Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (14 page)

Arnoux returned, and Madame Arnoux appeared at the other doorway. As she was enveloped in shadow, the young man could at first distinguish only her head. She wore a black velvet gown, and in her hair she had fastened a long Algerian cap, in a red silk net, which coiling round her comb, fell over her left shoulder.

Arnoux introduced Frédéric.

“Oh! I remember Monsieur perfectly well,” she responded.

Then the guests arrived, nearly all at the same time—Dittmer, Lovarias, Burrieu, the composer Rosenwald, the poet Théophile Lorris, two art critics, colleagues of Hussonnet, a paper manufacturer, and in the rear the illustrious Pierre Paul Meinsius, the last representative of the grand school of painting, who blithely carried along with his fame his forty-five years and his big paunch.

When they were passing into the dining-room, Madame Arnoux took his arm. A chair had been left vacant for Pellerin. Arnoux, though he took advantage of him, was fond of him. Besides, he was afraid of his terrible tongue, so much so, that, in order to soften him, he had given a portrait of him in
L‘Art Industriel,
accompanied by exaggerated praise; and Pellerin, more sensitive about distinction than about money, made his appearance about eight o’clock quite out of breath. Frédéric imagined that they had been reconciled for a long time.

He liked the company, the food, everything. The dining-room, which resembled a mediaeval parlour, was hung with embossed leather. A Dutch what-not faced a rack for chibouks, and around the table the Bohemian glasses, variously coloured, had, in the midst of the flowers and fruits, the effect of illuminations in a garden.

He had to make his choice between ten sorts of mustard. He partook of daspachio, of curry, of ginger, of Corsican blackbirds, and of Roman lasagna; he drank extraordinary wines, lip-fraeli and tokay. Arnoux indeed prided himself on entertaining people in good style. With an eye to the procurement of fine foods, he was on friendly terms with the mail-coach drivers, and with the cooks of great houses, who communicated to him the secrets of rare sauces.

But Frédéric was particularly amused by the conversation. His taste for travelling was tickled by Dittmer, who talked about the East; he gratified his curiosity about theatrical matters by listening to Rosenwald’s chat about the opera; and the atrocious Bohemian existence assumed for him a droll aspect when seen through the gaiety of Hussonnet, who related, in a picturesque fashion, how he had spent an entire winter with no food except Dutch cheese. Then, a discussion between Lovarias and Burrieu about the Florentine School gave him new ideas with regard to masterpieces, widened his horizons, and he found difficulty in restraining his enthusiasm when Pellerin exclaimed:

“Don’t bother me with your hideous reality! What does it mean—reality? Some see things black, others blue—the multitude sees them stupidly. There is nothing less natural than Michael Angelo; there is nothing more powerful! The anxiety about external truth is a mark of contemporary baseness; and art will become, if things go on that way, a sort of poor joke as much below religion as it is below poetry, and as much below politics as it is below business. You will never reach its goal—yes, its goal!—which is to create within us an impersonal exaltation, with minor works, in spite of all your fine execution. Look, for instance, at Bassolier’s pictures: they are pretty, coquettish, neat, and by no means dull. You might put them into your pocket, bring them with you when you are travelling. Notaries buy them for twenty thousand francs, while the ideas they contain are only worth three sous. But, without ideas, there is no greatness; without greatness there is no beauty. Olympus is a mountain. The most astonishing monument will always be the Pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste; the desert is better than a sidewalk, and a savage is better than a hairdresser!”

Frédéric, while listening to these things, glanced towards Madame Arnoux. They sank into his soul like pieces of metal falling into a furnace, added to his passion, and supplied the material of love.

His chair was three seats down from hers on the same side. From time to time, she bent forward a little, turning aside her head to address a few words to her little daughter; and as she smiled on these occasions, a dimple took shape in her cheek, giving to her face an expression of delicate good-nature.

As soon as the time came for the gentlemen to have their wine, she disappeared. The conversation became more free and easy.

M. Arnoux shone in it, and Frédéric was astonished at the cynicism of men. However, their preoccupation with women established between them and him, a certain equality, which raised his own self-esteem.

When they had returned to the drawing-room, he took up, to keep himself in countenance, one of the albums which lay about on the table. The great artists of the day had illustrated them with drawings, had written in them snatches of verse or prose, or their signatures simply. In the midst of famous names he found many that he had never heard of before, and original thoughts appeared only underneath a flood of nonsense. All these entries contained a more or less direct expression of homage towards Madame Arnoux. Frédéric would have been afraid to write a line beside them.

She went into her boudoir to look at the little chest with silver clasps which he had noticed on the mantelpiece. It was a present from her husband, a work of the Renaissance. Arnoux’s friends complimented him, and his wife thanked him. His tender emotions were aroused, and before all the guests he gave her a kiss.

After this they all chatted in groups here and there. The worthy Meinsius was with Madame Arnoux on an easy chair close beside the fire. She was leaning forward towards his ear; their heads were just touching, and Frédéric would have been glad to become deaf, infirm, and ugly if, instead, he had an illustrious name and white hair—in short, if he only happened to possess something which would install him in such intimate association with her. He began once more to eat his heart out, furious at the idea of being so young a man.

But she came into the corner of the drawing-room in which he was sitting, asked him whether he was acquainted with any of the guests, whether he was fond of painting, how long he had been a student in Paris. Every word that came out of her mouth seemed to Frédéric something entirely new, an exclusive appendage of her personality. He gazed attentively at the fringe on her head-dress, the ends of which caressed her bare shoulder, and he was unable to take his eyes off of her; he plunged his soul into the whiteness of that feminine flesh, and yet he did not venture to raise his eyelids to look up at her, face to face.

Rosenwald interrupted them, begging Madame Arnoux to sing something. He played a prelude, she waited, her lips opened slightly, and a sound, pure, long-continued, silvery, ascended into the air.

Frédéric did not understand a single one of the Italian words.

The song began with a grave measure, something like church music, then in a more animated strain, with a crescendo, it broke into repeated bursts of sound, then suddenly subsided, and the melody came back again in a tender fashion with a wide and easy swing.

She stood beside the keyboard with her arms at her sides and a far-off look on her face. Sometimes, in order to read the music, she blinked her eyes and bent her head for a moment. Her contralto voice in the low notes took a mournful intonation which had a chilling effect on the listener, and then her beautiful face, with those great brows of hers, tilted over her shoulder; her bosom swelled; her arms stretched out; her throat, from which trills made their escape, fell back as if under aerial kisses. She flung out three sharp notes, came down again, cast forth one higher still, and, after a silence, finished with a flourish.

Rosenwald did not leave the piano. He continued playing, to amuse himself. From time to time a guest stole away. At eleven o’clock, as the last of them were going off, Arnoux went out along with Pellerin, under the pretext of seeing him home. He was one of those people who say that they are ill when they do not “take a turn” after dinner.

Madame Arnoux had made her way towards the hall. Dittmer and Hussonnet bowed to her. She stretched out her hand to them. She did the same to Frédéric; and he felt, as it were, something penetrating every particle of his skin.

He took leave of his friends. He wished to be alone. His heart was overflowing. Why had she offered him her hand? Was it a thoughtless act, or an encouragement? “Come now! I am mad!” Besides, what did it matter, when he could now visit her entirely at his ease, live in the very atmosphere she breathed?

The streets were deserted. Now and then a heavy wagon would roll past, shaking the pavement. The houses came one after another with their grey fronts, their closed windows; and he thought with disdain of all those human beings who lived behind those walls without having seen her, and not one of whom dreamed of her existence. He had no consciousness of his surroundings, of space, of anything, and striking the ground with his heel, rapping with his walking-stick on the shutters of the shops, he kept walking on continually at random, in a state of excitement, carried away by his emotions. Suddenly he felt himself surrounded by damp air, and found that he was on the edge of the quays.

The gas-lamps shone in two straight lines, which ran on endlessly, and long red flames flickered in the depths of the water. The waves were slate-coloured, while the sky, which was of clearer hue, seemed to be supported by vast masses of shadow that rose on each side of the river. The darkness was intensified by buildings whose outlines the eye could not distinguish. A luminous haze floated above the roofs further on. All the noises of the night had melted into a single monotonous hum.

He stopped in the middle of the Pont Neuf, and, taking off his hat and opening his chest, he drank in the air. And now he felt as if something that was inexhaustible were rising up from the very depths of his being, a surge of tenderness that flooded him, like the motion of the waves under his eyes. A church-clock slowly struck one, like a voice calling out to him.

Then, he was seized with one of those shuddering sensations of the soul in which one seems to be transported into a higher world. He felt, as it were, endowed with some extraordinary talent, the aim of which he could not determine. He seriously asked himself whether he would be a great painter or a great poet; and he decided in favour of painting, for the exigencies of this profession would bring him into contact with Madame Arnoux. So, then, he had found his vocation! The object of his existence was now perfectly clear, and there could be no mistake about the future.

When he had shut his door, he heard some one snoring in the dark closet near his room. It was his friend. He no longer gave him a thought.

His own face presented itself to him in the mirror. He thought himself handsome, and for a minute he remained there gazing at himself.

B
efore twelve o’clock next day he had bought a box of paints, brushes, and an easel. Pellerin agreed to give him lessons, and Frédéric brought him to his lodgings to see whether anything was wanting among his painting utensils.

Deslauriers had come back, and the second armchair was occupied by a young man. The clerk said, pointing towards him:

“Here he is! Sénécal!”

Frédéric disliked this young man. His forehead was heightened by the way in which he wore his hair, cut straight like a brush. There was a certain hard, cold look in his grey eyes; and his long black coat, his entire costume, smacked of the pedagogue and the ecclesiastic.

They first discussed topics of the hour, amongst others Rossini’s
Stabat.
Sénécal, in answer to a question, declared that he never went to the theatre. Pellerin opened the box of paints.

“Are these all for you?” said the clerk.

“Why, certainly!”

“Well, really! What a notion!”

And he leaned across the table, at which the mathematical tutor was turning the pages of a volume of Louis Blanc.
¹⁶
He had brought it with him, and was reading passages from it in a low voices, while Pellerin and Frédéric were examining together the palette, the knife, and the bladders; then the talk came round to the dinner at Arnoux’s.

“The art-dealer, is it?” asked Sénécal. “A fine gentleman, truly!”

“Why do you say that?” said Pellerin.

Sénécal replied: “A man who makes money by political maneuvres!” And he went on to talk about a well-known lithograph, in which the Royal Family was all represented as being engaged in edifying occupations: Louis Philippe had a copy of the Code in his hand; the Queen had a Catholic prayer-book; the Princesses were embroidering; the Duc de Nemours was girding on a sword; M. de Joinville was showing a map to his young brothers; and in the background could be seen a bed with two compartments. This picture, which was entitled “A Good Family,” was a source of delight to commonplace middle-class people, but of grief to patriots. Pellerin, in a tone of vexation, as if he had been the producer of this work himself, observed that every opinion had some value. Sénécal protested: Art should aim exclusively at promoting morality amongst the masses! The only subjects that ought to be reproduced were those which impelled people to virtuous actions; all others were harmful.

“But that depends on the execution,” cried Pellerin. “I might produce masterpieces.”

“So much the worse for you, then; you have no right—”

“What?”

“No, monsieur, you have no right to excite my interest in matters of which I disapprove. What need have we of laborious trifles, from which it is impossible to derive any benefit—those Venuses, for instance, with all your landscapes? I see there no instruction for the people! Show us rather their miseries! arouse enthusiasm in us for their sacrifices! Ah, my God! there is no lack of subjects—the farm, the workshop—”

Pellerin stammered forth his indignation at this, and, imagining that he had found an argument: