in the portrait of a female Bohemian some resemblance to Mademoiselle Vatnaz; and, as he felt interested in this lady, he desired to know what was her exact social position.

She had been, as far as Pellerin could ascertain, originally a schoolmistress in the provinces. She now gave lessons in Paris, and tried to write for the small journals.

According to Frédéric, one would imagine from her manners with Arnoux that she was his mistress.

“Pshaw! he has others!”

Then, turning away his face, which reddened with shame as he realised the baseness of the suggestion, the young man added, with a swaggering air:

“Very likely his wife pays him back for it?”

“Not at all; she is virtuous.”

Frédéric again experienced a feeling of remorse, and the result was that his attendance at the office of the art journal became more regular than before.

The big letters which formed the name of Arnoux on the marble plate above the shop seemed to him quite peculiar and full of meaning, like some sacred writing. The wide sidewalk, by its descent, facilitated his approach; the door almost turned of its own accord; and the handle, smooth to the touch, gave him the sensation of friendly and, as it were, intelligent fingers clasping his. Unconsciously, he became quite as punctual as Regimbart.

Every day Regimbart seated himself in the corner by the fireplace, in his armchair, got hold of the
National,
and kept possession of it, expressing his thoughts by exclamations or by shrugs of the shoulders. From time to time he would wipe his forehead with his pocket-handkerchief, rolled up in a ball, which he usually stuck in between two buttons of his green frock-coat. He had pleated trousers, shoe-boots, and a long cravat; and his hat, with its turned-up brim, made him easily recognisable, at a distance, in a crowd.

At eight o‘clock in the morning he descended the heights of Montmartre, in order to imbibe white wine in the Rue Nôtre Dame des Victoires. A late breakfast, following several games of billiards, brought him on to three o’clock. He then directed his steps towards the Passage des Panoramas, where he had a glass of absinthe. After the sitting in Arnoux’s shop, he entered the Bordelais café, where he swallowed some vermouth; then, in place of returning home to his wife, he preferred to dine alone in a little café in the Rue Gaillon, where he desired them to serve up to him “household dishes, natural things.” Finally, he made his way to another billiard-room, and remained there till midnight, in fact, till one o’Clock in the morning, up till the last moment, when, the gas being put out and the window-shutters fastened, the master of the establishment, worn out, begged him to go.

And it was not the love of drinking that attracted Citizen Regimbart to these places, but the inveterate habit of talking politics. With advancing age, he had lost his vivacity, and now exhibited only a silent moroseness. One would have said, judging from the serious look on his face, that he was turning over in his mind the affairs of the whole world. Nothing, however, came from it; and nobody, even amongst his own friends, knew him to have any occupation, although he gave himself out as being up to his eyeballs in business.

Arnoux appeared to have very great esteem for him. One day he said to Frédéric:

“He knows a lot, I assure you. He is an able man.”

On another occasion Regimbart spread over his desk papers relating to the kaolin mines in Brittany. Arnoux referred to his own experience on the subject.

Frédéric showed himself more ceremonious towards Regimbart, going so far as to invite him from time to time to take a glass of absinthe; and, although he considered him a stupid man, he often remained a full hour in his company solely because he was Jacques Arnoux’s friend.

After pushing forward some contemporary masters in the early portions of their career, the art-dealer, a man of progressive ideas, had tried, while clinging to his artistic ways, to extend his meagre profits. His objective was to emancipate the fine arts, the sublime at a popular price. Over every industry associated with Parisian luxury he exercised an influence which proved fortunate with respect to little things, but harmful with respect to great things. With his mania for pandering to public opinion, he made clever artists swerve from their true path, corrupted the strong, exhausted the weak, and got distinction for those of mediocre talent; he set them up with the assistance of his connections and of his magazine. Young painters were ambitious to see their works in his shop-window, and upholsterers took. inspiration from his home decoration. Frédéric regarded him, at the same time, as a millionaire, as a
dilettante,
and as a man of action. However, he found many things that filled him with astonishment, for my lord Arnoux was rather sly in his commercial transactions.