The Fat and the Thin Part 22

A slight flush came back to her cheeks, and Quenu considered that she looked wonderfully blooming. He came and sat down beside her at the counter for a moment or two. "You ought to go out oftener," said he; "it does you good. We'll go to the theatre together one of these nights, if you like; to the Gaite, eh? Madame Taboureau has been to see the piece they are playing there, and she declares it's splendid."

Lisa smiled, and said they would see about it, and then once more she took herself off. Quenu thought that it was too good of her to take so much trouble in running about after that brute Gavard. In point of fact, however, she had simply gone upstairs to Florent's bedroom, the key of which was hanging from a nail in the kitchen. She hoped to find out something or other by an inspection of this room, since the poultry dealer had failed her. She went slowly round it, examining the bed, the mantelpiece, and every corner. The window with the little balcony was open, and the budding pomegranate was steeped in the golden beams of the setting sun. The room looked to her as though Augustine had never left it--had slept there only the night before. There seemed to be nothing masculine about the place. She was quite surprised, for she had expected to find some suspicious-looking chests, and coffers with strong locks.

She went to feel Augustine's summer gown, which was still hanging against the wall. Then she sat down at the table, and began to read an unfinished page of ma.n.u.script, in which the word "revolution" occurred twice. This alarmed her, and she opened the drawer, which she saw was full of papers. But her sense of honour awoke within her in presence of the secret which the rickety deal table so badly guarded. She remained bending over the papers, trying to understand them without touching them, in a state of great emotion, when the shrill song of the chaffinch, on whose cage streamed a ray of sunshine, made her start. She closed the drawer. It was a base thing that she had contemplated, she thought.

Then, as she lingered by the window, reflecting that she ought to go and ask counsel of Abbe Roustan, who was a very sensible man, she saw a crowd of people round a stretcher in the market square below. The night was falling, still she distinctly recognised Cadine weeping in the midst of the crowd; while Florent and Claude, whose boots were white with dust, stood together talking earnestly at the edge of the footway.

She hurried downstairs again, surprised to see them back so soon, and scarcely had she reached her counter when Mademoiselle Saget entered the shop.

"They have found that scamp of a Marjolin in the cellar, with his head split open," exclaimed the old maid. "Won't you come to see him, Madame Quenu?"

Lisa crossed the road to look at him. The young fellow was lying on his back on the stretcher, looking very pale. His eyes were closed, and a stiff wisp of his fair hair was clotted with blood. The bystanders, however, declared that there was no serious harm done, and, besides, the scamp had only himself to blame, for he was always playing all sorts of wild pranks in the cellars. It was generally supposed that he had been trying to jump over one of the stone blocks--one of his favourite amus.e.m.e.nts--and had fallen with his head against the slab.

"I dare say that hussy there gave him a shove," remarked Mademoiselle Saget, pointing to Cadine, who was weeping. "They are always larking together."

Meantime the fresh air had restored Marjolin to consciousness, and he opened his eyes in wide astonishment. He looked round at everybody, and then, observing Lisa bending over him, he gently smiled at her with an expression of mingled humility and affection. He seemed to have forgotten all that had happened. Lisa, feeling relieved, said that he ought to be taken to the hospital at once, and promised to go and see him there, and take him some oranges and biscuits. However, Marjolin's head had fallen back, and when the stretcher was carried away Cadine followed it, with her flat basket slung round her neck, and her hot tears rolling down upon the bunches of violets in their mossy bed. She certainly had no thoughts for the flowers that she was thus scalding with her bitter grief.

As Lisa went back to her shop, she heard Claude say, as he shook hands with Florent and parted from him: "Ah! the confounded young scamp! He's quite spoiled my day for me! Still, we had a very enjoyable time, didn't we?"

Claude and Florent had returned both worried and happy, bringing with them the pleasant freshness of the country air. Madame Francois had disposed of all her vegetables that morning before daylight; and they had all three gone to the Golden Compa.s.ses, in the Rue Montorgueil, to get the cart. Here, in the middle of Paris, they found a foretaste of the country. Behind the Restaurant Philippe, with its frontage of gilt woodwork rising to the first floor, there was a yard like that of a farm, dirty, teeming with life, reeking with the odour of manure and straw. Bands of fowls were pecking at the soft ground. Sheds and staircases and galleries of greeny wood clung to the old houses around, and at the far end, in a shanty of big beams, was Balthazar, harnessed to the cart, and eating the oats in his nosebag. He went down the Rue Montorgueil at a slow trot, seemingly well pleased to return to Nanterre so soon. However, he was not going home without a load. Madame Francois had a contract with the company which undertook the scavenging of the markets, and twice a week she carried off with her a load of leaves, forked up from the ma.s.s of refuse which littered the square. It made excellent manure. In a few minutes the cart was filled to overflowing.

Claude and Florent stretched themselves out on the deep bed of greenery; Madame Francois grasped her reins, and Balthazar went off at his slow, steady pace, his head somewhat bent by reason of there being so many pa.s.sengers to pull along.

This excursion had been talked of for a long time past. Madame Francois laughed cheerily. She was partial to the two men, and promised them an _omelette au lard_ as had never been eaten, said she, in "that villainous Paris." Florent and Claude revelled in the thought of this day of lounging idleness which as yet had scarcely begun to dawn.

Nanterre seemed to be some distant paradise into which they would presently enter.

"Are you quite comfortable?" Madame Francois asked as the cart turned into the Rue du Pont Neuf.

Claude declared that their couch was as soft as a bridal bed. Lying on their backs, with their hands crossed under their heads, both men were looking up at the pale sky from which the stars were vanishing. All along the Rue de Rivoli they kept unbroken silence, waiting till they should have got clear of the houses, and listening to the worthy woman as she chattered to Balthazar: "Take your time, old man," she said to him in kindly tones. "We're in no hurry; we shall be sure to get there at last."

On reaching the Champs Elysees, when the artist saw nothing but tree-tops on either side of him, and the great green ma.s.s of the Tuileries gardens in the distance, he woke up, as it were, and began to talk. When the cart had pa.s.sed the end of the Rue du Roule he had caught a glimpse of the side entrance of Saint Eustache under the giant roofing of one of the market covered-ways. He was constantly referring to this view of the church, and tried to give it a symbolical meaning.

"It's an odd mixture," he said, "that bit of church framed round by an avenue of cast iron. The one will kill the other; the iron will slay the stone, and the time is not very far off. Do you believe in chance, Florent? For my part, I don't think that it was any mere chance of position that set a rose-window of Saint Eustache right in the middle of the central markets. No; there's a whole manifesto in it. It is modern art, realism, naturalism--whatever you like to call it--that has grown up and dominates ancient art. Don't you agree with me?"

Then, as Florent still kept silence, Claude continued: "Besides, that church is a piece of b.a.s.t.a.r.d architecture, made up of the dying gasp of the middle ages, and the first stammering of the Renaissance. Have you noticed what sort of churches are built nowadays? They resemble all kinds of things--libraries, observatories, pigeon-cotes, barracks; and surely no one can imagine that the Deity dwells in such places. The pious old builders are all dead and gone; and it would be better to cease erecting those hideous carca.s.ses of stone, in which we have no belief to enshrine. Since the beginning of the century there has only been one large original pile of buildings erected in Paris--a pile in accordance with modern developments--and that's the central markets. You hear me, Florent? Ah! they are a fine bit of building, though they but faintly indicate what we shall see in the twentieth century! And so, you see, Saint Eustache is done for! It stands there with its rose-windows, deserted by worshippers, while the markets spread out by its side and teem with noisy life. Yes! that's how I understand it all, my friend."

"Ah! Monsieur Claude," said Madame Francois, laughing, "the woman who cut your tongue-string certainly earned her money. Look at Balthazar laying his ears back to listen to you. Come, come, get along, Balthazar!"

The cart was slowly making its way up the incline. At this early hour of the morning the avenue, with its double lines of iron chairs on either pathway, and its lawns, dotted with flowerbeds and clumps of shrubbery, stretching away under the blue shadows of the trees, was quite deserted; however, at the Rond-Point a lady and gentleman on horseback pa.s.sed the cart at a gentle trot. Florent, who had made himself a pillow with a bundle of cabbage-leaves, was still gazing at the sky, in which a far-stretching rosy glow was appearing. Every now and then he would close his eyes, the better to enjoy the fresh breeze of the morning as it fanned his face. He was so happy to escape from the markets, and travel on through the pure air, that he remained speechless, and did not even listen to what was being said around him.

"And then, too, what fine jokers are those fellows who imprison art in a toy-box!" resumed Claude, after a pause. "They are always repeating the same idiotic words: 'You can't create art out of science,' says one; 'Mechanical appliances kill poetry,' says another; and a pack of fools wail over the fate of the flowers, as though anybody wished the flowers any harm! I'm sick of all such twaddle; I should like to answer all that snivelling with some work of open defiance. I should take a pleasure in shocking those good people. Shall I tell you what was the finest thing I ever produced since I first began to work, and the one which I recall with the greatest pleasure? It's quite a story. When I was at my Aunt Lisa's on Christmas Eve last year that idiot of an Auguste, the a.s.sistant, was setting out the shop-window. Well, he quite irritated me by the weak, spiritless way in which he arranged the display; and at last I requested him to take himself off, saying that I would group the things myself in a proper manner. You see, I had plenty of bright colours to work with--the red of the tongues, the yellow of the hams, the blue of the paper shavings, the rosy pink of the things that had been cut into, the green of the sprigs of heath, and the black of the black-puddings--ah! a magnificent black, which I have never managed to produce on my palette. And naturally, the _crepine_, the small sausages, the chitterlings, and the crumbed trotters provided me with delicate greys and browns. I produced a perfect work of art. I took the dishes, the plates, the pans, and the jars, and arranged the different colours; and I devised a wonderful picture of still life, with subtle scales of tints leading up to brilliant flashes of colour. The red tongues seemed to thrust themselves out like greedy flames, and the black-puddings, surrounded by pale sausages, suggested a dark night fraught with terrible indigestion. I had produced, you see, a picture symbolical of the gluttony of Christmas Eve, when people meet and sup--the midnight feasting, the ravenous gorging of stomachs void and faint after all the singing of hymns.[*] At the top of everything a huge turkey exhibited its white breast, marbled blackly by the truffles showing through its skin. It was something barbaric and superb, suggesting a paunch amidst a halo of glory; but there was such a cutting, sarcastic touch about it all that people crowded to the window, alarmed by the fierce flare of the shop-front. When my aunt Lisa came back from the kitchen she was quite frightened, and thought I'd set the fat in the shop on fire; and she considered the appearance of the turkey so indelicate that she turned me out of the place while Auguste re-arranged the window after his own idiotic fashion. Such brutes will never understand the language of a red splotch by the side of a grey one. Ah, well! that was my masterpiece. I have never done anything better."

[*] An allusion to the "midnight ma.s.s" usually celebrated in Roman Catholic churches on Christmas Eve.--Translator.

He relapsed into silence, smiling and dwelling with gratification on this reminiscence. The cart had now reached the Arc de Triomphe, and strong currents of air swept from the avenues across the expanse of open ground. Florent sat up, and inhaled with zest the first odours of gra.s.s wafted from the fortifications. He turned his back on Paris, anxious to behold the country in the distance. At the corner of the Rue de Longchamp, Madame Francois pointed out to him the spot where she had picked him up. This rendered him thoughtful, and he gazed at her as she sat there, so healthy-looking and serene, with her arms slightly extended so as to grasp the reins. She looked even handsomer than Lisa, with her neckerchief tied over her head, her robust glow of health, and her brusque, kindly air. When she gave a slight cluck with her tongue, Balthazar p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and rattled down the road at a quicker pace.

On arriving at Nanterre, the cart turned to the left into a narrow lane, skirted some blank walls, and finally came to a standstill at the end of a sort of blind alley. It was the end of the world, Madame Francois used to say. The load of vegetable leaves now had to be discharged. Claude and Florent would not hear of the journeyman gardener, who was planting lettuces, leaving his work, but armed themselves with pitchforks and proceeded to toss the leaves into the manure pit. This occupation afforded them much amus.e.m.e.nt. Claude had quite a liking for manure, since it symbolises the world and its life. The strippings and parings of the vegetables, the scourings of the markets, the refuse that fell from that colossal table, remained full of life, and returned to the spot where the vegetables had previously sprouted, to warm and nourish fresh generations of cabbages, turnips, and carrots. They rose again in fertile crops, and once more went to spread themselves out upon the market square. Paris rotted everything, and returned everything to the soil, which never wearied of repairing the ravages of death.

"Ah!" exclaimed Claude, as he plied his fork for the last time, "here's a cabbage-stalk that I'm sure I recognise. It has grown up at least half a score of times in that corner yonder by the apricot tree."

This remark made Florent laugh. But he soon became grave again, and strolled slowly through the kitchen garden, while Claude made a sketch of the stable, and Madame Francois got breakfast ready. The kitchen garden was a long strip of ground, divided in the middle by a narrow path; it rose slightly, and at the top end, on raising the head, you could perceive the low barracks of Mont Valerien. Green hedges separated it from other plots of land, and these lofty walls of hawthorn fringed the horizon with a curtain of greenery in such wise that of all the surrounding country Mont Valerien alone seemed to rise inquisitively on tip-toe in order to peer into Madame Francois's close. Great peacefulness came from the countryside which could not be seen. Along the kitchen garden, between the four hedges, the May sun shone with a languid heat, a silence disturbed only by the buzzing of insects, a somnolence suggestive of painless parturition. Every now and then a faint cracking sound, a soft sigh, made one fancy that one could hear the vegetables sprout into being. The patches of spinach and sorrel, the borders of radishes, carrots, and turnips, the beds of potatoes and cabbages, spread out in even regularity, displaying their dark leaf-mould between their tufts of greenery. Farther away, the trenched lettuces, onions, leeks, and celery, planted by line in long straight rows, looked like soldiers on parade; while the peas and beans were beginning to twine their slender tendrils round a forest of sticks, which, when June came, they would transform into a thick and verdant wood. There was not a weed to be seen. The garden resembled two parallel strips of carpet of a geometrical pattern of green on a reddish ground, which were carefully swept every morning. Borders of thyme grew like greyish fringe along each side of the pathway.

Florent paced backwards and forwards amidst the perfume of the thyme, which the sun was warming. He felt profoundly happy in the peacefulness and cleanliness of the garden. For nearly a year past he had only seen vegetables bruised and crushed by the jolting of the market-carts; vegetables torn up on the previous evening, and still bleeding. He rejoiced to find them at home, in peace in the dark mould, and sound in every part. The cabbages had a bulky, prosperous appearance; the carrots looked bright and gay; and the lettuces lounged in line with an air of careless indolence. And as he looked at them all, the markets which he had left behind him that morning seemed to him like a vast mortuary, an abode of death, where only corpses could be found, a charnel-house reeking with foul smells and putrefaction. He slackened his steps, and rested in that kitchen garden, as after a long perambulation amidst deafening noises and repulsive odours. The uproar and the sickening humidity of the fish market had departed from him; and he felt as though he were being born anew in the pure fresh air. Claude was right, he thought. The markets were a sphere of death. The soil was the life, the eternal cradle, the health of the world.

"The omelet's ready!" suddenly cried Madame Francois.

When they were all three seated round the table in the kitchen, with the door thrown open to the sunshine, they ate their breakfast with such light-hearted gaiety that Madame Francois looked at Florent in amazement, repeating between each mouthful: "You're quite altered.

You're ten years younger. It is that villainous Paris which makes you seem so gloomy. You've got a little sunshine in your eyes now. Ah! those big towns do one's health no good, you ought to come and live here."

Claude laughed, and retorted that Paris was a glorious place. He stuck up for it and all that belonged to it, even to its gutters; though at the same time retaining a keen affection for the country.

In the afternoon Madame Francois and Florent found themselves alone at the end of the garden, in a corner planted with a few fruit trees.

Seated on the ground, they talked somewhat seriously together. The good woman advised Florent with an affectionate and quite maternal kindness.

She asked him endless questions about his life, and his intentions for the future, and begged him to remember that he might always count upon her, if ever he thought that she could in the slightest degree contribute to his happiness. Florent was deeply touched. No woman had ever spoken to him in that way before. Madame Francois seemed to him like some healthy, robust plant that had grown up with the vegetables in the leaf-mould of the garden; while the Lisas, the Normans, and other pretty women of the markets appeared to him like flesh of doubtful freshness decked out for exhibition. He here enjoyed several hours of perfect well-being, delivered from all that reek of food which sickened him in the markets, and reviving to new life amidst the fertile atmosphere of the country, like that cabbage stalk which Claude declared he had seen sprout up more than half a score of times.

The two men took leave of Madame Francois at about five o'clock. They had decided to walk back to Paris; and the market gardener accompanied them into the lane. As she bade good-bye to Florent, she kept his hand in her own for a moment, and said gently: "If ever anything happens to trouble you, remember to come to me."

For a quarter of an hour Florent walked on without speaking, already getting gloomy again, and reflecting that he was leaving health behind him. The road to Courbevoie was white with dust. However, both men were fond of long walks and the ringing of stout boots on the hard ground.

Little clouds of dust rose up behind their heels at every step, while the rays of the sinking sun darted obliquely over the avenue, lengthening their shadows in such wise that their heads reached the other side of the road, and journeyed along the opposite footway.

Claude, swinging his arms, and taking long, regular strides, complacently watched these two shadows, whilst enjoying the rhythmical cadence of his steps, which he accentuated by a motion of his shoulders.

Presently, however, as though just awaking from a dream, he exclaimed: "Do you know the 'Battle of the Fat and the Thin'?"

Florent, surprised by the question, replied in the negative; and thereupon Claude waxed enthusiastic, talking of that series of prints in very eulogical fashion. He mentioned certain incidents: the Fat, so swollen that they almost burst, preparing their evening debauch, while the Thin, bent double by fasting, looked in from the street with the appearance of envious laths; and then, again, the Fat, with hanging cheeks, driving off one of the Thin, who had been audacious enough to introduce himself into their midst in lowly humility, and who looked like a ninepin amongst a population of b.a.l.l.s.

In these designs Claude detected the entire drama of human life, and he ended by cla.s.sifying men into Fat and Thin, two hostile groups, one of which devours the other, and grows fat and sleek and enjoys itself.

"Cain," said he, "was certainly one of the Fat, and Abel one of the Thin. Ever since that first murder, there have been rampant appet.i.tes which have drained the life-blood of small eaters. It's a continual preying of the stronger upon the weaker; each swallowing his neighbour, and then getting swallowed in his turn. Beware of the Fat, my friend."

He relapsed into silence for a moment, still watching their two shadows, which the setting sun elongated more than ever. Then he murmured: "You see, we belong to the Thin--you and I. Those who are no more corpulent than we are don't take up much room in the sunlight, eh?"

Florent glanced at the two shadows, and smiled. But Claude waxed angry, and exclaimed: "You make a mistake if you think it is a laughing matter.

For my own part, I greatly suffer from being one of the Thin. If I were one of the Fat, I could paint at my ease; I should have a fine studio, and sell my pictures for their weight in gold. But, instead of that, I'm one of the Thin; and I have to grind my life out in producing things which simply make the Fat ones shrug their shoulders. I shall die of it all in the end, I'm sure of it, with my skin clinging to my bones, and so flattened that they will be able to bury me between two leaves of a book. And you, too, you are one of the Thin, a wonderful one; the very king of Thin, in fact! Do you remember your quarrel with the fish-wives?

It was magnificent; all those colossal bosoms flying at your scraggy breast! Oh! they were simply acting from natural instinct; they were pursuing one of the Thin just as cats pursue a mouse. The Fat, you know, have an instinctive hatred of the Thin, to such an extent that they must needs drive the latter from their sight, either by means of their teeth or their feet. And that is why, if I were in your place, I should take my precautions. The Quenus belong to the Fat, and so do the Mehudins; indeed, you have none but Fat ones around you. I should feel uneasy under such circ.u.mstances."

"And what about Gavard, and Mademoiselle Saget, and your friend Marjolin?" asked Florent, still smiling.

"Oh, if you like, I will cla.s.sify all our acquaintances for you,"

replied Claude. "I've had their heads in a portfolio in my studio for a long time past, with memoranda of the order to which they belong. Gavard is one of the Fat, but of the kind which pretends to belong to the Thin. The variety is by no means uncommon. Mademoiselle Saget and Madame Lecoeur belong to the Thin, but to a variety which is much to be feared--the Thin ones whom envy drives to despair, and who are capable of anything in their craving to fatten themselves. My friend Marjolin, little Cadine, and La Sarriette are three Fat ones, still innocent, however, and having nothing but the guileless hunger of youth. I may remark that the Fat, so long as they've not grown old, are charming creatures. Monsieur Lebigre is one of the Fat--don't you think so? As for your political friends, Charvet, Clemence, Logre, and Lacaille, they mostly belong to the Thin. I only except that big animal Alexandre, and that prodigy Robine, who has caused me a vast amount of annoyance."

The artist continued to talk in this strain from the Pont de Neuilly to the Arc de Triomphe. He returned to some of those whom he had already mentioned, and completed their portraits with a few characteristic touches. Logre, he said, was one of the Thin whose belly had been placed between his shoulders. Beautiful Lisa was all stomach, and the beautiful Norman all bosom. Mademoiselle Saget, in her earlier life, must have certainly lost some opportunity to fatten herself, for she detested the Fat, while, at the same time, she despised the Thin. As for Gavard, he was compromising his position as one of the Fat, and would end by becoming as flat as a bug.

"And what about Madame Francois?" Florent asked.

Claude seemed much embarra.s.sed by this question. He cast about for an answer, and at last stammered:

"Madame Francois, Madame Francois--well, no, I really don't know; I never thought about cla.s.sifying her. But she's a dear good soul, and that's quite sufficient. She's neither one of the Fat nor one of the Thin!"

They both laughed. They were now in front of the Arc de Triomphe. The sun, over by the hills of Suresnes, was so low on the horizon that their colossal shadows streaked the whiteness of the great structure even above the huge groups of statuary, like strokes made with a piece of charcoal. This increased Claude's merriment, he waved his arms and bent his body; and then, as he started on his way again, he said; "Did you notice--just as the sun set our two heads shot up to the sky!"

But Florent no longer smiled. Paris was grasping him again, that Paris which now frightened him so much, after having cost him so many tears at Cayenne. When he reached the markets night was falling, and there was a suffocating smell. He bent his head as he once more returned to the nightmare of endless food, whilst preserving the sweet yet sad recollection of that day of bright health odorous with the perfume of thyme.