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Title: The Hidden Masterpiece
Author: Honore de Balzac
Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
Release Date: December, 1998 [Etext #1553]
Posting Date: February 26, 2010
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIDDEN MASTERPIECE ***
Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
THE HIDDEN MASTERPIECE
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
THE HIDDEN MASTERPIECE
CHAPTER I
On a cold morning in December, towards the close of the year 1612, a
young man, whose clothing betrayed his poverty, was standing before the
door of a house in the Rue des Grands-Augustine, in Paris. After walking
to and fro for some time with the hesitation of a lover who fears
to approach his mistress, however complying she may be, he ended by
crossing the threshold and asking if Maitre Francois Porbus were within.
At the affirmative answer of an old woman who was sweeping out one of
the lower rooms the young man slowly mounted the stairway, stopping from
time to time and hesitating, like a newly fledged courier doubtful as to
what sort of reception the king might grant him.
When he reached the upper landing of the spiral ascent, he paused a
moment before laying hold of a grotesque knocker which ornamented the
door of the atelier where the famous painter of Henry IV.--neglected by
Marie de Medicis for Rubens--was probably at work. The young man felt
the strong sensation which vibrates in the soul of great artists when,
in the flush of youth and of their ardor for art, they approach a man of
genius or a masterpiece. In all human sentiments there are, as it were,
primeval flowers bred of noble enthusiasms, which droop and fade from
year to year, till joy is but a memory and glory a lie. Amid such
fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the young passion of an
artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his destined fame and
woe,--a passion daring yet timid, full of vague confidence and sure
discouragement. Is there a man, slender in fortune, rich in his
spring-time of genius, whose heart has not beaten loudly as he
approached a master of his art? If there be, that man will forever lack
some heart-string, some touch, I know not what, of his brush, some
fibre in his creations, some sentiment in his poetry. When braggarts,
self-satisfied and in love with themselves, step early into the fame
which belongs rightly to their future achievements, they are men
of genius only in the eyes of fools. If talent is to be measured by
youthful shyness, by that indefinable modesty which men born to glory
lose in the practice of their art, as a pretty woman loses hers among
the artifices of coquetry, then this unknown young man might claim to
be possessed of genuine merit. The habit of success lessens doubt; and
modesty, perhaps, is doubt.
Worn down with poverty and discouragement, and dismayed at this moment
by his own presumption, the young neophyte might not have dared to enter
the presence of the master to whom we owe our admirable portrait of
Henry IV., if chance had not thrown an unexpected assistance in his way.
An old man mounted the spiral stairway. The oddity of his dress, the
magnificence of his lace ruffles, the solid assurance of his deliberate
step, led the youth to assume that this remarkable personage must be the
patron, or at least the intimate friend, of the painter. He drew back
into a corner of the landing and made room for the new-comer; looking at
him attentively and hoping to find either the frank good-nature of
the artistic temperament, or the serviceable disposition of those
who promote the arts. But on the contrary he fancied he saw something
diabolical in the expression of the old man's face,--something, I know
not what, which has the quality of alluring the artistic mind.
Imagine a bald head, the brow full and prominent and falling with deep
projection over a little flattened nose turned up at the end like the
noses of Rabelais and Socrates; a laughing, wrinkled mouth; a short
chin boldly chiselled and garnished with a gray beard cut into a point;
sea-green eyes, faded perhaps by age, but whose pupils, contrasting
with the pearl-white balls on which they floated, cast at times
magnetic glances of anger or enthusiasm. The face in other respects
was singularly withered and worn by the weariness of old age, and still
more, it would seem, by the action of thoughts which had undermined both
soul and body. The eyes had lost their lashes, and the eyebrows were
scarcely traced along the projecting arches where they belonged. Imagine
such a head upon a lean and feeble body, surround it with lace of
dazzling whiteness worked in meshes like a fish-slice, festoon the black
velvet doublet of the old man with a heavy gold chain, and you will
have a faint idea of the exterior of this strange individual, to whose
appearance the dusky light of the landing lent fantastic coloring. You
might have thought that a canvas of Rembrandt without its frame had
walked silently up the stairway, bringing with it the dark atmosphere
which was the sign-manual of the great master. The old man cast a look
upon the youth which was full of sagacity; then he rapped three times
upon the door, and said, when it was opened by a man in feeble health,
apparently about forty years of age, "Good-morning, maitre."
Porbus bowed respectfully, and made way for his guest, allowing the
youth to pass in at the same time, under the impression that he came
with the old man, and taking no further notice of him; all the less
perhaps because the neophyte stood still beneath the spell which holds a
heaven-born painter as he sees for the first time an atelier filled with
the materials and instruments of his art. Daylight came from a casement
in the roof and fell, focussed as it were, upon a canvas which rested on
an easel in the middle of the room, and which bore, as yet, only three
or four chalk lines. The light thus concentrated did not reach the dark
angles of the vast atelier; but a few wandering reflections gleamed
through the russet shadows on the silvered breastplate of a horseman's
cuirass of the fourteenth century as it hung from the wall, or sent
sharp lines of light upon the carved and polished cornice of a dresser
which held specimens of rare pottery and porcelains, or touched with
sparkling points the rough-grained texture of ancient gold-brocaded
curtains, flung in broad folds about the room to serve the painter
as models for his drapery. Anatomical casts in plaster, fragments
and torsos of antique goddesses amorously polished by the kisses of
centuries, jostled each other upon shelves and brackets. Innumerable
sketches, studies in the three crayons, in ink, and in red chalk
covered the walls from floor to ceiling; color-boxes, bottles of oil and
turpentine, easels and stools upset or standing at right angles, left
but a narrow pathway to the circle of light thrown from the window in
the roof, which fell full on the pale face of Porbus and on the ivory
skull of his singular visitor.
The attention of the young man was taken exclusively by a picture
destined to become famous after those days of tumult and revolution,
and which even then was precious in the sight of certain opinionated
individuals to whom we owe the preservation of the divine afflatus
through the dark days when the life of art was in jeopardy. This noble
picture represents the Mary of Egypt as she prepares to pay for her
passage by the ship. It is a masterpiece, painted for Marie de Medicis,
and afterwards sold by her in the days of her distress.
"I like your saint," said the old man to Porbus, "and I will give you
ten golden crowns over and above the queen's offer; but as to entering
into competition with her--the devil!"
"You do like her, then?"
"As for that," said the old man, "yes, and no. The good woman is well
set-up, but--she is not living. You young men think you have done all
when you have drawn the form correctly, and put everything in
place according to the laws of anatomy. You color the features with
flesh-tones, mixed beforehand on your palette,--taking very good care to
shade one side of the face darker than the other; and because you draw
now and then from a nude woman standing on a table, you think you can
copy nature; you fancy yourselves painters, and imagine that you have
got at the secret of God's creations! Pr-r-r-r!--To be a great poet it
is not enough to know the rules of syntax and write faultless grammar.
Look at your saint, Porbus. At first sight she is admirable; but at the
very next glance we perceive that she is glued to the canvas, and that
we cannot walk round her. She is a silhouette with only one side,
a semblance cut in outline, an image that can't turn nor change her
position. I feel no air between this arm and the background of the
picture; space and depth are wanting. All is in good perspective; the
atmospheric gradations are carefully observed, and yet in spite of your
conscientious labor I cannot believe that this beautiful body has the
warm breath of life. If I put my hand on that firm, round throat I shall
find it cold as marble. No, no, my friend, blood does not run beneath
that ivory skin; the purple tide of life does not swell those veins, nor
stir those fibres which interlace like net-work below the translucent
amber of the brow and breast. This part palpitates with life, but that
other part is not living; life and death jostle each other in every
detail. Here, you have a woman; there, a statue; here again, a dead
body. Your creation is incomplete. You have breathed only a part of your
soul into the well-beloved work. The torch of Prometheus went out in
your hands over and over again; there are several parts of your painting
on which the celestial flame never shone."
"But why is it so, my dear master?" said Porbus humbly, while the young
man could hardly restrain a strong desire to strike the critic.
"Ah! that is the question," said the little old man. "You are floating
between two systems,--between drawing and color, between the patient
phlegm and honest stiffness of the old Dutch masters and the dazzling
warmth and abounding joy of the Italians. You have tried to follow, at
one and the same time, Hans Holbein and Titian; Albrecht Durier and
Paul Veronese. Well, well! it was a glorious ambition, but what is
the result? You have neither the stern attraction of severity nor the
deceptive magic of the chiaroscuro. See! at this place the rich, clear
color of Titian has forced out the skeleton outline of Albrecht Durier,
as molten bronze might burst and overflow a slender mould. Here and
there the outline has resisted the flood, and holds back the magnificent
torrent of Venetian color. Your figure is neither perfectly well
painted nor perfectly well drawn; it bears throughout the signs of this
unfortunate indecision. If you did not feel that the fire of your genius
was hot enough to weld into one the rival methods, you ought to have
chosen honestly the one or the other, and thus attained the unity which
conveys one aspect, at least, of life. As it is, you are true only
on your middle plane. Your outlines are false; they do not round upon
themselves; they suggest nothing behind them. There is truth here," said
the old man, pointing to the bosom of the saint; "and here," showing the
spot where the shoulder ended against the background; "but there," he
added, returning to the throat, "it is all false. Do not inquire into
the why and wherefore. I should fill you with despair."
The old man sat down on a stool and held his head in his hands for some
minutes in silence.
"Master," said Porbus at length, "I studied that throat from the nude;
but, to our sorrow, there are effects in nature which become false or
impossible when placed on canvas."
"The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to represent it. You
are not an abject copyist, but a poet," cried the old man, hastily
interrupting Porbus with a despotic gesture. "If it were not so, a
sculptor could reach the height of his art by merely moulding a
woman. Try to mould the hand of your mistress, and see what you will
get,--ghastly articulations, without the slightest resemblance to her
living hand; you must have recourse to the chisel of a man who, without
servilely copying that hand, can give it movement and life. It is our
mission to seize the mind, soul, countenance of things and beings.
Effects! effects! what are they? the mere accidents of the life, and not
the life itself. A hand,--since I have taken that as an example,--a
hand is not merely a part of the body, it is far more; it expresses and
carries on a thought which we must seize and render. Neither the painter
nor the poet nor the sculptor should separate the effect from the cause,
for they are indissolubly one. The true struggle of art lies there. Many
a painter has triumphed through instinct without knowing this theory of
art as a theory.
"Yes," continued the old man vehemently, "you draw a woman, but you do
not _see_ her. That is not the way to force an entrance into the arcana
of Nature. Your hand reproduces, without an action of your mind, the
model you copied under a master. You do not search out the secrets
of form, nor follow its windings and evolutions with enough love and
perseverance. Beauty is solemn and severe, and cannot be attained in
that way; we must wait and watch its times and seasons, and clasp it
firmly ere it yields to us. Form is a Proteus less easily captured, more
skilful to double and escape, than the Proteus of fable; it is only
at the cost of struggle that we compel it to come forth in its true
aspects. You young men are content with the first glimpse you get of it;
or, at any rate, with the second or the third. This is not the spirit
of the great warriors of art,--invincible powers, not misled by
will-o'-the-wisps, but advancing always until they force Nature to lie
bare in her divine integrity. That was Raphael's method," said the old
man, lifting his velvet cap in homage to the sovereign of art; "his
superiority came from the inward essence which seems to break from the
inner to the outer of his figures. Form with him was what it is with
us,--a medium by which to communicate ideas, sensations, feelings; in
short, the infinite poesy of being. Every figure is a world; a portrait,
whose original stands forth like a sublime vision, colored with the
rainbow tints of light, drawn by the monitions of an inward voice, laid
bare by a divine finger which points to the past of its whole existence
as the source of its given expression. You clothe your women with
delicate skins and glorious draperies of hair, but where is the blood
which begets the passion or the peace of their souls, and is the cause
of what you call 'effects'? Your saint is a dark woman; but this, my
poor Porbus, belongs to a fair one. Your figures are pale, colored
phantoms, which you present to our eyes; and you call that painting!
art! Because you make something which looks more like a woman than a
house, you think you have touched the goal; proud of not being obliged
to write "currus venustus" or "pulcher homo" on the frame of your
picture, you think yourselves majestic artists like our great
forefathers. Ha, ha! you have not got there yet, my little men; you
will use up many a crayon and spoil many a canvas before you reach that
height. Undoubtedly a woman carries her head this way and her petticoats
that way; her eyes soften and droop with just that look of resigned
gentleness; the throbbing shadow of the eyelashes falls exactly thus
upon her cheek. That is it, and--that is _not it_. What lacks? A mere
nothing; but that mere nothing is _all_. You have given the shadow of
life, but you have not given its fulness, its being, its--I know not
what--soul, perhaps, which floats vaporously about the tabernacle of
flesh; in short, that flower of life which Raphael and Titian culled.
Start from the point you have now attained, and perhaps you may yet
paint a worthy picture; you grew weary too soon. Mediocrity will extol
your work; but the true artist smiles. O Mabuse! O my master!" added
this singular person, "you were a thief; you have robbed us of your
life, your knowledge, your art! But at least," he resumed after a pause,
"this picture is better than the paintings of that rascally Rubens, with
his mountains of Flemish flesh daubed with vermilion, his cascades of
red hair, and his hurly-burly of color. At any rate, you have got the
elements of color, drawing, and sentiment,--the three essential parts of
art."
"But the saint is sublime, good sir!" cried the young man in a loud
voice, waking from a deep reverie. "These figures, the saint and the
boatman, have a subtile meaning which the Italian painters cannot give.
I do not know one of them who could have invented that hesitation of the
boatman."
"Does the young fellow belong to you?" asked Porbus of the old man.
"Alas, maitre, forgive my boldness," said the neophyte, blushing. "I am
all unknown; only a dauber by instinct. I have just come to Paris, that
fountain of art and science."
"Let us see what you can do," said Porbus, giving him a red crayon and a
piece of paper.
The unknown copied the saint with an easy turn of his hand.
"Oh! oh!" exclaimed the old man, "what is your name?"
The youth signed the drawing: Nicolas Poussin.
"Not bad for a beginner," said the strange being who had discoursed so
wildly. "I see that it is worth while to talk art before you. I don't
blame you for admiring Porbus's saint. It is a masterpiece for the world
at large; only those who are behind the veil of the holy of holies can
perceive its errors. But you are worthy of a lesson, and capable of
understanding it. I will show you how little is needed to turn that
picture into a true masterpiece. Give all your eyes and all your
attention; such a chance of instruction may never fall in your way
again. Your palette, Porbus."
Porbus fetched his palette and brushes. The little old man turned up
his cuffs with convulsive haste, slipped his thumb through the palette
charged with prismatic colors, and snatched, rather than took, the
handful of brushes which Porbus held out to him. As he did so his beard,
cut to a point, seemed to quiver with the eagerness of an incontinent
fancy; and while he filled his brush he muttered between his teeth:--
"Colors fit to fling out of the window with the man who ground
them,--crude, false, revolting! who can paint with them?"
Then he dipped the point of his brush with feverish haste into the
various tints, running through the whole scale with more rapidity
than the organist of a cathedral runs up the gamut of the "O Filii" at
Easter.
Porbus and Poussin stood motionless on either side of the easel, plunged
in passionate contemplation.
"See, young man," said the old man without turning round, "see how with
three or four touches and a faint bluish glaze you can make the air
circulate round the head of the poor saint, who was suffocating in that
thick atmosphere. Look how the drapery now floats, and you see that the
breeze lifts it; just now it looked like heavy linen held out by pins.
Observe that the satiny lustre I am putting on the bosom gives it the
plump suppleness of the flesh of a young girl. See how this tone of
mingled reddish-brown and ochre warms up the cold grayness of that large
shadow where the blood seemed to stagnate rather than flow. Young man,
young man! what I am showing you now no other master in the world can
teach you. Mabuse alone knew the secret of giving life to form. Mabuse
had but one pupil, and I am he. I never took a pupil, and I am an old
man now. You are intelligent enough to guess at what should follow from
the little that I shall show you to-day."
While he was speaking, the extraordinary old man was giving touches here
and there to all parts of the picture. Here two strokes of the brush,
there one, but each so telling that together they brought out a new
painting,--a painting steeped, as it were, in light. He worked with
such passionate ardor that the sweat rolled in great drops from his bald
brow; and his motions seemed to be jerked out of him with such rapidity
and impatience that the young Poussin fancied a demon, encased with the
body of this singular being, was working his hands fantastically like
those of a puppet without, or even against, the will of their owner. The
unnatural brightness of his eyes, the convulsive movements which seemed
the result of some mental resistance, gave to this fancy of the youth
a semblance of truth which reacted upon his lively imagination. The old
man worked on, muttering half to himself, half to his neophyte:--
"Paf! paf! paf! that is how we butter it on, young man. Ah! my little
pats, you are right; warm up that icy tone. Come, come!--pon, pon,
pon,--" he continued, touching up the spots where he had complained of a
lack of life, hiding under layers of color the conflicting methods, and
regaining the unity of tone essential to an ardent Egyptian.
"Now see, my little friend, it is only the last touches of the brush
that count for anything. Porbus put on a hundred; I have only put on one
or two. Nobody will thank us for what is underneath, remember that!"
At last the demon paused; the old man turned to Porbus and Poussin, who
stood mute with admiration, and said to them,--
"It is not yet equal to my Beautiful Nut-girl; still, one can put one's
name to such a work. Yes, I will sign it," he added, rising to fetch
a mirror in which to look at what he had done. "Now let us go and
breakfast. Come, both of you, to my house. I have some smoked ham and
good wine. Hey! hey! in spite of the degenerate times we will talk
painting; we are strong ourselves. Here is a little man," he continued,
striking Nicolas Poussin on the shoulder, "who has the faculty."
Observing the shabby cap of the youth, he pulled from his belt a
leathern purse from which he took two gold pieces and offered them to
him, saying,--
"I buy your drawing."
"Take them," said Porbus to Poussin, seeing that the latter trembled
and blushed with shame, for the young scholar had the pride of poverty;
"take them, he has the ransom of two kings in his pouch."
The three left the atelier and proceeded, talking all the way of art,
to a handsome wooden house standing near the Pont Saint-Michel, whose
window-casings and arabesque decoration amazed Poussin. The embryo
painter soon found himself in one of the rooms on the ground floor
seated, beside a good fire, at a table covered with appetizing dishes,
and, by unexpected good fortune, in company with two great artists who
treated him with kindly attention.
"Young man," said Porbus, observing that he was speechless, with his
eyes fixed on a picture, "do not look at that too long, or you will fall
into despair."
It was the Adam of Mabuse, painted by that wayward genius to enable him
to get out of the prison where his creditors had kept him so long. The
figure presented such fulness and force of reality that Nicolas Poussin
began to comprehend the meaning of the bewildering talk of the old man.
The latter looked at the picture with a satisfied but not enthusiastic
manner, which seemed to say, "I have done better myself."
"There is life in the form," he remarked. "My poor master surpassed
himself there; but observe the want of truth in the background. The
man is living, certainly; he rises and is coming towards us; but the
atmosphere, the sky, the air that we breathe, see, feel,--where are
they? Besides, that is only a man; and the being who came first from
the hand of God must needs have had something divine about him which
is lacking here. Mabuse said so himself with vexation in his sober
moments."
Poussin looked alternately at the old man and at Porbus with uneasy
curiosity. He turned to the latter as if to ask the name of their host,
but the painter laid a finger on his lips with an air of mystery, and
the young man, keenly interested, kept silence, hoping that sooner or
later some word of the conversation might enable him to guess the name
of the old man, whose wealth and genius were sufficiently attested by
the respect which Porbus showed him, and by the marvels of art heaped
together in the picturesque apartment.
Poussin, observing against the dark panelling of the wall a magnificent
portrait of a woman, exclaimed aloud, "What a magnificent Giorgione!"
"No," remarked the old man, "that is only one of my early daubs."
"Zounds!" cried Poussin naively; "are you the king of painters?"
The old man smiled, as if long accustomed to such homage. "Maitre
Frenhofer," said Porbus, "could you order up a little of your good Rhine
wine for me?"
"Two casks," answered the host; "one to pay for the pleasure of
looking at your pretty sinner this morning, and the other as a mark of
friendship."
"Ah! if I were not so feeble," resumed Porbus, "and if you would consent
to let me see your Beautiful Nut-girl, I too could paint some lofty
picture, grand and yet profound, where the forms should have the living
life."
"Show my work!" exclaimed the old man, with deep emotion. "No, no! I
have still to bring it to perfection. Yesterday, towards evening, I
thought it was finished. Her eyes were liquid, her flesh trembled, her
tresses waved--she breathed! And yet, though I have grasped the secret
of rendering on a flat canvas the relief and roundness of nature, this
morning at dawn I saw many errors. Ah! to attain that glorious result,
I have studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed and
lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like him,
great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear tones
of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,--remember
that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by means of
half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept diminishing little by
little, I was able to cast strong shadows deepening almost to blackness.
The shadows of ordinary painters are not of the same texture as their
tones of light. They are wood, brass, iron, anything you please except
flesh in shadow. We feel that if the figures changed position the shady
places would not be wiped off, and would remain dark spots which never
could be made luminous. I have avoided that blunder, though many of our
most illustrious painters have fallen into it. In my work you will see
whiteness beneath the opacity of the broadest shadow. Unlike the crowd
of ignoramuses, who fancy they draw correctly because they can paint one
good vanishing line, I have not dryly outlined my figures, nor brought
out superstitiously minute anatomical details; for, let me tell you, the
human body does not end off with a line. In that respect sculptors get
nearer to the truth of nature than we do. Nature is all curves, each
wrapping or overlapping another. To speak rigorously, there is no such
thing as drawing. Do not laugh, young man; no matter how strange that
saying seems to you, you will understand the reasons for it one of these
days. A line is a means by which man explains to himself the effect
of light upon a given object; but there is no such thing as a line in
nature, where all things are rounded and full. It is only in modelling
that we really draw,--in other words, that we detach things from their
surroundings and put them in their due relief. The proper distribution
of light can alone reveal the whole body. For this reason I do not
sharply define lineaments; I diffuse about their outline a haze of warm,
light half-tints, so that I defy any one to place a finger on the exact
spot where the parts join the groundwork of the picture. If seen near
by this sort of work has a woolly effect, and is wanting in nicety and
precision; but go a few steps off and the parts fall into place; they
take their proper form and detach themselves,--the body turns, the limbs
stand out, we feel the air circulating around them.
"Nevertheless," he continued, sadly, "I am not satisfied; there are
moments when I have my doubts. Perhaps it would be better not to sketch
a single line. I ask myself if I ought not to grasp the figure first by
its highest lights, and then work down to the darker portions. Is not
that the method of the sun, divine painter of the universe? O Nature,
Nature! who has ever caught thee in thy flights? Alas! the heights of
knowledge, like the depths of ignorance, lead to unbelief. I doubt my
work."
The old man paused, then resumed. "For ten years I have worked, young
man; but what are ten short years in the long struggle with Nature? We
do not know the type it cost Pygmalion to make the only statue that ever
walked--"
He fell into a reverie and remained, with fixed eyes, oblivious of all
about him, playing mechanically with his knife.
"See, he is talking to his own soul," said Porbus in a low voice.
The words acted like a spell on Nicolas Poussin, filling him with the
inexplicable curiosity of a true artist. The strange old man, with his
white eyes fixed in stupor, became to the wondering youth something more
than a man; he seemed a fantastic spirit inhabiting an unknown sphere,
and waking by its touch confused ideas within the soul. We can no more
define the moral phenomena of this species of fascination than we can
render in words the emotions excited in the heart of an exile by a song
which recalls his fatherland. The contempt which the old man affected
to pour upon the noblest efforts of art, his wealth, his manners,
the respectful deference shown to him by Porbus, his work guarded so
secretly,--a work of patient toil, a work no doubt of genius, judging by
the head of the Virgin which Poussin had so naively admired, and which,
beautiful beside even the Adam of Mabuse, betrayed the imperial touch of
a great artist,--in short, everything about the strange old man seemed
beyond the limits of human nature. The rich imagination of the youth
fastened upon the one perceptible and clear clew to the mystery of this
supernatural being,--the presence of the artistic nature, that wild
impassioned nature to which such mighty powers have been confided, which
too often abuses those powers, and drags cold reason and common souls,
and even lovers of art, over stony and arid places, where for such
there is neither pleasure nor instruction; while to the artistic soul
itself,--that white-winged angel of sportive fancy,--epics, works of
art, and visions rise along the way. It is a nature, an essence, mocking
yet kind, fruitful though destitute. Thus, for the enthusiastic Poussin,
the old man became by sudden transfiguration Art itself,--art with all
its secrets, its transports, and its dreams.
"Yes, my dear Porbus," said Frenhofer, speaking half in reverie, "I have
never yet beheld a perfect woman; a body whose outlines were faultless
and whose flesh-tints--Ah! where lives she?" he cried, interrupting his
own words; "where lives the lost Venus of the ancients, so long sought
for, whose scattered beauty we snatch by glimpses? Oh! to see for a
moment, a single moment, the divine completed nature,--the ideal,--I
would give my all of fortune. Yes; I would search thee out, celestial
Beauty! in thy farthest sphere. Like Orpheus, I would go down to hell to
win back the life of art--"
"Let us go," said Porbus to Poussin; "he neither sees nor hears us any
longer."
"Let us go to his atelier," said the wonder-struck young man.
"Oh! the old dragon has guarded the entrance. His treasure is out of our
reach. I have not waited for your wish or urging to attempt an assault
on the mystery."
"Mystery! then there is a mystery?"
"Yes," answered Porbus. "Frenhofer was the only pupil Mabuse was willing
to teach. He became the friend, saviour, father of that unhappy man, and
he sacrificed the greater part of his wealth to satisfy the mad passions
of his master. In return, Mabuse bequeathed to him the secret of relief,
the power of giving life to form,--that flower of nature, our perpetual
despair, which Mabuse had seized so well that once, having sold and
drunk the value of a flowered damask which he should have worn at
the entrance of Charles V., he made his appearance in a paper garment
painted to resemble damask. The splendor of the stuff attracted the
attention of the emperor, who, wishing to compliment the old drunkard,
laid a hand upon his shoulder and discovered the deception. Frenhofer is
a man carried away by the passion of his art; he sees above and beyond
what other painters see. He has meditated deeply on color and the
absolute truth of lines; but by dint of much research, much thought,
much study, he has come to doubt the object for which he is searching.
In his hours of despair he fancies that drawing does not exist, and that
lines can render nothing but geometric figures. That, of course, is not
true; because with a black line which has no color we can represent
the human form. This proves that our art is made up, like nature, of an
infinite number of elements. Drawing gives the skeleton, and color gives
the life; but life without the skeleton is a far more incomplete
thing than the skeleton without the life. But there is a higher truth
still,--namely, that practice and observation are the essentials of
a painter; and that if reason and poesy persist in wrangling with the
tools, the brushes, we shall be brought to doubt, like Frenhofer, who
is as much excited in brain as he is exalted in art. A sublime painter,
indeed; but he had the misfortune to be born rich, and that enables him
to stray into theory and conjecture. Do not imitate him. Work! work!
painters should theorize with their brushes in their hands."
"We will contrive to get in," cried Poussin, not listening to Porbus,
and thinking only of the hidden masterpiece.
Porbus smiled at the youth's enthusiasm, and bade him farewell with a
kindly invitation to come and visit him.
* * * * *
Nicolas Poussin returned slowly towards the Rue de la Harpe and passed,
without observing that he did so, the modest hostelry where he was
lodging. Returning presently upon his steps, he ran up the miserable
stairway with anxious rapidity until he reached an upper chamber
nestling between the joists of a roof "en colombage,"--the plain, slight
covering of the houses of old Paris. Near the single and gloomy window
of the room sat a young girl, who rose quickly as the door opened, with
a gesture of love; she had recognized the young man's touch upon the
latch.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"It is--it is," he cried, choking with joy, "that I feel myself a
painter! I have doubted it till now; but to-day I believe in myself. I
can be a great man. Ah, Gillette, we shall be rich, happy! There is gold
in these brushes!"
Suddenly he became silent. His grave and earnest face lost its
expression of joy; he was comparing the immensity of his hopes with the
mediocrity of his means. The walls of the garret were covered with bits
of paper on which were crayon sketches; he possessed only four clean
canvases. Colors were at that time costly, and the poor gentleman gazed
at a palette that was well-nigh bare. In the midst of this poverty
he felt within himself an indescribable wealth of heart and the
superabundant force of consuming genius. Brought to Paris by a gentleman
of his acquaintance, and perhaps by the monition of his own talent, he
had suddenly found a mistress,--one of those generous and noble souls
who are ready to suffer by the side of a great man; espousing his
poverty, studying to comprehend his caprices, strong to bear deprivation
and bestow love, as others are daring in the display of luxury and in
parading the insensibility of their hearts. The smile which flickered on
her lips brightened as with gold the darkness of the garret and rivalled
the effulgence of the skies; for the sun did not always shine in the
heavens, but she was always here,--calm and collected in her passion,
living in his happiness, his griefs; sustaining the genius which
overflowed in love ere it found in art its destined expression.
"Listen, Gillette; come!"
The obedient, happy girl sprang lightly on the painter's knee. She was
all grace and beauty, pretty as the spring-time, decked with the wealth
of feminine charm, and lighting all with the fire of a noble soul.
"O God!" he exclaimed, "I can never tell her!"
"A secret!" she cried; "then I must know it."
Poussin was lost in thought.
"Tell me."
"Gillette, poor, beloved heart!"
"Ah! do you want something of me?"
"Yes."
"If you want me to pose as I did the other day," she said, with a little
pouting air, "I will not do it. Your eyes say nothing to me, then. You
look at me, but you do not think of me."
"Would you like me to copy another woman?"
"Perhaps," she answered, "if she were very ugly."
"Well," continued Poussin, in a grave tone, "if to make me a great
painter it were necessary to pose to some one else--"
"You are testing me," she interrupted; "you know well that I would not
do it."
Poussin bent his head upon his breast like a man succumbing to joy or
grief too great for his spirit to bear.
"Listen," she said, pulling him by the sleeve of his worn doublet,
"I told you, Nick, that I would give my life for you; but I never
said--never!--that I, a living woman, would renounce my love."
"Renounce it?" cried Poussin.
"If I showed myself thus to another you would love me no longer; and I
myself, I should feel unworthy of your love. To obey your caprices, ah,
that is simple and natural! in spite of myself, I am proud and happy in
doing thy dear will; but to another, fy!"
"Forgive me, my own Gillette," said the painter, throwing himself at her
feet. "I would rather be loved than famous. To me thou art more precious
than fortune and honors. Yes, away with these brushes! burn those
sketches! I have been mistaken. My vocation is to love thee,--thee
alone! I am not a painter, I am thy lover. Perish art and all its
secrets!"
She looked at him admiringly, happy and captivated by his passion. She
reigned; she felt instinctively that the arts were forgotten for her
sake, and flung at her feet like grains of incense.
"Yet he is only an old man," resumed Poussin. "In you he would see only
a woman. You are the perfect woman whom he seeks."
"Love should grant all things!" she exclaimed, ready to sacrifice love's
scruples to reward the lover who thus seemed to sacrifice his art to
her. "And yet," she added, "it would be my ruin. Ah, to suffer for thy
good! Yes, it is glorious! But thou wilt forget me. How came this cruel
thought into thy mind?"
"It came there, and yet I love thee," he said, with a sort of
contrition. "Am I, then, a wretch?"
"Let us consult Pere Hardouin."
"No, no! it must be a secret between us."
"Well, I will go; but thou must not be present," she said. "Stay at the
door, armed with thy dagger. If I cry out, enter and kill the man."
Forgetting all but his art, Poussin clasped her in his arms.
"He loves me no longer!" thought Gillette, when she was once more alone.
She regretted her promise. But before long she fell a prey to an anguish
far more cruel than her regret; and she struggled vainly to drive forth
a terrible fear which forced its way into her mind. She felt that she
loved him less as the suspicion rose in her heart that he was less
worthy than she had thought him.
CHAPTER II
Three months after the first meeting of Porbus and Poussin, the former
went to see Maitre Frenhofer. He found the old man a prey to one of
those deep, self-developed discouragements, whose cause, if we are to
believe the mathematicians of health, lies in a bad digestion, in the
wind, in the weather, in some swelling of the intestines, or else,
according to casuists, in the imperfections of our moral nature; the
fact being that the good man was simply worn out by the effort to
complete his mysterious picture. He was seated languidly in a large
oaken chair of vast dimensions covered with black leather; and without
changing his melancholy attitude he cast on Porbus the distant glance of
a man sunk in absolute dejection.
"Well, maitre," said Porbus, "was the distant ultra-marine, for which
you journeyed to Brussels, worthless? Are you unable to grind a new
white? Is the oil bad, or the brushes restive?"
"Alas!" cried the old man, "I thought for one moment that my work was
accomplished; but I must have deceived myself in some of the details. I
shall have no peace until I clear up my doubts. I am about to travel;
I go to Turkey, Asia, Greece, in search of models. I must compare my
picture with various types of Nature. It may be that I have up _there_,"
he added, letting a smile of satisfaction flicker on his lip, "Nature
herself. At times I am half afraid that a brush may wake this woman, and
that she will disappear from sight."
He rose suddenly, as if to depart at once. "Wait," exclaimed Porbus.
"I have come in time to spare you the costs and fatigues of such a
journey."
"How so?" asked Frenhofer, surprised.
"Young Poussin is beloved by a woman whose incomparable beauty is
without imperfection. But, my dear master, if he consents to lend her to
you, at least you must let us see your picture."
The old man remained standing, motionless, in a state bordering on
stupefaction. "What!" he at last exclaimed, mournfully. "Show my
creature, my spouse?--tear off the veil with which I have chastely
hidden my joy? It would be prostitution! For ten years I have lived with
this woman; she is mine, mine alone! she loves me! Has she not smiled
upon me as, touch by touch, I painted her? She has a soul,--the soul
with which I endowed her. She would blush if other eyes than mine beheld
her. Let her be seen?--where is the husband, the lover, so debased as to
lend his wife to dishonor? When you paint a picture for the court you do
not put your whole soul into it; you sell to courtiers your tricked-out
lay-figures. My painting is not a picture; it is a sentiment, a passion!
Born in my atelier, she must remain a virgin there. She shall not leave
it unclothed. Poesy and women give themselves bare, like truth, to
lovers only. Have we the model of Raphael, the Angelica of Ariosto, the
Beatrice of Dante? No, we see but their semblance. Well, the work which
I keep hidden behind bolts and bars is an exception to all other art. It
is not a canvas; it is a woman,--a woman with whom I weep and laugh
and think and talk. Would you have me resign the joy of ten years, as I
might throw away a worn-out doublet? Shall I, in a moment, cease to
be father, lover, creator?--this woman is not a creature; she is my
creation. Bring your young man; I will give him my treasures,--paintings
of Correggio, Michael-Angelo, Titian; I will kiss the print of his feet
in the dust,--but make him my rival? Shame upon me! Ha! I am more a
lover than I am a painter. I shall have the strength to burn my Nut-girl
ere I render my last sigh; but suffer her to endure the glance of a man,
a young man, a painter?--No, no! I would kill on the morrow the man who
polluted her with a look! I would kill you,--you, my friend,--if you did
not worship her on your knees; and think you I would submit my idol to
the cold eyes and stupid criticisms of fools? Ah, love is a mystery! its
life is in the depths of the soul; it dies when a man says, even to his
friend, Here is she whom I love."
The old man seemed to renew his youth; his eyes had the brilliancy and
fire of life, his pale cheeks blushed a vivid red, his hands trembled.
Porbus, amazed by the passionate violence with which he uttered these
words, knew not how to answer a feeling so novel and yet so profound.
Was the old man under the thraldom of an artist's fancy? Or did these
ideas flow from the unspeakable fanaticism produced at times in every
mind by the long gestation of a noble work? Was it possible to bargain
with this strange and whimsical being?
Filled with such thoughts, Porbus said to the old man, "Is it not woman
for woman? Poussin lends his mistress to your eyes."
"What sort of mistress is that?" cried Frenhofer. "She will betray him
sooner or later. Mine will be to me forever faithful."
"Well," returned Porbus, "then let us say no more. But before you find,
even in Asia, a woman as beautiful, as perfect, as the one I speak of,
you may be dead, and your picture forever unfinished."
"Oh, it is finished!" said Frenhofer. "Whoever sees it will find a woman
lying on a velvet bed, beneath curtains; perfumes are exhaling from a
golden tripod by her side: he will be tempted to take the tassels of
the cord that holds back the curtain; he will think he sees the bosom of
Catherine Lescaut,--a model called the Beautiful Nut-girl; he will see
it rise and fall with the movement of her breathing. Yet--I wish I could
be sure--"
"Go to Asia, then," said Porbus hastily, fancying he saw some hesitation
in the old man's eye.
Porbus made a few steps towards the door of the room. At this moment
Gillette and Nicolas Poussin reached the entrance of the house. As the
young girl was about to enter, she dropped the arm of her lover and
shrank back as if overcome by a presentiment. "What am I doing here?"
she said to Poussin, in a deep voice, looking at him fixedly.
"Gillette, I leave you mistress of your actions; I will obey your will.
You are my conscience, my glory. Come home; I shall be happy, perhaps,
if you, yourself--"
"Have I a self when you speak thus to me? Oh, no! I am but a child.
Come," she continued, seeming to make a violent effort. "If our love
perishes, if I put into my heart a long regret, thy fame shall be
the guerdon of my obedience to thy will. Let us enter. I may yet live
again,--a memory on thy palette."
Opening the door of the house the two lovers met Porbus coming out.
Astonished at the beauty of the young girl, whose eyes were still wet
with tears, he caught her all trembling by the hand and led her to the
old master.
"There!" he cried; "is she not worth all the masterpieces in the world?"
Frenhofer quivered. Gillette stood before him in the ingenuous, simple
attitude of a young Georgian, innocent and timid, captured by brigands
and offered to a slave-merchant. A modest blush suffused her cheeks,
her eyes were lowered, her hands hung at her sides, strength seemed to
abandon her, and her tears protested against the violence done to her
purity. Poussin cursed himself, and repented of his folly in bringing
this treasure from their peaceful garret. Once more he became a lover
rather than an artist; scruples convulsed his heart as he saw the eye of
the old painter regain its youth and, with the artist's habit, disrobe
as it were the beauteous form of the young girl. He was seized with the
jealous frenzy of a true lover.
"Gillette!" he cried; "let us go."
At this cry, with its accent of love, his mistress raised her eyes
joyfully and looked at him; then she ran into his arms.
"Ah! you love me still?" she whispered, bursting into tears.
Though she had had strength to hide her suffering, she had none to hide
her joy.
"Let me have her for one moment," exclaimed the old master, "and you
shall compare her with my Catherine. Yes, yes; I consent!"
There was love in the cry of Frenhofer as in that of Poussin, mingled
with jealous coquetry on behalf of his semblance of a woman; he seemed
to revel in the triumph which the beauty of his virgin was about to win
over the beauty of the living woman.
"Do not let him retract," cried Porbus, striking Poussin on the
shoulder. "The fruits of love wither in a day; those of art are
immortal."
"Can it be," said Gillette, looking steadily at Poussin and at Porbus,
"that I am nothing more than a woman to him?"
She raised her head proudly; and as she glanced at Frenhofer with
flashing eyes she saw her lover gazing once more at the picture he had
formerly taken for a Giorgione.
"Ah!" she cried, "let us go in; he never looked at me like that!"
"Old man!" said Poussin, roused from his meditation by Gillette's voice,
"see this sword. I will plunge it into your heart at the first cry of
that young girl. I will set fire to your house, and no one shall escape
from it. Do you understand me?"
His look was gloomy and the tones of his voice were terrible. His
attitude, and above all the gesture with which he laid his hand upon
the weapon, comforted the poor girl, who half forgave him for thus
sacrificing her to his art and to his hopes of a glorious future.
Porbus and Poussin remained outside the closed door of the atelier,
looking at one another in silence. At first the painter of the Egyptian
Mary uttered a few exclamations: "Ah, she unclothes herself!"--"He tells
her to stand in the light!"--"He compares them!" but he grew silent as
he watched the mournful face of the young man; for though old painters
have none of such petty scruples in presence of their art, yet they
admire them in others, when they are fresh and pleasing. The young man
held his hand on his sword, and his ear seemed glued to the panel of the
door. Both men, standing darkly in the shadow, looked like conspirators
waiting the hour to strike a tyrant.
"Come in! come in!" cried the old man, beaming with happiness. "My work
is perfect; I can show it now with pride. Never shall painter, brushes,
colors, canvas, light, produce the rival of Catherine Lescaut, the
Beautiful Nut-girl."
Porbus and Poussin, seized with wild curiosity, rushed into the middle
of a vast atelier filled with dust, where everything lay in disorder,
and where they saw a few paintings hanging here and there upon the
walls. They stopped before the figure of a woman, life-sized and half
nude, which filled them with eager admiration.
"Do not look at that," said Frenhofer, "it is only a daub which I made
to study a pose; it is worth nothing. Those are my errors," he added,
waving his hand towards the enchanting compositions on the walls around
them.
At these words Porbus and Poussin, amazed at the disdain which the
master showed for such marvels of art, looked about them for the secret
treasure, but could see it nowhere.
"There it is!" said the old man, whose hair fell in disorder about his
face, which was scarlet with supernatural excitement. His eyes sparkled,
and his breast heaved like that of a young man beside himself with love.
"Ah!" he cried, "did you not expect such perfection? You stand before a
woman, and you are looking for a picture! There are such depths on that
canvas, the air within it is so true, that you are unable to distinguish
it from the air you breathe. Where is art? Departed, vanished! Here is
the form itself of a young girl. Have I not caught the color, the very
life of the line which seems to terminate the body? The same phenomenon
which we notice around fishes in the water is also about objects which
float in air. See how these outlines spring forth from the background.
Do you not feel that you could pass your hand behind those shoulders?
For seven years have I studied these effects of light coupled with
form. That hair,--is it not bathed in light? Why, she breathes! That
bosom,--see! Ah! who would not worship it on bended knee? The flesh
palpitates! Wait, she is about to rise; wait!"
"Can you see anything?" whispered Poussin to Porbus.
"Nothing. Can you?"
"No."
The two painters drew back, leaving the old man absorbed in ecstasy,
and tried to see if the light, falling plumb upon the canvas at which he
pointed, had neutralized all effects. They examined the picture, moving
from right to left, standing directly before it, bending, swaying,
rising by turns.
"Yes, yes; it is really a canvas," cried Frenhofer, mistaking the
purpose of their examination. "See, here is the frame, the easel; these
are my colors, my brushes." And he caught up a brush which he held out
to them with a naive motion.
"The old rogue is making game of us," said Poussin, coming close to the
pretended picture. "I can see nothing here but a mass of confused color,
crossed by a multitude of eccentric lines, making a sort of painted
wall."
"We are mistaken. See!" returned Porbus.
Coming nearer, they perceived in a corner of the canvas the point of a
naked foot, which came forth from the chaos of colors, tones, shadows
hazy and undefined, misty and without form,--an enchanting foot, a
living foot. They stood lost in admiration before this glorious fragment
breaking forth from the incredible, slow, progressive destruction
around it. The foot seemed to them like the torso of some Grecian Venus,
brought to light amid the ruins of a burned city.
"There is a woman beneath it all!" cried Porbus, calling Poussin's
attention to the layers of color which the old painter had successively
laid on, believing that he thus brought his work to perfection. The two
men turned towards him with one accord, beginning to comprehend, though
vaguely, the ecstasy in which he lived.
"He means it in good faith," said Porbus.
"Yes, my friend," answered the old man, rousing from his abstraction,
"we need faith; faith in art. We must live with our work for years
before we can produce a creation like that. Some of these shadows have
cost me endless toil. See, there on her cheek, below the eyes, a faint
half-shadow; if you observed it in Nature you might think it could
hardly be rendered. Well, believe me, I took unheard-of pains to
reproduce that effect. My dear Porbus, look attentively at my work, and
you will comprehend what I have told you about the manner of treating
form and outline. Look at the light on the bosom, and see how by a
series of touches and higher lights firmly laid on I have managed to
grasp light itself, and combine it with the dazzling whiteness of the
clearer tones; and then see how, by an opposite method,--smoothing off
the sharp contrasts and the texture of the color,--I have been able,
by caressing the outline of my figure and veiling it with cloudy
half-tints, to do away with the very idea of drawing and all other
artificial means, and give to the form the aspect and roundness of
Nature itself. Come nearer, and you will see the work more distinctly;
if too far off it disappears. See! there, at that point, it is, I think,
most remarkable." And with the end of his brush he pointed to a spot of
clear light color.
Porbus struck the old man on the shoulder, turning to Poussin as he did
so, and said, "Do you know that he is one of our greatest painters?"
"He is a poet even more than he is a painter," answered Poussin gravely.
"There," returned Porbus, touching the canvas, "is the ultimate end of
our art on earth."
"And from thence," added Poussin, "it rises, to enter heaven."
"How much happiness is there!--upon that canvas," said Porbus.
The absorbed old man gave no heed to their words; he was smiling at his
visionary woman.
"But sooner or later, he will perceive that there is nothing there,"
cried Poussin.
"Nothing there!--upon my canvas?" said Frenhofer, looking first at the
two painters, and then at his imaginary picture.
"What have you done?" cried Porbus, addressing Poussin.
The old man seized the arm of the young man violently, and said to him,
"You see nothing?--clown, infidel, scoundrel, dolt! Why did you come
here? My good Porbus," he added, turning to his friend, "is it possible
that you, too, are jesting with me? Answer; I am your friend. Tell me,
can it be that I have spoiled my picture?"
Porbus hesitated, and feared to speak; but the anxiety painted on the
white face of the old man was so cruel that he was constrained to point
to the canvas and utter the word, "See!"
Frenhofer looked at his picture for a space of a moment, and staggered.
"Nothing! nothing! after toiling ten years!"
He sat down and wept.
"Am I then a fool, an idiot? Have I neither talent nor capacity? Am I
no better than a rich man who walks, and can only walk? Have I indeed
produced nothing?"
He gazed at the canvas through tears. Suddenly he raised himself proudly
and flung a lightning glance upon the two painters.
"By the blood, by the body, by the head of Christ, you are envious men
who seek to make me think she is spoiled, that you may steal her from
me. I--I see her!" he cried. "She is wondrously beautiful!"
At this moment Poussin heard the weeping of Gillette as she stood,
forgotten, in a corner.
"What troubles thee, my darling?" asked the painter, becoming once more
a lover.
"Kill me!" she answered. "I should be infamous if I still loved thee,
for I despise thee. I admire thee; but thou hast filled me with horror.
I love, and yet already I hate thee."
While Poussin listened to Gillette, Frenhofer drew a green curtain
before his Catherine, with the grave composure of a jeweller locking
his drawers when he thinks that thieves are near him. He cast at the two
painters a look which was profoundly dissimulating, full of contempt and
suspicion; then, with convulsive haste, he silently pushed them through
the door of his atelier. When they reached the threshold of his house he
said to them, "Adieu, my little friends."
The tone of this farewell chilled the two painters with fear.
* * * * *
On the morrow Porbus, alarmed, went again to visit Frenhofer, and found
that he had died during the night, after having burned his paintings.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Hidden Masterpiece, by Honore de Balzac
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