His Masterpiece Part 27

This boisterous hilarity enlivened the end of the dinner. They all left off eating, though the mistress of the house still insisted upon filling their plates.

'My dear, do attend to them,' she kept saying to Sandoz, who had grown greatly excited amidst the din. 'Just stretch out your hand; the biscuits are on the side-board.'

They all declined anything more, and rose up. As the rest of the evening was to be spent there, round the table, drinking tea, they leaned back against the walls and continued chatting while the servant cleared away. The young couple a.s.sisted, Henriette putting the salt-cellars in a drawer, and Sandoz helping to fold the cloth.

'You can smoke,' said Henriette. 'You know that it doesn't inconvenience me in the least.'

f.a.gerolles, who had drawn Claude into the window recess, offered him a cigar, which was declined.

'True, I forgot; you don't smoke. Ah! I say, I must go to see what you have brought back with you. Some very interesting things, no doubt. You know what I think of your talent. You are the cleverest of us all.'

He showed himself very humble, sincere at heart, and allowing his admiration of former days to rise once more to the surface; indeed, he for ever bore the imprint of another's genius, which he admitted, despite the complex calculations of his cunning mind. But his humility was mingled with a certain embarra.s.sment very rare with him--the concern he felt at the silence which the master of his youth preserved respecting his last picture. At last he ventured to ask, with quivering lips:

'Did you see my actress at the Salon? Do you like it? Tell me candidly.'

Claude hesitated for a moment; then, like the good-natured fellow he was, said:

'Yes; there are some very good bits in it.'

f.a.gerolles already repented having asked that stupid question, and he ended by altogether floundering; he tried to excuse himself for his plagiarisms and his compromises. When with great difficulty he had got out of the mess, enraged with himself for his clumsiness, he for a moment became the joker of yore again, made even Claude laugh till he cried, and amused them all. At last he held out his hand to take leave of Henriette.

'What, going so soon?'

'Alas! yes, dear madame. This evening my father is entertaining the head of a department at one of the ministries, an official whom he's trying to influence in view of obtaining a decoration; and, as I am one of his t.i.tles to that distinction, I had to promise that I would look in.'

When he was gone, Henriette, who had exchanged a few words in a low voice with Sandoz, disappeared; and her light footfall was heard on the first floor. Since her marriage it was she who tended the old, infirm mother, absenting herself in this fashion several times during the evening, just as the son had done formerly.

Not one of the guests, however, had noticed her leave the room.

Mahoudeau and Gagniere were now talking about f.a.gerolles; showing themselves covertly bitter, without openly attacking him. As yet they contented themselves with ironical glances and shrugs of the shoulders--all the silent contempt of fellows who don't wish to slash a chum. Then they fell back on Claude; they prostrated themselves before him, overwhelmed him with the hopes they set in him. Ah! it was high time for him to come back, for he alone, with his great gifts, his vigorous touch, could become the master, the recognised chief. Since the Salon of the Rejected the 'school of the open air' had increased in numbers; a growing influence was making itself felt; but unfortunately, the efforts were frittered away; the new recruits contented themselves with producing sketches, impressions thrown off with a few strokes of the brush; they were awaiting the necessary man of genius, the one who would incarnate the new formula in masterpieces. What a position to take! to master the mult.i.tude, to open up a century, to create a new art! Claude listened to them, with his eyes turned to the floor and his face very pale. Yes, that indeed was his unavowed dream, the ambition he dared not confess to himself. Only, with the delight that the flattery caused him, there was mingled a strange anguish, a dread of the future, as he heard them raising him to the position of dictator, as if he had already triumphed.

'Don't,' he exclaimed at last; 'there are others as good as myself. I am still seeking my real line.'

Jory, who felt annoyed, was smoking in silence. Suddenly, as the others obstinately kept at it, he could not refrain from remarking:

'All this, my boys, is because you are vexed at f.a.gerolles' success.'

They energetically denied it; they burst out in protestations.

f.a.gerolles, the young master! What a good joke!

'Oh, you are turning your back upon us, we know it,' said Mahoudeau.

'There's no fear of your writing a line about us nowadays.'

'Well, my dear fellow,' answered Jory, vexed, 'everything I write about you is cut out. You make yourselves hated everywhere. Ah! if I had a paper of my own!'

Henriette came back, and Sandoz's eyes having sought hers, she answered him with a glance and the same affectionate, quiet smile that he had shown when leaving his mother's room in former times. Then she summoned them all. They sat down again round the table while she made the tea and poured it out. But the gathering grew sad, benumbed, as it were, with la.s.situde. Sandoz vainly tried a diversion by admitting Bertrand, the big dog, who grovelled at sight of the sugar-basin, and ended by going to sleep near the stove, where he snored like a man. Since the discussion on f.a.gerolles there had been intervals of silence, a kind of bored irritation, which fell heavily upon them amidst the dense tobacco smoke. And, in fact, Gagniere felt so out of sorts that he left the table for a moment to seat himself at the piano, murdering some pa.s.sages from Wagner in a subdued key, with the stiff fingers of an amateur who tries his first scale at thirty.

Towards eleven o'clock Dubuche, arriving at last, contributed the finishing touch to the general frost. He had made his escape from a ball to fulfil what he considered a remaining duty towards his old comrades; and his dress-coat, his white necktie, his fat, pale face, all proclaimed his vexation at having come, the importance he attached to the sacrifice, and the fear he felt of compromising his new position. He avoided mentioning his wife, so that he might not have to bring her to Sandoz's. When he had shaken hands with Claude, without showing more emotion than if he had met him the day before, he declined a cup of tea and spoke slowly--puffing out his cheeks the while--of his worry in settling in a brand-new house, and of the work that had overwhelmed him since he had attended to the business of his father-in-law, who was building a whole street near the Parc Monceau.

Then Claude distinctly felt that something had snapped. Had life then already carried away the evenings of former days, those evenings so fraternal in their very violence, when nothing had as yet separated them, when not one of them had thought of keeping his part of glory to himself? Nowadays the battle was beginning. Each hungry one was eagerly biting. And a fissure was there, a scarcely perceptible crack that had rent the old, sworn friendships, and some day would make them crumble into a thousand pieces.

However, Sandoz, with his craving for perpetuity, had so far noticed nothing; he still beheld them as they had been in the Rue d'Enfer, all arm in arm, starting off to victory. Why change what was well? Did not happiness consist in one pleasure selected from among all, and then enjoyed for ever afterwards? And when, an hour later, the others made up their minds to go off, wearied by the dull egotism of Dubuche, who had not left off talking about his own affairs; when they had dragged Gagniere, in a trance, away from the piano, Sandoz, followed by his wife, absolutely insisted, despite the coldness of the night, on accompanying them all to the gate at the end of the garden. He shook hands all round, and shouted after them:

'Till Thursday, Claude; till next Thursday, all of you, eh? Mind you all come!'

'Till Thursday!' repeated Henriette, who had taken the lantern and was holding it aloft so as to light the steps.

And, amid the laughter, Gagniere and Mahoudeau replied, jokingly: 'Till Thursday, young master! Good-night, young master!'

Once in the Rue Nollet, Dubuche immediately hailed a cab, in which he drove away. The other four walked together as far as the outer boulevards, scarcely exchanging a word, looking dazed, as it were, at having been in each other's company so long. At last Jory decamped, pretending that some proofs were waiting for him at the office of his newspaper. Then Gagniere mechanically stopped Claude in front of the Cafe Baudequin, the gas of which was still blazing away. Mahoudeau refused to go in, and went off alone, sadly ruminating, towards the Rue du Cherche-Midi.

Without knowing how, Claude found himself seated at their old table, opposite Gagniere, who was silent. The cafe had not changed. The friends still met there of a Sunday, showing a deal of fervour, in fact, since Sandoz had lived in the neighbourhood; but the band was now lost amid a flood of new-comers; it was slowly being submerged by the increasing triteness of the young disciples of the 'open air.' At that hour of night, however, the establishment was getting empty. Three young painters, whom Claude did not know, came to shake hands with him as they went off; and then there merely remained a petty retired tradesman of the neighbourhood, asleep in front of a saucer.

Gagniere, quite at his ease, as if he had been at home, absolutely indifferent to the yawns of the solitary waiter, who was stretching his arms, glanced towards Claude, but without seeing him, for his eyes were dim.

'By the way,' said the latter, 'what were you explaining to Mahoudeau this evening? Yes, about the red of a flag turning yellowish amid the blue of the sky. That was it, eh? You are studying the theory of complementary colours.'

But the other did not answer. He took up his gla.s.s of beer, set it down again without tasting its contents, and with an ecstatic smile ended by muttering:

'Haydn has all the gracefulness of a rhetorician--his is a gentle music, quivering like the voice of a great-grandmother in powdered hair.

Mozart, he's the precursory genius--the first who endowed an orchestra with an individual voice; and those two will live mostly because they created Beethoven. Ah, Beethoven! power and strength amidst serene suffering, Michael Angelo at the tomb of the Medici! A heroic logician, a kneader of human brains; for the symphony, with choral accompaniments, was the starting-point of all the great ones of to-day!'

The waiter, tired of waiting, began to turn off the gas, wearily dragging his feet along as he did so. Mournfulness pervaded the deserted room, dirty with saliva and cigar ends, and reeking of spilt drink; while from the hushed boulevard the only sound that came was the distant blubbering of some drunkard.

Gagniere, still in the clouds, however, continued to ride his hobby-horse.

'Weber pa.s.ses by us amid a romantic landscape, conducting the ballads of the dead amidst weeping willows and oaks with twisted branches. Schumann follows him, beneath the pale moonlight, along the sh.o.r.es of silvery lakes. And behold, here comes Rossini, incarnation of the musical gift, so gay, so natural, without the least concern for expression, caring nothing for the public, and who isn't my man by a long way--ah!

certainly not--but then, all the same, he astonishes one by his wealth of production, and the huge effects he derives from an acc.u.mulation of voices and an ever-swelling repet.i.tion of the same strain. These three led to Meyerbeer, a cunning fellow who profited by everything, introducing symphony into opera after Weber, and giving dramatic expression to the unconscious formulas of Rossini. Oh! the superb bursts of sound, the feudal pomp, the martial mysticism, the quivering of fantastic legends, the cry of pa.s.sion ringing out through history! And such finds!--each instrument endowed with a personality, the dramatic _recitatives_ accompanied symphoniously by the orchestra--the typical musical phrase on which an entire work is built! Ah! he was a great fellow--a very great fellow indeed!'

'I am going to shut up, sir,' said the waiter, drawing near.

And, seeing that Gagniere did not as much as look round, he went to awaken the petty retired tradesman, who was still dozing in front of his saucer.

'I am going to shut up, sir.'

The belated customer rose up, shivering, fumbled in the dark corner where he was seated for his walking-stick, and when the waiter had picked it up for him from under the seats he went away.

And Gagniere rambled on:

'Berlioz has mingled literature with his work. He is the musical ill.u.s.trator of Shakespeare, Virgil, and Goethe. But what a painter!--the Delacroix of music, who makes sound blaze forth amidst effulgent contrasts of colour. And withal he has romanticism in his brain, a religious mysticism that carries him away, an ecstasy that soars higher than mountain summits. A bad builder of operas, but marvellous in detached pieces, asking too much at times of the orchestra which he tortures, having pushed the personality of instruments to its furthest limits; for each instrument represents a character to him. Ah! that remark of his about clarionets: "They typify beloved women." Ah! it has always made a shiver run down my back. And Chopin, so dandified in his Byronism; the dreamy poet of those who suffer from neurosis! And Mendelssohn, that faultless chiseller! a Shakespeare in dancing pumps, whose "songs without words" are gems for women of intellect! And after that--after that--a man should go down on his knees.'

There was now only one gas-lamp alight just above his head, and the waiter standing behind him stood waiting amid the gloomy, chilly void of the room. Gagniere's voice had come to a reverential _tremolo_. He was reaching devotional fervour as he approached the inner tabernacle, the holy of holies.

'Oh! Schumann, typical of despair, the voluptuousness of despair! Yes, the end of everything, the last song of saddened purity hovering above the ruins of the world! Oh! Wagner, the G.o.d in whom centuries of music are incarnated! His work is the immense ark, all the arts blended in one; the real humanity of the personages at last expressed, the orchestra itself living apart the life of the drama. And what a ma.s.sacre of conventionality, of inept formulas! what a revolutionary emanc.i.p.ation amid the infinite! The overture of "Tannhauser," ah! that's the sublime hallelujah of the new era. First of all comes the chant of the pilgrims, the religious strain, calm, deep and slowly throbbing; then the voices of the sirens gradually drown it; the voluptuous pleasures of Venus, full of enervating delight and languor, grow more and more imperious and disorderly; and soon the sacred air gradually returns, like the aspiring voice of s.p.a.ce, and seizes hold of all other strains and blends them in one supreme harmony, to waft them away on the wings of a triumphal hymn!'

'I am going to shut up, sir,' repeated the waiter.

Claude, who no longer listened, he also being absorbed in his own pa.s.sion, emptied his gla.s.s of beer and cried: 'Eh, old man, they are going to shut up.'