by Émile Zola
Without any transition, Claude, who had been lost in thought, suddenly asked, as though wakening from a dream:
‘Have they decided yet who’s going to do the new decoration at the Hôtel de Ville?’
To which Mahoudeau replied:
‘Not yet, but they will soon. … I shan’t be doing anything, as I’ve got no connections. … Even Fagerolles isn’t too sure. He’s quite worried, really. Things are not going too smoothly, so I suppose that’s why he’s not here tonight. … Ah, the days of plenty are over for him. It’s all turning to dust, them and their paintings at fancy prices.’
He laughed, and there was a note of satisfaction in his laugh which was echoed at the other end of the table by a similar snigger from Gagnière. Then the pair of them began to grow gleeful over the impending disaster which was causing consternation among the younger artists. It was bound to happen, they pointed out; it had all been foreseen; the inflated prices pictures had been fetching were bound to lead to a crash. As soon as private collectors, following the lead given by the Stock Exchange, panicked at the prospect of a falling market, prices had started to go down with a wallop and were dropping every day, so nobody was selling a thing. And what a sight the famous Naudet had been in the midst of the rout! At first he had managed to hold his own. He had invented the ‘American’ trick: the single canvas hanging in sacred isolation in a gallery and for which he would not even take the trouble to name a price, he was so sure he could never find the man rich enough to pay it, but which he sold in the end for two or three hundred thousand francs to a New York pig-breeder who was only too proud to have been able to treat himself to the most expensive picture of the year. But that sort of thing could not be done indefinitely, and Naudet, whose expenditure had increased with his income, had let himself be swept off his feet by the movement for which he was himself responsible. Now he was faced with the prospect of seeing his house and his fortune vanish before the onslaught of his creditors.
‘Mahoudeau, won’t you have some more mushrooms,’ Henriette broke in, doing her duty as hostess.
The butler was handing round the roast, everyone was eating, the wine was flowing freely, but the talk had grown so sour that the delicacies were passing unnoticed, much to the hostess’s sorrow and her husband’s.
‘What?’ said Mahoudeau, ‘Mushrooms? No thanks,’ and went on with his story.
‘The joke is that Naudet is suing Fagerolles. Yes! What do you think of that? Going to have him sold up! Damned funny, I think, the whole business! Oh, there’s going to be a fine clean-up in the Avenue de Villiers among the artist-princes! Mansions will be going cheap next spring, you’ll see!… Well, it was Naudet who forced Fagerolles to build his little place, and it was he who furnished it like a high-class brothel, so now he’s claiming back his belongings, curios, and what not. … But Fagerolles’s borrowed money on them, apparently. … You see the situation! … Naudet accuses Fagerolles of having ruined his market by indiscriminate exhibiting to satisfy his personal vanity; Fagerolles retorts that he’s had enough of being exploited; so it looks like a fight to the death. I hope it is!’
From the far end of the table came Gagnière’s inexorable, day-dreamer’s voice:
‘Done for, Fagerolles. … Never been a real success anyhow.’
The others protested. What about his hundred thousand a year from sales? What about his medals and his decoration? But Gagnière remained unshaken and sat smiling and looking mysterious, as if facts could make no difference to his inspired belief.
‘Don’t try to argue with me,’ he said. ‘Fagerolles never had the faintest notion of values.’
Jory was just going to defend Fagerolles, whom he regarded as one of his own creations, when Henriette called for a truce in honour of the ravioli. So there was a short lull, broken only by the tinkle of glasses and the subdued clatter of forks, while the table, its admirable symmetry already seriously impaired, seemed brighter than ever, as if it had borrowed some light from the flare-up of opinions.
Sandoz was worried and surprised. What was it that made them go for him like that? he wondered. Hadn’t they all started life together? Weren’t they all going to have their share in the final victory? For the first time his dream of eternity had been disturbed, that long succession of precious Thursdays, every one the same, every one perfectly happy, which he had always imagined stretching away to the far end of time. It was not a pleasant feeling, but for the time being at least it was easily thrown off.
‘Look out, Claude!’ he said with a laugh. ‘Save some room for the birds! … Eh! Claude! Where are you?’
Since the conversation had dropped Claude had floated back into his dream, and without looking, without even knowing what he was doing, was helping himself to more ravioli. Christine, looking very serious and very charming, said nothing, but never took her eyes off him. He started, and chose himself a leg when the hazel-hens were brought round, their strong sauce filling the room with the smell of resin.
‘There!’ cried Sandoz. ‘Can you smell that? If that doesn’t make you think you’re eating all the forests in Russia, nothing will!’
But Claude had already reverted to his original topic.
‘So Fagerolles is going to do the Council Chamber, is that right?’ he said.
That was enough. Mahoudeau and Gagnière were off again at once. A nice mess he’d make of it if he got the Council Chamber! And he was ready to stoop to anything to get it. Ever since the bottom had dropped out of his market he’d never stopped pestering the authorities. … And he was the man who used to pretend to turn up his nose at commissions, as if he were a great master with more patrons than he could satisfy! Could anybody imagine anything less dignified than an artist trying to get round a government official? The kowtowing, the concessions, the downright prostitution! It was a disgrace; art reduced to such a state of servility, art having to depend on the likes and dislikes of some fool of a minister! No shadow of doubt that Fagerolles at his official banquet was conscientiously licking the boots of some half-witted Under-Secretary or other!
‘And why not?’ cried Jory. ‘Why shouldn’t he look after Number One? He can’t rely on such as you to pay his debts!’
‘Indeed he can’t!’ retorted Mahoudeau. ‘Why should he? I don’t have debts. I know what it is to be poor. I don’t build palaces. I don’t have a mistress like Irma to ruin me!’
Once more Gagnière broke in with his strange, cracked voice, like some distant oracle.
‘But Irma doesn’t ruin him. She’s the one who pays!’
There were more sharp words, interspersed with jokes in which Irma’s name was frequently mentioned; and now Mathilde, who, to show her good breeding, had so far remained silent and aloof, suddenly vented her indignation with the expression of a pious prude undergoing physical assault.
‘Gentlemen! Please!’ she exclaimed with a horrified gesture. ‘That dreadful woman! In our presence! How could you!’
From that point, much to their dismay, Henriette and Sandoz witnessed the final collapse of their dinner-party. The truffle salad, the ice, the dessert, gave no one any pleasure, feelings ran so high; while the Chambertin and the sparkling Moselle were no more appreciated than drinking-water. Henriette kept a smiling face, though to little effect, and Sandoz, making allowance for human weaknesses, did what he could to make peace. But not one of them would give way, and everyone went on attacking everyone else on the slightest provocation. In the old days their parties had often ended rather drearily in a mixture of vague boredom and sleepy repletion. This time everybody was in fighting trim and bent on destroying his adversary. The candles in the chandelier were burning with longer, pointed flames; on the wall, the flowers on the china plates bloomed with unusual vividness, and even the table, its orderly array now in utter confusion, seemed to reflect something of the heat and violence of the talk and activity to which it had been submitted in the past two hours.
As everybody was talking at once, Henriette rose from the table
, hoping that the change might quieten them. Just as she did so Claude was heard saying:
‘The very thing for me, the Hôtel de Ville job … if I could get it! … It’s always been my dream to paint the walls of Paris!’
In the drawing-room, where the small chandelier and the wall-brackets had been lit and it felt almost cold after the Turkish bath atmosphere they had just left, coffee calmed the ruffled tempers for a time. Apart from Fagerolles, no other guests were expected, for it was a very exclusive household. Sandoz and Henriette did not make use of their drawing-room either for recruiting a favourable public or muzzling the Press by a flow of invitations. Henriette heartily disliked social functions, and her husband used to say, with a laugh, that it took him ten years to get to like somebody and be sure it was for good. Happiness, surely, which some people said was unattainable, meant a few well-tried friendships and a haven of homely affection! So in the Sandozes’ drawing-room there were never any musical soirées and no one had ever stood up within its four walls to read a line of either verse or prose.
Time seemed to pass very slowly on this particular Thursday evening, for the general irritation, though subdued, persisted. The ladies gathered round the fire, which had now burnt low, and when the butler had cleared the table and reopened the dining-room doors they were soon left alone with their conversation while the men retired to smoke and drink beer.
Sandoz and Claude, as they did not smoke, soon returned to the drawing-room and sat on a sofa near the door. Delighted to see his old friend happy and talkative, Sandoz had begun to revive old memories. Yesterday he had had some news from Plassans. Yes, about Pouillaud, who used to be the life and soul of the dormitory and then ended up as a staid, respectable solicitor. Well, he’d got into trouble. He’d been caught in compromising circumstances with some twelve-year-old girls! Oh, he always was a bit of a lad, Pouillaud, wasn’t he? But Claude made no response; his interest was elsewhere. He had heard his name mentioned in the dining-room and was trying to catch the rest of the conversation.
It was Jory, Mahoudeau, and Gagnière who had returned ravening and insatiable to the slaughter. Their voices had risen from a discreet whisper to what was now almost a shout.
‘Oh, as a man, you can take him and keep him,’ Jory was saying, speaking of Fagerolles. ‘He was never up to much in my opinion. And he’s certainly got the better of you two, make no mistake about that, breaking with you as he did and using you as stepping-stones to his own success! Oh, you weren’t very smart, or you’d have seen his game!’
‘How could we help it?’ retorted Mahoudeau furiously. ‘We’d only got to be known as friends of Claude’s for every door to be slammed in our faces!’
‘Yes, he’s been the death of us two!’ said Gagnière firmly.
And so they went on; after criticizing Fagerolles for going over to the enemy, for grovelling to the Press, for making up to elderly duchesses, they left him alone to vent their fury on Claude, the source of all their troubles. What was Fagerolles, after all? Just an artist like a lot of others, with an eye to the main chance, determined to be a ‘draw’ at all costs, even if it meant breaking with his friends and tearing them to pieces behind their backs. But Claude, the great painter who had missed the mark, who, in spite of his high opinion of himself couldn’t paint a decent figure if he tried, what had he done for them? Nothing, except put them in an awkward position and shown them no way of getting out of it. Their only hope of success lay in breaking with him, that was clear. Another time they wouldn’t be such damned fools as to sacrifice themselves for what was obviously a hopeless cause! They accused Claude of having paralysed them and exploited, yes, exploited them, but so heavy-handedly that he had got nothing out of it for himself.
‘Take me, for example,’ said Mahoudeau. ‘Why, at one time he practically turned my brain. When I think of it now I wonder how ever I came to join his gang at all? I’m not like him, am I? Could we have had anything in common? … I really don’t know. … And it’s maddening to wake up to things so late in the day!’
‘What about me?’ put in Gagnière. ‘All he did for me was pinch my originality. Do you think I’ve enjoyed it, these last fifteen years, hearing my pictures described as “perfect Claudes”? … No! I’ve had as much as I can stand of that sort of thing. I’d rather never paint another picture. … I ought never to have had anything to do with him. I can see that now.’
Panic-stricken to discover that, having been like brothers since their early youth, they were now suddenly become strangers and enemies, they were deliberately breaking the last bonds that had held them together. Life had scattered them as the years went by, and serious differences had sprung up between them; now all that was left of their old enthusiasms and their hopes for a victory in which each one would have played his part was a bitter taste in the mouth and a feeling of vindictiveness.
‘Still, you’ve got to admit,’ said Jory with a grin, ‘Fagerolles wasn’t such an idiot as to let someone else pinch his ideas.’
This annoyed Mahoudeau, who retorted:
‘I don’t see what you’ve got to laugh at; you didn’t exactly play the game yourself. … Always saying you’d give us a hand up when you had a paper of your own, and …’
‘Ah, yes, but remember …’
Jory’s reply was cut short by Gagnière joining in on Mahoudeau’s side.
‘He’s right, you did,’ he said, ‘and you can’t tell us now that your stuff’s subbed beyond recognition, because now you’re the boss. But have you ever said a good word for either of us? Not you! In your last Salon report you never even mentioned our names.’
At a loss for an answer, Jory covered his embarrassment by giving vent to his own candid opinion.
‘If there’s anyone to blame for that,’ he cried, ‘it’s that god-forsaken Claude! … Why should I lose my subscribers to please you two? You’re both impossible, though you may not realize it. You, Mahoudeau, can work till you drop turning out nice little statues, and you, Gagnière, needn’t ever handle a paint-brush again, but you’ve both got the sort of labels on your backs that it’ll take ten years to get off … if you ever do get ’em off, and there are plenty of men who don’t. So far as the public’s concerned you’re just a couple of fools … the only men who still believe in the genius of a tomfool crank who’ll probably end up in the madhouse.’
Jory’s outburst so stimulated the others that in the end all three were talking at once, vying with each other in the ferocity of their attacks, their jaws working with such violence that they looked as if they were biting.
Sitting on the sofa near the door, Sandoz at length found himself obliged to interrupt his flow of amusing reminiscences to listen to the tumult in the dining-room.
‘Hear ’em?’ whispered Claude, a faint smile of pain on his lips. ‘They seem to have got me sorted out! … No, no! Don’t go in to them. I deserve it for making a mess of things.’
Pale with indignation, Sandoz sat still and listened to all the vehemence and rancour poured out by personalities in conflict in the struggle for existence, sweeping away his cherished dream of eternal friendship.
Fortunately, Henriette heard the angry voices too and, wondering what they signified, got up and went to the dining-room where she upbraided the smokers for neglecting the ladies to spend their time quarrelling. Thereupon they all went back to the drawing-room, still sweating and panting from the violence of their onslaught, and when Henriette looked up at the clock and remarked that Fagerolles could not possibly be coming so late in the evening they all looked at each other and grinned. Fagerolles had a flair. He knew better than to butt in on old friends for whom he had no more use and who couldn’t stand him anyhow!
Fagerolles did not come, and the evening drew to an uncomfortable close. Back in the dining-room the candles were lighted again and tea was served on a Russian cloth with a stag-hunt embroidered upon it in red. There was a large brioche, plates of cakes and sweetmeats and an exotic array of drinks: whisky, gin, kum
mel, Scio raki, joined later by punch, brought in by the butler, who then attended to the guests’ requirements while the hostess was filling the teapot from the steaming samovar. But all the comfort, the delicacies and the subtle aroma of freshly-made tea did nothing to ease the tension. The conversation had somehow reverted to the subject of success and failure. Was there anything more disgraceful than the way they awarded medals and decorations for one sort and another? What could be more degrading for artists? Why should they be expected to remain schoolboys all their lives? That was the reason for all the platitudes: docility and sucking up to the masters, to make sure of a good mark!
In the drawing-room again, as Sandoz was quickly reaching the point when he would be relieved to see the last of his guests, he noticed Mathilde and Gagnière sitting side by side blissfully talking music, while everybody else had apparently talked themselves dry. Gagnière was going off into rapturous flights of poetry and philosophy, while Mathilde, like the flabby, middle-aged trollop she was, showed the whites of her eyes, swooning under the caress of invisible wings, surrounded as always by her unsavoury odour of herb-shop. They had noticed each other at a concert the previous Sunday and now, in a give-and-take of high-flown, far-fetched eulogies, were comparing their impressions.
‘Ah, monsieur, the Meyerbeer, the Struensée overture, that death motif and then the peasants’ dance, so wonderfully fiery and colourful, and then the death tune again, and that C on the ’cellos! Ah, the ’cellos, monsieur, the ’cellos! …’
‘And the Berlioz, madame, the feast theme in Roméo! Oh, the passage where the clarinets—“women beloved”, I call them—take up the melody alone, with harp accompaniment! Sheer ecstasy, don’t you think? A sort of floating whiteness. … Then the feast itself, a magnificent outburst, like a Veronese—his “Marriage at Cana”, for example—for tumultuous activity! And the way the love theme is picked up again, very softly at first, then swelling up and up and up. … Oh, magnificent!’
