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The Hidden Masterpiece
“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.”