His Masterpiece quotes

Then, farther down, against the other bank, were lighters, laden with coals, and barges full of mill stone, dominated as it were by the gigantic arm of a steam crane. But, suddenly, everything disappeared again.

Claude had an instinctive distrust of women⁠—that story of an accident, of a belated train and a brutal cabman, seemed to him a ridiculous invention.

At the second thunderclap the girl had shrunk farther still into her corner, absolutely terrified.

“Well, as it annoys you, let’s say no more about it. But if you only knew. I’ve got a figure in my picture yonder which doesn’t make headway at all, and you were just in the very note.

As for me, when it’s a question of painting, I’d kill father and mother, you know.

Well, you’ll excuse me, won’t you? And if you’d like me to be very nice, you’d just give me a few minutes more. No, no; keep quiet as you are; I only want the head—nothing but the head.

Was there aught else in art than the rendering of what one felt within oneself? Was not the whole of art reduced to placing a woman in front of one—and then portraying her according to the feelings that she inspired?

Was not a bunch of carrots⁠—yes, a bunch of carrots⁠—studied from nature, and painted unaffectedly, in a personal style, worth all the everlasting smudges of the School of Arts, all that tobacco-juice painting, cooked up according to certain given recipes?

The day would come when one carrot, originally rendered, would lead to a revolution. It was because of this that he now contented himself with going to the Boutin studio, a free studio, kept by a former model, in the Rue de la Huchette.

Was not a bunch of carrots—yes, a bunch of carrots—studied from nature, and painted unaffectedly, in a personal style, worth all the everlasting smudges of the School of Arts, all that tobacco-juice painting, cooked up according to certain given recipes?

The day would come when one carrot, originally rendered, would lead to a revolution.

It was because of this that he now contented himself with going to the Boutin studio, a free studio, kept by a former model, in the Rue de la Huchette.

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.”

And now the sun was setting, shadows began to darken the studio, which in the gloaming assumed a most melancholy aspect.

When the light went down like this on the crisis of a bad day’s work, it seemed to Claude as if the sun would never rise again, but had forever carried life and all the jubilant gaiety of colour away.

“Come,” implored Sandoz, with all the gentleness of brotherly compassion. “Come, there’s a good fellow.”

With the bold assurance of their twenty summers, these young fellows took possession of the foot pavement.

The moment they were together trumpets seemed to sound in advance of them; they seized upon Paris and quietly dropped it into their pockets.

There was no longer the slightest doubt about their victory; they freely displayed their threadbare coats and old shoes, like destined conquerors of tomorrow who disdained bagatelles, and had only to take the trouble to become the masters of all the luxury surrounding them.

Claude, quivering with excitement, kept saying: “

Ah! Paris! It’s ours. We have only to take it.

”

“

Ah! life! life! to feel it and portray it in its reality, to love it for itself, to behold in it the only real, lasting, and changing beauty, without any idiotic idea of ennobling it by mutilation.

To understand that all so-called ugliness is nothing but the mark of individual character, to create real men and endow them with life—yes, that’s the only way to become a god!”

“Well, nothing; some little things. But I shan’t exhibit this time. I should like to find a telling subject.

Ah, you fellows are happy at still being at the bottom of the hill.

A man has good legs then, he feels so plucky when it’s a question of getting up. But when once he is atop, the deuce take it! the worries begin.

And as he finally entered the room, he beheld a vast, swarming, closely packed crowd pressing eagerly in front of his picture. All the laughter arose, spread, and ended there.

And it was his picture that was being laughed at.

“Eh!” repeated Jory, triumphantly, “there’s a success for you.”

… and some puerility of effort in his work, but on the other hand what a pretty general tone, what a play of light he had thrown into it, a silvery grey light, fine and diffuse, brightened by all the dancing sunbeams of the open air.

It was as if a window had been suddenly opened amidst all the old bituminous cookery of art, amidst all the stewing sauces of tradition, and the sun came in and the walls smiled under that invasion of springtide.

The light note of his picture, the bluish tinge that people had been railing at, flashed out among the other paintings also. Was this not the expected dawn, a new aurora rising on art?

Then Claude turned round to Fagerolles, and surprised him by this tardy reply:

“A fellow can only be an idiot according to his own lights, my dear chap, and it looks as if I am going to remain one. So much the better for you if you are clever!”

Fagerolles at once patted him on the shoulder, like a chum who had only been in fun, and Claude allowed Sandoz to take his arm. They led him off at last.

Nothing broke the stillness but the sound of song coming from a clump of verdure behind the café; there was some rehearsal at the Concert de l’Horloge, for one heard the sentimental voice of a girl trying a love-song.

“Ah! how they amused me, the idiots!” exclaimed Claude, in a last burst. “Do you know, I wouldn’t take a hundred thousand francs for my day’s pleasure!”

Then he relapsed into silence, thoroughly exhausted. Nobody had any saliva left; silence reigned; they all shivered in the icy gust that swept by. And they separated in a sort of bewilderment, shaking hands in a tired fashion. Dubuche was going to dine out;

Then she, with both hands, raised his face to her lips in a transport of passion. She kissed him, and with her warm breath she blew to his very heart the words: “Be quiet, be quiet, I love you!”

They adored each other; it was inevitable.

Near them, on the centre of the table, the lilac she had sent him that morning embalmed the night air, and, alone shiny with lingering light, the scattered particles of gold leaf, wafted from the frame of the big picture, twinkled like a swarming of …

“And so now you’re married?”

“Well,” replied the painter without hesitation, “it looks like it since I’m with my wife.”

The lunch was exquisite: the omelette overdone, the sausages too greasy, and the bread so hard that he had to cut it into fingers for Christine lest she should hurt her wrist.

Sandoz had pleased her at once with his good-natured air, his sound friendship, the fatherly sympathy with which he looked at her. Tears of emotion came to her eyes as he kept both her hands in his, saying:

“It is very good of you to love Claude, and you must love each other always, for love is, after all, the best thing in life.”

Then, bending to kiss the little one, whom she had on her arm, he added: “So there’s one already!”

That’s my idea! Is it not farcical that some should constantly and exclusively study the functions of the brain on the pretext that the brain alone is the noble part of our organism?

Thought, thought, confound it all! thought is the product of the whole body.

Let them try to make a brain think by itself alone; see what becomes of the nobleness of the brain when the stomach is ailing! No, no, it’s idiotic; there is no philosophy nor science in it!

and, to hide how much he felt moved, he added, roughly, with a sweeping gesture that took in the whole scene around:

“How idiotic it is! a soul for every one of us, when there is that big soul there!”

Claude, who had disappeared amid the grass, had not stirred. After a fresh spell of silence he summed up everything:

Claude, who had watched him writing, turned to the other in amazement.

“We no longer speak to one another; we write,” said the sculptor, quietly.

“Yes.”

Claude left off laughing.

Ah! misery, how discouraging it was!

how could he show himself hard on those whom it crushed? He walked about the studio, no longer vexed at finding models weakened by concessions to middle-class taste; he even felt tolerant with regard to that hideous bust.

“

I have told you a score of times that one was forever beginning one’s career afresh, that joy did not consist in having reached the summit, but in the climbing, in the gaiety of scaling the heights.

Only, you don’t understand, you cannot understand; a man must have passed through it. Just remember! You hope for everything, you dream of everything; it is the hour of boundless illusions, and your legs are so strong that the most fatiguing roads seem short;

no fresh hope inflames you; there is nothing left but to die. And yet you still cling on, you won’t admit that it’s all up with you, you obstinately persist in trying to produce—just as old men cling to love with painful, ignoble efforts.

Ah! a man ought to have the courage and the pride to strangle himself before his last masterpiece!

”

… who remained as obstinate as regards his habits of friendship, as regards his habits of work, as radiant at being able to receive his friends at the board of his new home as he had formerly been, when sharing his frugal bachelor fare with them.

A dream of eternal friendship made him changeless.

Thursdays similar one to another followed and followed on until the furthest stages of their lives. All of them were eternally together, all started at the selfsame hour, and participated in the same triumph!

… 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?

Such painting could only lead to martyrdom. He, amidst their praises, understood well enough the rupture that was taking place, and when the hanging committee had once more closed the Salon against him, he dolorously exclaimed, in a moment of lucidity:

“All right; it’s an understood thing⁠—I’ll die at the task.”

However, although his obstinate courage seemed to increase, he now and then gradually relapsed into his former doubts, consumed by the struggle he was waging with nature.

But his displeasure increased on seeing that Christine’s eyes were wide open. He felt inclined to complain of it. However, after some random remarks, he suddenly exclaimed:

“The most surprising thing is that her trunk wasn’t hurt!”

“What do you mean?” asked Christine, in amazement.

She surely knew him, said he; he became a downright brute when he was at work. Then he bent over and embraced her. But it was as if something irreparable had taken place, as if something had forever snapped, leaving a void between them.

The formality of marriage seemed to have killed love.

If he had escaped her when she, all alone, cried her eyes out in the Rue de Douai, if he lingered till late in the Rue Tourlaque, fascinated as by a mistress, perhaps now that she was present she might regain her hold over him.

Ah, painting, painting! in what jealous hatred she held it!

Hers was no longer the revolt of a girl of the bourgeoisie, who painted neatly in watercolours, against independent, brutal, magnificent art.

It is a simple question of temperament; some women would die if they failed to please. But, to my thinking, insult is a very good medicine to take; unpopularity is a very manly school to be brought up in.

Nothing keeps one in such good health and strength as the hooting of a crowd of imbeciles.

It suffices that a man can say that he has given his life’s blood to his work; that he expects neither immediate justice nor serious attention;

How can a man be sufficiently wanting in self-doubt as to believe in himself? It absolutely amazes me to see men, who furiously deny talent to everybody else, lose all critical acumen, all common sense, when it becomes a question of their own bastard creations.

Why, a book is always very ugly. To like it one mustn’t have had a hand in the cooking of it.

I say nothing of the jugsful of insults that are showered upon one. Instead of annoying, they rather encourage me. I see men who are upset by attacks, who feel a humiliating craving to win sympathy. It is a simple question of temperament;

He was thoroughly moved; the words stuck in his throat; he was obliged to draw breath for a moment before delivering himself of this passionate cry in which all his impenitent lyricism took wing:

“Ah, life! a second span of life, who shall give it to me, that work may rob me of it again⁠—that I may die of it once more?”

It had now become quite dark; the mother’s rigid silhouette was no longer visible; the hoarse breathing of the child sounded amidst the obscurity like a terrible and distant signal of distress, uprising from the streets.

She lighted it and came back looking very pale, casting a glance of hatred and fear at the picture. It was not to go then? The abomination was to begin once more!

“I’ll set to work at it again,” repeated Claude, “and it shall kill me, it shall kill my wife, my child, the whole lot; but, by heaven, it shall be a masterpiece!”

Christine sat down again; they approached Jacques, who had thrown the clothes off once more with his feverish little hands. He was still breathing heavily, lying quite inert, his head buried in the pillow like a weight, with which the bed seemed to creak.

When Christine rose from her knees, she found him thus occupied. Then, bursting into tears again, she merely said:

“Ah! you can paint him now, he’ll never stir again.”

For five hours Claude kept at it, and on the second day, when Sandoz came back with him from the cemetery, after the funeral, he shuddered with pity and admiration at the sight of the small canvas.

and the supreme skill of the painter lay in his pretended audacity, in a mendacious semblance of forcible treatment which just sufficed to send the multitude into ecstasies.

It was like a storm in a cream-jug!

Claude, being unable to approach, listened to the remarks around him. At last there was a man who depicted real truth! He did not press his points like those fools of the new school; he knew how to convey everything without showing anything. Ah!

… was only cognisant of the vogue which that youngster, unworthy of cleaning his palette, had so suddenly and easily acquired, that vogue which seemed to be pushing him, Bongrand, into oblivion—he who had struggled for ten years before he had succeeded in making himself known.

Ah! when the new generations bury a man, if they only knew what tears of blood they make him shed in death!

However, as he had remained silent, he was seized with the fear that he might have let his suffering be divined. Was he falling to the baseness of envy? Anger with himself made him raise his head—a man should die erect.

But Claude suffered still more from the loneliness of his work. Astonishment and disappointment made him look for the crowd, the rush which he had anticipated. Why was he not hooted?

Ah! the insults of yore, the mocking, the indignation that had rent his heart, but made him live! No, nothing more, not even a passing expectoration: this was death.

The visitors filed rapidly through the long gallery, seized with boredom. There were merely some people in front of the Opening of the Chamber, where they collected to read the inscriptions, and show each other the deputies’ heads.

“

What do I care if I have made them all, when I haven’t made myself?

See here, it’s too big an affair for me, and that’s what stifles me.”

That exclamation summed up all the astonishment that the affair caused him, all the recollections that occurred to him of Mahoudeau’s shop. That Jory, why, he could still hear him talking about Mathilde in an abominable manner; and yet he had married her!

It was really stupid for a fellow to speak badly of a woman, for he never knew if he might not end by marrying her some day or other!

However, Jory was perfectly serene, his memory was dead, he never allowed himself an allusion to the past, never showed the slightest embarrassment when his comrades’ eyes were turned on him. Besides, Mathilde seemed to be a newcomer.

“

Goodbye; try to get out of worry! As for me, I’ve spoilt my life.

”

“Bah! what does it matter? Well, there’s nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman.

When the Earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won’t add one atom to its dust.

”

and I refer to brother writers who possess self-respect; I leave the fools and the scoundrels on one side.

For a man to be able to work on pluckily, it is best for him to expect neither good faith nor justice. To be in the right he must begin by dying.

”

“Oh, let it be! It’s the natural order of things,” replied Sandoz, quietly. “

Now that my enemies are beginning to praise me, it’s only proper that my friends should attack me.

”

Oh! I’ve had enough of it, I prefer not to paint any more. All the same, if I had seen clearly in former times, I shouldn’t have associated with him.”

It was a stampede, the snapping of the last ties, in their stupefaction at suddenly finding that they were strangers and enemies, after a long youth of fraternity together.

Life had disbanded them on the road, and the great dissimilarity of their characters stood revealed;

But he interrupted her with a despairing gesture. What! was that, then, the end of his long illusion, that dream of eternity which had made him set happiness in a few friendships, formed in childhood, and shared until extreme old age?

Ah! what a wretched band, what a final rending, what a terrible balance-sheet to weep over after that bankruptcy of the human heart!

And he grew astonished on thinking of the friends who had fallen off by the roadside, of the great affections lost on the way, of the others unceasingly changing around himself, in whom he found no change.

Would his wife and himself have to resign themselves to live as in a desert, to cloister themselves in utter hatred of the world? Ought they rather to throw their doors wide open to a throng of strangers and indifferent folk?

By degrees a certainty dawned in the depths of his grief: everything ended and nothing began again in life.

He seemed to yield to evidence, and, heaving a big sigh, exclaimed:

“Well, no, I won’t leave you alone! I’ve had enough of it. I’ll tell you what’s stifling me, what has been killing me ever since I have known you.

Ah! that painting, yes, your painting, she’s the murderess who has poisoned my life!

I had a presentiment of it on the first day; your painting frightened me as if it were a monster. I found it abominable, execrable; but then, one’s cowardly, I loved you too much not to like it also;

And no more worrying about chimeras, nothing but the delight of living! Doesn’t it suffice that I love you, that I adore you, that I am willing to be your servant, your slave, to exist solely for your pleasures?

Do you hear, I love you, I love you? there is nothing else, and that is enough⁠—I love you!

”