After this they all chatted in groups here and there. The worthy Meinsius was with Madame Arnoux on an easy chair close beside the fire.
She was leaning forward towards his ear; their heads were just touching, and Frederick would have been glad to become deaf, infirm, and ugly if, instead, he had an ill.u.s.trious name and white hair--in short, if he only happened to possess something which would install him in such intimate a.s.sociation with her. He began once more to eat out his heart, furious at the idea of being so young a man.
But she came into the corner of the drawing-room in which he was sitting, asked him whether he was acquainted with any of the guests, whether he was fond of painting, how long he had been a student in Paris. Every word that came out of her mouth seemed to Frederick something entirely new, an exclusive appendage of her personality. He gazed attentively at the fringes of her head-dress, the ends of which caressed her bare shoulder, and he was unable to take away his eyes; he plunged his soul into the whiteness of that feminine flesh, and yet he did not venture to raise his eyelids to glance at her higher, face to face.
Rosenwald interrupted them, begging of Madame Arnoux to sing something.
He played a prelude, she waited, her lips opened slightly, and a sound, pure, long-continued, silvery, ascended into the air.
Frederick did not understand a single one of the Italian words. The song began with a grave measure, something like church music, then in a more animated strain, with a crescendo movement, it broke into repeated bursts of sound, then suddenly subsided, and the melody came back again in a tender fashion with a wide and easy swing.
She stood beside the keyboard with her arms hanging down and a far-off look on her face. Sometimes, in order to read the music, she advanced her forehead for a moment and her eyelashes moved to and fro. Her contralto voice in the low notes took a mournful intonation which had a chilling effect on the listener, and then her beautiful head, with those great brows of hers, bent over her shoulder; her bosom swelled; her eyes were wide apart; her neck, from which roulades made their escape, fell back as if under aerial kisses. She flung out three sharp notes, came down again, cast forth one higher still, and, after a silence, finished with an organ-point.
Rosenwald did not leave the piano. He continued playing, to amuse himself. From time to time a guest stole away. At eleven o"clock, as the last of them were going off, Arnoux went out along with Pellerin, under the pretext of seeing him home. He was one of those people who say that they are ill when they do not "take a turn" after dinner. Madame Arnoux had made her way towards the anteroom. Dittmer and Hussonnet bowed to her. She stretched out her hand to them. She did the same to Frederick; and he felt, as it were, something penetrating every particle of his skin.
He quitted his friends. He wished to be alone. His heart was overflowing. Why had she offered him her hand? Was it a thoughtless act, or an encouragement? "Come now! I am mad!" Besides, what did it matter, when he could now visit her entirely at his ease, live in the very atmosphere she breathed?
The streets were deserted. Now and then a heavy wagon would roll past, shaking the pavements. The houses came one after another with their grey fronts, their closed windows; and he thought with disdain of all those human beings who lived behind those walls without having seen her, and not one of whom dreamed of her existence. He had no consciousness of his surroundings, of s.p.a.ce, of anything, and striking the ground with his heel, rapping with his walking-stick on the shutters of the shops, he kept walking on continually at random, in a state of excitement, carried away by his emotions. Suddenly he felt himself surrounded by a circle of damp air, and found that he was on the edge of the quays.
The gas-lamps shone in two straight lines, which ran on endlessly, and long red flames flickered in the depths of the water. The waves were slate-coloured, while the sky, which was of clearer hue, seemed to be supported by vast ma.s.ses of shadow that rose on each side of the river.
The darkness was intensified by buildings whose outlines the eye could not distinguish. A luminous haze floated above the roofs further on. All the noises of the night had melted into a single monotonous hum.
He stopped in the middle of the Pont Neuf, and, taking off his hat and exposing his chest, he drank in the air. And now he felt as if something that was inexhaustible were rising up from the very depths of his being, an afflux of tenderness that enervated him, like the motion of the waves under his eyes. A church-clock slowly struck one, like a voice calling out to him.
Then, he was seized with one of those shuddering sensations of the soul in which one seems to be transported into a higher world. He felt, as it were, endowed with some extraordinary faculty, the aim of which he could not determine. He seriously asked himself whether he would be a great painter or a great poet; and he decided in favour of painting, for the exigencies of this profession would bring him into contact with Madame Arnoux. So, then, he had found his vocation! The object of his existence was now perfectly clear, and there could be no mistake about the future.
When he had shut his door, he heard some one snoring in the dark closet near his apartment. It was his friend. He no longer bestowed a thought on him.
His own face presented itself to his view in the gla.s.s. He thought himself handsome, and for a minute he remained gazing at himself.
CHAPTER V.
"Love Knoweth No Laws."
Before twelve o"clock next day he had bought a box of colours, paintbrushes, and an easel. Pellerin consented to give him lessons, and Frederick brought him to his lodgings to see whether anything was wanting among his painting utensils.
Deslauriers had come back, and the second armchair was occupied by a young man. The clerk said, pointing towards him:
""Tis he! There he is! Senecal!" Frederick disliked this young man. His forehead was heightened by the way in which he wore his hair, cut straight like a brush. There was a certain hard, cold look in his grey eyes; and his long black coat, his entire costume, savoured of the pedagogue and the ecclesiastic.
They first discussed topics of the hour, amongst others the _Stabat_ of Rossini. Senecal, in answer to a question, declared that he never went to the theatre.
Pellerin opened the box of colours.
"Are these all for you?" said the clerk.
"Why, certainly!"
"Well, really! What a notion!" And he leaned across the table, at which the mathematical tutor was turning over the leaves of a volume of Louis Blanc. He had brought it with him, and was reading pa.s.sages from it in low tones, while Pellerin and Frederick were examining together the palette, the knife, and the bladders; then the talk came round to the dinner at Arnoux"s.
"The picture-dealer, is it?" asked Senecal. "A nice gentleman, truly!"
"Why, now?" said Pellerin. Senecal replied:
"A man who makes money by political turpitude!"
And he went on to talk about a well-known lithograph, in which the Royal Family was all represented as being engaged in edifying occupations: Louis Philippe had a copy of the Code in his hand; the Queen had a Catholic prayer-book; the Princesses were embroidering; the Duc de Nemours was girding on a sword; M. de Joinville was showing a map to his young brothers; and at the end of the apartment could be seen a bed with two divisions. This picture, which was ent.i.tled "A Good Family," was a source of delight to commonplace middle-cla.s.s people, but of grief to patriots.
Pellerin, in a tone of vexation, as if he had been the producer of this work himself, observed by way of answer that every opinion had some value. Senecal protested: Art should aim exclusively at promoting morality amongst the ma.s.ses! The only subjects that ought to be reproduced were those which impelled people to virtuous actions; all others were injurious.
"But that depends on the execution," cried Pellerin. "I might produce masterpieces."
"So much the worse for you, then; you have no right----"
"What?"
"No, monsieur, you have no right to excite my interest in matters of which I disapprove. What need have we of laborious trifles, from which it is impossible to derive any benefit--those Venuses, for instance, with all your landscapes? I see there no instruction for the people!
Show us rather their miseries! arouse enthusiasm in us for their sacrifices! Ah, my G.o.d! there is no lack of subjects--the farm, the workshop----"
Pellerin stammered forth his indignation at this, and, imagining that he had found an argument:
"Moliere, do you accept him?"
"Certainly!" said Senecal. "I admire him as the precursor of the French Revolution."
"Ha! the Revolution! What art! Never was there a more pitiable epoch!"
"None greater, Monsieur!"
Pellerin folded his arms, and looking at him straight in the face:
"You have the appearance of a famous member of the National Guard!"
His opponent, accustomed to discussions, responded:
"I am not, and I detest it just as much as you. But with such principles we corrupt the crowd. This sort of thing, however, is profitable to the Government. It would not be so powerful but for the complicity of a lot of rogues of that sort."
The painter took up the defence of the picture-dealer, for Senecal"s opinions exasperated him. He even went so far as to maintain that Arnoux was really a man with a heart of gold, devoted to his friends, deeply attached to his wife.
"Oho! if you offered him a good sum, he would not refuse to let her serve as a model."
Frederick turned pale.
"So then, he has done you some great injury, Monsieur?"
"Me? no! I saw him once at a cafe with a friend. That"s all."