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（卡尔维诺 href='1975/im'>《未来千年文学备忘录》中曾提到这篇小说。这里的应该是定稿的英译本，译者不详。电子文本来自Project Gutenberg，原网址为 href=".gutenberg./etext/23060）" >.gutenberg./etext/23060）THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE
By Honoré De Balzac
TO A LORD
1845
I--GILLETTE
On a cold December m in the year 1612, a young man, whose clothing was somewhat of the thi, was walking to and fro before a gateway in the Rue des Grands-Augustins in Paris. He went up and dowreet before this house with the irresolution of a gallant who dares not veo the presence of the mistress whom he loves for the first time, easy of access though she may be; but after a suffitly long interval of hesitatio last crossed the threshold and inquired of an old woman, who was sweeping out a large room on the ground floor, whether Master Porbus was within. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, the young ma slowly up the staircase, like a gentleman but newly e to court, and doubtful as to his reception by the king. He came to a stand once more on the landing at the head of the stairs, and again he hesitated before raising his hand to the grotesque knocker on the door of the studio, where doubtless the painter was at work--Master Porbus, sometime painter in ordinary to Henri IV till Mary de Medici took Rubens into favor.
The young ma deeply stirred by aion that must thrill the hearts of all great artists when, in the pride of their youth and their first love of art, they e into the presence of a master or stand before a masterpiece. For all humaiments there is a time of early blossoming, a day of generous enthusiasm that gradually fades until nothing is left of happiness but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion. Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resemble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of glory and disaster, of vague expectations and real disappois.
Those who have missed this experien the early days of light purses; who have not, in the dawn of their genius, stood in the presence of a master ahe throbbing of their hearts, will always carry in their inmost souls a chord that has never been touched, and in their work an indefinable quality will be lag, a something iroke of the brush, a mysterious element that oetry. The swaggerers, so puffed up by self-ceit that they are fident over-soon of their success, ever be taken for men of talent save by fools. From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure of youthful genius, the stranger oaircase might be allowed to have something in him; for he seemed to possess the indescribable diffidehe early timidity that artists are bound to lose in the course of a great career, even as pretty women lose it as they make progress is of coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes as triumph succeeds to triumph, and modesty is, perhaps, distrust of itself.
The poor neophyte was so overe by the sciousness of his own presumption and insignifice, that it began to look as if he was hardly likely to pee into the studio of the paio whom we owe the wonderful portrait of Henri IV. But fate ropitious; an old man came up the staircase. From the quaint e of this newer, his collar of magnifit lace, and a certain serene gravity in his bearing, the first arrival thought that this personage must be either a patron or a friend of the court painter. He stood aside therefore upon the landing to allow the visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously the while. Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze, there was that indescribable something which has an irresistible attra for artists.
Picture that face. A bald high forehead and rugged jutting brows above a small flat urned up at the end, as in the portraits of Socrates and Rabelais; deep lines about the mog mouth; a short , carried proudly, covered with a grizzled pointed beard; sea-greehat age might seem to have dimmed were it not for the trast between the iris and the surrounding mother-of-pearl tints, so that it seemed as if uhe stress of anger or enthusiasm there would be a magic power to quell or kindle in their glahe face was withered beyond wont by the fatigue of years, yet it seemed aged still more by the thoughts that had worn away both soul and body. There were no lashes to the deep-set eyes, and scarcely a trace of the arg lines of the eyebrows above them. Set this head on a spare and feeble frame, place it in a frame of lace wrought like an engraved silver fish-slice, imagine a heavy gold over the old mans black doublet, and you will have some dim idea of this strange personage, who seemed still more fantasti the sombre twilight of the staircase. One of Rembrandts portraits might have stepped down from its frame to walk in an appropriate atmosphere of gloom, such as the great painter loved. The older man gave the younger a shrewd glance, and khrice at the door. It ened by a man of forty or thereabout, who seemed to be an invalid.
"Good day, Master."
Porbus bowed respectfully, ahe door open for the younger man to ehinking that the latter apanied his visitor; and when he saw that the neophyte stood a while as if spellbound, feeling, as every artist-nature must feel, the fasating influence of the first sight of a studio in which the material processes of art are revealed, Porbus troubled himself no more about this sed er.
All the light iudio came from a window in the roof, and was trated upon an easel, where a vas stood untouched as yet save for three or four outlines in chalk. The daylight scarcely reached the remles and ers of the vast room; they were as dark as night, but the silver ored breastplate of a Reiters corselet, that hung upon the wall, attracted a stray gleam to its dim abiding-place among the brown shadows; or a shaft of light shot across the carved and glistening surface of an antique sideboard covered with curious silver-plate, or struck out a line of glittering dots among the raised threads of the golden of some old brocaded curtains, where the lines of the stiff, heavy folds were broken, as the stuff had been flung carelessly down to serve as a model.
Plaster _écorchés_ stood about the room; and here and there, on shelves and tables, lay fragments of classical sculpture-torsos of antique goddesses, worn smooth as though all the years of the turies that had passed over them had been lovers kisses. The walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, with tless sketches in charcoal, red chalk, or pen and ink. Amid the litter and fusion of color boxes, overturools, flasks of oil, and essehere was just room to move so as to reach the illuminated circular space where the easel stood. The light from the window in the roof fell full upon Por-buss pale fad on the ivory-tinted forehead of his strange visitor. But in another moment the younger man heeded nothing but a picture that had already bee famous even in those stormy days of political and religious revolution, a picture that a few of the zealous worshipers, who have so oftehe sacred fire of art alive in evil days, were wont to go on pilgrimage to see. The beautiful panel represented a Saint Mary of Egypt about to pay her passage across the seas. It was a masterpiece destined for Mary de Medici, who sold it in later years of poverty.
"I like your saint," the old man remarked, addressing Porbus. "I would give you ten golden s for her over and above the price the Queen is paying; but as for putting a spoke in that wheel,--the devil take it!"
"It is good then?"
"Hey! hey!" said the old man; "good, say you?--Yes and no. Yood woman is not badly done, but she is not alive. You artists fancy that when a figure is correctly drawn, and everything in its place acc to the rules of anatomy, there is nothing more to be done. You make up the flesh tints beforehand on your palettes acc to your formulae, and fill ilines with due care that one side of the face shall be darker thaher; and because you look from time to time at a naked woman who stands on the platform before you, you fondly imagihat you have copied nature, think yourselves to be painters, believe that you have wrested His secret from God. Pshaw! You may know your syntax thhly and make no blunders in yrammar, but it takes that and something more to make a great poet. Look at your saint, Porbus! At a first glance she is admirable; look at her again, and you see at ohat she is glued to the background, and that you could not walk round her. She is a silhouette that turns but one side of her face to all beholders, a figure cut out of vas, an image with no power to move nor ge her position. I feel as if there were no air between that arm and the background, no spao sense of distan your vas. The perspective is perfectly correct, the strength of the c is accurately diminished with the distance; but, in spite of these praiseworthy efforts, I could never bring myself to believe that the warm breath of life es and goes in that beautiful body. It seems to me that if I laid my hand on the firm, rouhroat, it would be cold as marble to the touo, my friend, the blood does not flow beh that ivory skin, the tide of life does not flush those delicate fibres, the purple veins that trace a work beh the transparent amber of her brow and breast. Here the pulse seems to beat, there it is motionless, life ah are at strife in every detail; here you see a woman, there a statue, there again a corpse. Your creation is inplete. You had only power to breathe a portion of your soul into your beloved work. The fire of Prometheus died out again and again in your hands; many a spot in your picture has not been touched by the divine flame."
"But how is it, dear master?" Porbus asked respectfully, while the young man with difficulty repressed his strong desire to beat the critic.
"Ah!" said the old man, "it is this! You have halted between two manners. You have hesitated between drawing and color, between the dogged attention to detail, the stiff precision of the German masters and the dazzling glow, the joyous exuberance of Italian painters. You have set yourself to imitate Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht Durer and Paul Veronese in a single picture. A magnifit ambition truly, but what has e of it? Your work has her the severe charm of a dry execution nor the magical illusion of Italian _chiaroscuro_. Titians rich golden c poured into Albrecht Dureras austere outlines has shattered them, like molten bronze bursting through the mold that is not strong enough to hold it. In other places the outlines have held firm, imprisoning and obsg the magnifit, glowing flood of Veian color. The drawing of the face is not perfect, the c is not perfect; traces of that unlucky indecisioo be seen everywhere. Unless you felt strong enough to fuse the two opposed manners in the fire of your own genius, you should have cast in your lot boldly with the one or the other, and so have obtaihe unity which simulates one of the ditions of life itself. Your work is only true in the tres; your outlines are false, they projeothing, there is no hint of anything behind them. There is truth here," said the old man, pointing to the breast of the Saint, "and again here," he went on, indig the rounded shoulder. "But there," once more returning to the n of the throat, "everything is false. Let us go no further into detail, you would be disheartened."
The old man sat down on a stool, and remained a while without speaking, with his face buried in his hands.
"Yet I studied that throat from the life, dear master," Porbus began; "it happens sometimes, for our misfortuhat real effects in nature look improbable when transferred to vas--"
"The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express it. You are not a servile copyist, but a poet!" cried the old man sharply, cutting Porbus short with an imperious gesture. "Otherwise a sculptht make a plaster cast of a living woman and save himself all further trouble. Well, try to make a cast of your mistresss hand, a up the thing before you. You will see a monstrosity, a dead mass, bearing no resemblao the living hand; you would be pelled to have recourse to the chisel of a sculptor who, without making a copy, would represent for you its movement and its life. We must detect the spirit, the inf soul in the appearances of things and beings. Effects! What are effects but the acts of life, not life itself? A hand, since I have taken that example, is not only a part of a body, it is the expression aension of a thought that must be grasped and rendered. her painter nor poet nor sculptor may separate the effect from the cause, which are iably taihe one iher. There begins the real struggle! Many a painter achieves success instinctively, unscious of the task that is set before art. You draw a woma you do not see her! Not so do you succeed iing Natures secrets from her! You are reprodug meically the model that you copied in your masters studio. You do not pee far enough into the inmost secrets of the mystery of form; you do not seek with love enough and perseveranough after the form that baffles and eludes you. Beauty is a thing severe and unapproachable, o be won by a languid lover. You must lie in wait for her ing >藏书网</a>and take her unawares, press her hard and clasp her in a tight embrace, and force her to yield. Form is a Proteus more intangible and more manifold than the Proteus of the legend; pelled, only after long wrestling, to stand forth ma in his true aspect. Some of you are satisfied with the first shape, or at most by the sed or the third that appears. Not thus wrestle the victors, the unvanquished painters who never suffer themselves to be deluded by all those treacherous shadoes; they persevere till Nature at the last stands bare to their gaze, and her very soul is revealed.
"In this manner worked Rafael," said the old man, taking off his cap to express his reverence for the King of Art. "His transdent greatness came of the intimate sehat, in him, seems as if it would shatter external form. Form in his figures (as with us) is a symbol, a means of unig sensations, ideas, the vast imaginings of a poet. Every face is a whole world. The subject of the portrait appeared for him bathed in the light of a divine vision; it was revealed by an inner voice, the finger of God laid bare the sources of expression in the past of a whole life.
"You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in gracious veiling of hair; but where is the blood, the source of passion and of calm, the cause of the particular effect? Why, this browian of yours, my good Porbus, is a colorless creature! These figures that you set before us are painted bloodless fantoms; and you call that painting, you call that art!
"Because you have made something more like a woman than a house, you think that you have set your fingers on the goal; you are quite proud that you need not to write _currus venustus_ or _pulcher homo_ beside yures, as early painters were wont to do and you fancy that you have done wonders. Ah! my good friend, there is still something more to learn, and you will use up a great deal of chalk and cover many a vas before you will learn it. Yes, truly, a woman carries her head in just such a way, so she holds her garments gathered into her hand; her eyes grow dreamy and soft with that expression of meek sweetness, and even so the quivering shadow of the lashes hovers upon her cheeks. It is all there, a is not there. What is lag? A nothing, but that nothing is everything.
"There you have the semblance of life, but you do not express its fulness and effluehat indescribable something, perhaps the soul itself, that envelopes the outlines of the body like a haze; that flower of life, in short, that Titian and Rafael caught. Your utmost achievement hitherto has only brought you to the starting-point. You might now perhaps begin to do excellent work, but you grow weary all too soon; and the crowd admires, and those who know smile.
"Oh, Mabuse! oh, my master!" cried the strange speaker, "thou art a thief! Thou hast carried away the secret of life with thee!"
"heless," he began again, "this picture of yours is worth more than all the paintings of that rascal Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh raddled with vermilion, his torrents of red hair, his riot of color. You, at least have color there, and feeling and drawing--the three essentials in art."
The young man roused himself from his deep musings.
"Why, my good man, the Saint is sublime!" he cried. "There is a subtlety of imagination about those two figures, the Saint Mary and the Shipman, that ot be found among Italian masters; I do not know a single one of them capable of imagining the Shipmaation."
"Did that little malapert e with you?" asked Porbus of the older man.
"Alas! master, pardon my boldness," cried the neophyte, and the ouo his face. "I am unknown--a dauber by instinct, and but lately e to this city--the fountain-head of all learning."
"Set to work," said Porbus, handing him a bit of red chalk and a sheet of paper.
The new-er quickly sketched the Saint Mary line for line.
"Aha!" exclaimed the old man. "Your name?" he added.
The young man wrote "Nicolas Poussin" below the sketch.
"Not bad that for a beginning," said the strange speaker, who had discoursed so wildly. "I see that we talk of art in your presence. I do not blame you for admiring Porbuss saint. In the eyes of the world she is a masterpiece, and those alone who have been initiated into the inmost mysteries of art discover her shortings. But it is worth while to give you the lesson, for you are able to uand it, so I will show you how little it o plete this picture. You must be all eyes, all attention, for it may be that such a ce of learning will never e in your way again--Porbus! your palette."
Porbus went in search of palette and brushes. The little old man turned back his sleeves with impatient energy, seized the palette, covered with many hues, that Porbus hao him, and snatched rather than took a handful of brushes of various sizes from the hands of his acquaintance. His pointed beard suddenly bristled--a menag movement that expressed the prick of a lovers fancy. As he loaded his brush, he muttered between his teeth, "These paints are only fit to fling out of the window, together with the fellow who ground them, their crudeness and falseness are disgusting! How one paint with this?"
He dipped the tip of the brush with feverish eagerness in the different pigments, making the circuit of the palette several times more quickly than the anist of a cathedral sweeps the octaves on the keyboard of his clavier for the "O Filii" at Easter.
Porbus and Poussin, oher side of the easel, stood stock-still, watg with inteerest.
"Look, young man," he began again, "see how three or four strokes of the brush and a thin glaze of blue let in the free air to play about the head of the poor Saint, who must have felt stifled and oppressed by the close atmosphere! See how the drapery begins to flutter; you feel that it is lifted by the breeze! A moment ago it hung as heavily and stiffly as if it were held out by pins. Do you see how the satihat I have just given to the breast rends the pliant, silken softness of a young girls skin, and how the brown-red, blended with burnt ochre, brings warmth into the cold gray of the deep shadow where <bdi>９９lib?</bdi>the blood lay gealed instead of c through the veins? Young man, young man, no master could teach you how to do this that I am doing before your eyes. Mabuse alone possessed the secret of giving life to his figures; Mabuse had but one pupil--that was I. I have had none, and I am old. You have suffit intelligeo imagihe rest from the glimpses that I am giving you."
While the old man eaking, he gave a touch here and there; sometimes two strokes of the brush, sometimes a single one; but every stroke told so well, that the whole picture seemed transfigured--the painting was flooded with light. He worked with such passionate fervor that beads of sweat gathered upon his bare forehead; he worked so quickly, in brief, impatient jerks, that it seemed to young Poussin as if some familiar spirit inhabiting the body of this strange being took a grotesque pleasure in making use of the mans hands against his own will. The uhly glitter of his eyes, the vulsive movements that seemed like struggles, gave to this fancy a semblance of truth which could not but stir a young imagination. The old man tinued, saying as he did so--
"Paf! paf! that is how to lay it on, young man!--Little touches! e and bring a glow into those icy cold tones for me! Just so! Pon! pon! pon!" and those parts of the picture that he had pointed out as cold and lifeless flushed with warmer hues, a few bold strokes of colht all the tones of the picture into the required harmony with the glowing tints of the Egyptian, and the differences in temperament vanished.
"Look you, youhe last touches make the picture. Porbus has given it a hurokes for every one of mine. No ohanks us for what lies beh. Bear that in mind."
At last the restless spirit stopped, and turning to Porbus and Poussin, who were speechless with admiration, he spoke--
"This is not as good as my Belle Noiseuse; still one might put ones o such a thing as this.--Yes, I would put my o it," he added, rising to reach for a mirror, in which he looked at the picture.--"And now," he said, "will you both e and breakfast with me? I have a smoked ham and some very fair wine!... Eh! eh! the times may be bad, but we still have some talk about art! We talk like equals.... Here is a little fellow who has aptitude," he added, laying a hand on Nicolas Poussins shoulder.
In this way the stranger became aware of the threadbare dition of the Normans doublet. He drew a leather purse from his girdle, felt in it, found two gold s, ahem out.
"I will buy your sketch," he said.
"Take it," said Porbus, as he saw the other start and flush with embarrassment, for Poussin had the pride of poverty. "Pray, take it; he has a couple of kings ransoms in his pouch!"
The three came down together from the studio, and, talking of art by the way, reached a picturesque wooden house hard by the Pont Saint-Michel. Poussin wondered a moment at its or, at the knocker, at the frames of the casements, at the scroll-work designs, and in the he stood in a vast low-ceiled room. A table, covered with tempting dishes, stood he blazing fire, and (luhoped for) he was in the pany of two great artists full of genial good humor.
"Do not look too long at that vas, young man," said Porbus, when he saoussin was standing, struck with wonder, before a painting. "You would fall a victim to despair."
It was the "Adam" painted by Mabuse to purchase his release from the prison, where his creditors had so lo him. And, as a matter of fact, the figure stood out so boldly and vingly, that Nicolas Poussin began to uand the real meaning of the words poured out by the old artist, who was himself looking at the picture with apparent satisfa, but without enthusiasm. "I have doer than that!" he seemed to be saying to himself.
"There is life in it," he said aloud; "in that respect my poor master here surpassed himself, but there is some lack of truth in the background. The man lives indeed; he is rising, and will e toward us; but the atmosphere, the sky, the air, the breath of the breeze--you look and feel for them, but they are not there. And then the man himself is, after all, only a man! Ah! but the one man in the world who came direct from the hands of God must have had a something divine about him that is wanting here. Mabuse himself would grind his teeth and say so when he was not drunk."
Poussin looked from the speaker to Porbus, and from Porbus to the speaker, with restless curiosity. He went up to the latter to ask for the name of their host; but the painter laid a finger on his lips with an air of mystery. The young mans i was excited; he kept silence, but hoped that sooner or later some word might be let fall that would reveal the name of his eainer. It was evident that he was a man of talent and very wealthy, for Porbus listeo him respectfully, and the vast room was crowded with marvels of art.
A magnifit portrait of a woman, hung against the dark oak panels of the wall, caught Poussins attention.
"What a glorious Giione!" he cried.
"No," said his host, "it is an early daub of mine--"
"Gramercy! I am in the abode of the god of painting, it seems!" cried Poussin ingenuously.
The old man smiled as if he had long grown familiar with such praise.
"Master Frenhofer!" said Porbus, "do you think you could spare me a little of your capital Rhine wine?"
"A couple of pipes!" answered his host; "oo discharge a debt, for the pleasure of seeing your pretty sihe other as a present from a friend."
"Ah! if I had my health," returned Porbus, "and if you would but let me see your Belle Noiseuse, I would paint some great picture, with breadth in it ah; the figures should be life-size."
"Let you see my work!" cried the painter in agitation. "No, no! it is not perfect yet; something still remains for me to do. Yesterday, in the dusk," he said, "I thought I had reached the end. Her eyes seemed moist, the flesh quivered, something stirred the tresses of her hair. She breathed! But though I have succeeded in reprodug Natures roundness and relief on the flat surface of the vas, this m, by daylight, I found out my mistake. Ah! to achieve that glorious result I have studied the works of the great masters of color, stripping off coat after coat of color from Titians vas, analyzing the pigments of the king of light. Like that sn painter, I began the fa a slight toh a supple and fat paste--for shadow is but an act; bear that in mind, youngster!--Then I began afresh, and by half-tones and thin glazes of color less aransparent, I gradually deepehe tints to the deepest black of the stro shadows. An ordinary painter makes his shadows somethiirely different in nature from the high lights; they are wood or brass, or what you will, anything but flesh in shadow. You feel that even if those figures were to alter their position, those shadow stains would never be sed away, those parts of the picture would never glow with light.
"I have escaped one mistake, into which the most famous painters have sometimes fallen; in my vas the whiteness shihrough the de and most persistent shadow. I have not marked out the limits of my figure in hard, dry outlines, and brought every least anatomical detail into prominence (like a host of dunces, who fancy that they draw because they trace a line elaborately smooth and ), for the human body is not tained within the limits of line. In this the sculptor approach the truth more nearly than we painters. Natures way is a plicated succession of curve within curve. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as drawing.--Do not laugh, young man; strange as that speech may seem to you, you will uand the truth in it some day.--A line is a method of expressing the effect of light upon an object; but there are no lines in Nature, everything is solid. We draw by modeling, that is to say, that we disengage an object from its setting; the distribution of the light alone gives to a body the appearance by which we know it. So I have not defihe outlines; I have suffused them with a haze of half-tints warm olden, in such a sort that you ot lay your finger on the e></a>xact spot where background and tours meet. Seen from near, the picture looks a blur; it seems to lack definition; but step back two paces, and the whole thing bees clear, distinct, and solid; the body stands out; the rounded form es into relief; you feel that the air plays round it. A--I am not satisfied; I have misgivings. Perhaps one ought not to draw a single line; perhaps it would be better to attack the face from the tre, taking the highest prominences first, proceeding from them through the whe of shadows to the heaviest of all. Is not this the method of the sun, the divine painter of the world? Oh, Nature, Nature! who has surprised thee, fugitive? But, after all, too muowledge, like ignorance, brings you to a ion. I have doubts about my work."
There ause. Then the old man spoke again. "I have been at work upon it for ten years, young man; but what are ten short years in a struggle with Nature? Do we know how long Sir Pygmaliht at the oatue that came to life?" The old man fell into deep musings, and gazed before him with unseeing eyes, while he played unheedingly with his knife.
"Look, he is in versation with his _domon!_" murmured Porbus.
At the word, Nicolas Poussi himself carried away by an unatable accession of artists curiosity. For him the old man, at oent and i, the seer with the unseeing eyes, became something more than a man--a fantastic spirit living in a mysterious world, and tless vague thoughts awoke within his soul. The effect of this species of fasation upon his mind o more be described in words than the passionate longing awakened in an exiles heart by the song that recalls his home. He thought of the s that the old man affected to display for the efforts of art, of his wealth, his manners, of the deference paid to him by Porbus. The mysterious picture, the work of patien which he had wrought so long i, was doubtless a work of genius, for the head of the Virgin which young Poussin had admired so frankly was beautiful even beside Mabuses "Adam"--there was no mistaking the imperial manner of one of the princes of art. Everything bio set the old man beyond the limits of human nature.
Out of the wealth of fancies in Nicolas Poussins brain an idea grew, and gathered shape and clearness. He saw in this supernatural being a plete type of the artist nature, a nature mog and kindly, barren and prolifi erratic spirit intrusted with great and manifold powers which she too often abuses, leading sober reason, the Philistine, and sometimes even the amateur forth into a stony wilderness where they see nothing; but the white-winged maiden herself, wild as her fancies may be, finds epics there and castles and works of art. For Poussin, the enthusiast, the old man, was suddenly transfigured, and became Art inate, Art with its mysteries, its vehement passion and its dreams.
"Yes, my dear Porbus," Frenhofer tinued, "hitherto I have never found a flawless model, a body with outlines of perfect beauty, the ations--Ah! where does she live?" he cried, breaking in upon himself, "the undiscoverable Venus of the older time, for whom we have sought so often, only to find the scattered gleams of her beauty here and there? Oh! to behold ond for one moment, Nature grown perfed divihe Ideal at last, I would give all that I possess.... Nay, Beauty divine, I would go to seek thee in the dim land of the dead; like Orpheus, I would go down into the Hades of Art t back the life of art from among the shadows of death."
"We go now," said Porbus to Poussin. "He her hears nor sees us any longer."
"Let us go to his studio," said young Poussin, w greatly.
"Oh! the old fox takes care that no one shall e. His treasures are so carefully guarded that it is impossible for us to e at them. I have not waited for ygestion and your fancy to attempt to lay hands on this mystery by force."
"So there is a mystery?" "Yes," answered Porbus. "Old Frenhofer is the only pupil Mabuse would take. Frenhofer became the painters friend, deliverer, and father; he sacrificed the greater part of his fortuo enable Mabuse to indulge in riotous extravagance, and iurn Mabuse bequeathed to him the secret of relief, the power of giving to his figures the wonderful life, the flower of Nature, the eternal despair of art, the secret which Ma-buse knew so well that one day when he had sold the flowered brocade suit in which he should have appeared at the Entry of Charles V, he apanied his master in a suit of paper paio resemble the brocade. The peculiar riess and splendor of the stuff struck the Emperor; he plimehe old drunkards patron oists appearance, and so the trick was brought to light. Frenhofer is a passiohusiast, who sees above and beyond other painters. He has meditated profoundly on color, and the absolute truth of line; but by the way of much research he has e to doubt the very existence of the objects of his search. He says, in moments of despondency, that there is no such thing as drawing, and that by means of lines we only reproduce geometrical figures; but that is overshooting the mark, for by outline and shadow you reprodu without any color at all, which shows that our art, like Nature, is posed of an infinite number of elements. Drawing gives you the skeleton, the anatomical frame- work, and color puts the life into it; but life without the skeleton is even more inplete than a skeleton without life. But there is something else truer still, and it is this--f or painters, practise and observation are everything; and when theories and poetical ideas begin to quarrel with the brushes, the end is doubt, as has happened with ood friend, who is half crack-braihusiast, half painter. A sublime painter! but unlucky for him, he was born to riches, and so he has leisure to follow his fancies. Do not you follow his example! Work! painters have no busio think, except brush in hand."
"We will find a way into his studio!" cried Poussin fidently. He had ceased to heed Porbuss remarks. The other smiled at the young painters enthusiasm, asked him to e to see him again, and they parted. Nicolas Poussi slowly back to the Rue de la Harpe, and passed the modest hostelry where he was lodging without notig it. A feeling of uneasiness prompted him to hurry up the crazy staircase till he reached a room at the top, a quaint, airy recess uhe steep, high-pitched roof ong houses in old Paris. In the one dingy window of the place sat a young girl, wh up at once when she heard some o the door; it was the prompting of love; she had reized the paiou the latch.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked.
"The matter is... is... Oh! I have felt that I am a painter! Until to-day I have had doubts, but now I believe in myself! There is the making of a great man in me! Never mind, Gillette, we shall be rid happy! There is gold at the tips of those brushes--"
He broke off suddenly. The joy faded from his powerful and ear face as he pared his vast hopes with his slender resources. The walls were covered with sketches in chalk os of on paper. There were but four vases in the room. Colors were very costly, and the young painters palette was almost bare. Yet in the midst of his poverty he possessed and was scious of the possession of inexhaustible treasures of the heart, of a dev genius equal to all the tasks that lay before him.
He had been brought to Paris by a nobleman among his friends, or perce by the sciousness of his powers; and in Paris he had found a mistress, one of those noble and generous souls who choose to suffer by a great mans side, who share his struggles and strive to uand his fancies, accepting their lot of poverty and love as bravely and dauntlessly as other women will set themselves to bear the burden of riches and make a parade of their insensibility. The smile that stole illettes lips filled the garret with golden light, and rivaled the brightness of the sun in heaven. The sun, moreover, does not always shine in heaven, whereas Gillette was always in the garret, absorbed in her passion, occupied by Poussins happiness and sorrow, soling the genius which found an outlet in love before art engrossed it.
"Listen, Gillette. e here."
The girl obeyed joyously, and sprang upon the painters knee. Hers erfect grad beauty, and the loveliness of spring; she was adorned with all luxuriant fairness of outward form, lighted up by the glow of a fair soul within.
"Oh! God," he cried; "I shall never dare to tell her--"
"A secret?" she cried; "I must know it!"
Poussin was absorbed in his dreams.
"Do tell it me!"
"Gillette... poor beloved heart!..."
"Oh! do you want something of me?"
"Yes."
"If you wish me to sit once more for you as I did the other day," she tinued with playful petulance, "I will never sent to do such a thing again, for your eyes say nothing all the while. You do not think of me at all, a you look at me--"
"Would you rather have me draw another woman?"
"Perhaps--if she were very ugly," she said.
"Well," said Poussin gravely, "and if, for the sake of my fame to e, if to make me a great painter, you must sit to some one else?"
"You may try me," she said; "you know quite well that I would not."
Poussins head sank on her breast; he seemed to be overpowered by some intolerable joy or sorrow.
"Listen," she cried, plug at the sleeve of Poussins threadbare doublet, "I told you, Nick, that I would lay down my life for you; but I never promised you that I in my lifetime would lay down my love."
"Your love?" cried the young artist.
"If I showed myself thus to another, you would love me no longer, and I should feel myself unworthy of you. Obedieo your fancies was a natural and simple thing, was it not? Even against my own will, I am glad and even proud to do thy dear will. But for another, out upon it!"
"Five me, my Gillette," said the painter, falling upon his knees; "I would rather be beloved than famous. You are fairer than success and honors. There, fling the pencils away, and burn these sketches! I have made a mistake. I was meant to love and not to paint. Perish art and all its secrets!"
Gillette looked admiringly at him, in aasy of happiness! She was triumphant; she felt instinctively that art was laid aside for her sake, and flung like a grain of inse at her feet.
"Yet he is only an old man," Poussin tinued; "for him you would be a woman, and nothing more. You--so perfect!"
"I must love you indeed!" she cried, ready to sacrifice even loves scruples to the lover who had given up so much for her sake; "but I should bring about my own ruin. Ah! to ruin myself, to lose everything for you!... It is a very glorious thought! Ah! but you will fet me. Oh I what evil thought is this that has e to you?"
"I love you, a I thought of it," he said, with something like remorse, "Am I so base a wretch?"
"Let us sult Père Hardouin," she said.
"No, no! Let it be a secret between us."
"Very well; I will do it. But you must not be there," she said. "Stay at the door with yger in your hand; and if I call, rush in and kill the painter."
Poussin fot everything but art. He held Gillette tightly in his arms.
"He loves me no longer!" thought Gillette when she was alone. She repented of her resolution already.
But to these misgivings there soon succeeded a sharper pain, and she strove to banish a hideous thought that arose in her ow. It seemed to her that her own love had grown less already, with a vague suspi that the painter had fallen somewhat in her eyes.
II--CATHERINE LESCAULT
Three months after Poussin and Porbus met, the latter went to see Master Frehe old man had fallen a victim to one of those profound and spontaneous fits of discement that are caused, acc to medical logis, by iion, flatulence, fever, or enlargement of the spleen; or, if you take the opinion of the Spiritualists, by the imperfes of our mortal nature. The good man had simply overworked himself in putting the finishing touches to his mysterious picture. He was lounging in a huge carved oak chair, covered with black leather, and did not ge his listless attitude, but gla Porbus like a man who has settled down into low spirits.
"Well, master," said Porbus, "was the ultramarine bad that you sent for tes? Is the new white difficult to grind? Is the oil poor, or are the brushes recalcitrant?"
"Alas!" cried the old man, "for a moment I thought that my work was finished, but I am sure that I am mistaken iaiails, and I ot rest until I have cleared my doubts. I am thinking of traveling. I am going to Turkey, to Greece, to Asia, i of a model, so as to pare my picture with the different living forms of Nature. Perhaps," and a smile of te stole over his face, "perhaps I have Nature herself up there. At times I am half afraid that a breath may waken her, and that she will escape me."
He rose to his feet as if to set out at once.
"Aha!" said Porbus, "I have e just in time to save you the trouble and expense of a journey."
"What?" asked Frenhofer in amazement.
"Young Poussin is loved by a woman of inparable and flawless beauty. But, dear master, if he sents to leo you, at the least you ought to let us see your work."
The old man stood motionless and pletely dazed.
"What!" he cried piteously at last, "show you my creation, my bride? Rend the veil that has kept my happiness sacred? It would be an infamous profanation. For ten years I have lived with her; she is mine, mine alone; she loves me. Has she not smiled at me, at each stroke of the brush upon the vas? She has a soul--the soul that I have given her. She would blush if any eyes but mine should rest oo exhibit her! Where is the husband, the lover so vile as t the woman he loves to dishonor? When you paint a picture for the court, you do not put your whole soul into it; to courtiers you sell lay figures duly colored. My painting is no painting, it is a se, a passion. She was born in my studio, there she must dwell in maiden solitude, and only when clad she issue thence. Poetry and women only lay the last veil aside for their lovers Have we Rafaels model, Ariostos Angelica, Dantes Beatriay, only their form and semblance. But this picture, locked away above in my studio, is an exception in our art. It is not a vas, it is a woman--a woman with whom I talk. I share her thoughts, her tears, her laughter. Would you have me fling aside these ten years of happiness like a cloak? Would you have me cease at oo be father, lover, and creator? She is not a creature, but a creation.
&qu your young painter here. I will give him my treasures; I will give him pictures by Cio and Michelangelo and Titian; I will kiss his footprints in the dust; but make him my rival! Shame on me. Ah! ah! I am a lover first, and then a painter. Yes, with my latest sigh I could find strength to burn my Belle Noiseuse; but--pel her to ehe gaze of a stranger, a young man and a painter!--Ah! no, no! I would kill him on the morrow who should sully her with a glanay, you, my friend, I would kill you with my own hands in a moment if you did not kneel in reverence before her! Now, will you have me submit my idol to the careless eyes and senseless criticisms of fools? Ah! love is a mystery; it only live hidden in the depths of the heart. You say, even to your friend, Behold her whom I love, and there is an end of love."
The old man seemed to have grown young again; there was light and life in his eyes, and a faint flush of red in his pale face. His hands shook. Porbus was so amazed by the passionate vehemence of Frenhofers words that he knew not what to reply to this utterance of aion as strange as it rofound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Had he fallen a victim to some freak of the artists fancy? or were these ideas of his produced by the strange lightheadedness whies over us during the long travail of a work of art. Would it be possible to e to terms with this singular passion?
Harassed by all these doubts, Porbus spoke--"Is it not woman for woman?" he said. "Does not Poussin submit his mistress to yaze?"
"What is she?" retorted the other. "A mistress who will be false to him sooner or later. Mine will be faithful to me forever."
"Well, well," said Porbus, "let us say no more about it. But you may die before you will find such a flawless beauty as hers, even in Asia, and then your picture will be left unfinished.
"Oh! it is finished," said Frenhof er. "Standing before it you would think that it was a living woman lying on the velvet couch beh the shadow of the curtains. Perfumes are burning on a golden tripod by her side. You would be tempted to lay your hand upoassel of the cord that holds back the curtains; it would seem to you that you saw her breast rise and fall as she breathed; that you beheld the living Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtezan whom men called La Belle Noiseuse. A--if I could but be sure--"
"Then go to Asia," returned Porbus, notig a certain indecision in Frenhofers face. And with that Porbus made a few steps toward the door. By that time Gillette and Nicolas Poussin had reached Frenhofers house. The girl drew away her arm from her lovers as she stood ohreshold, and shrank back as if some prese flashed through her mind.
"Oh! what have I e to do here?" she asked of her lover in low vibrating tones, with her eyes fixed on his.
"Gillette, I have left you to decide; I am ready to obey you ihing. You are my sd my glo home again; I shall be happier, perhaps, if you do not--"
"Am I my own when you speak to me like that? No, no; I am a child.--e," she added, seemingly with a violent effort; "if our love dies, if I plant a lret in my heart, your fame will be the reward of my obedieo your wishes, will it not? Let us go in. I shall still live on as a memory on your palette; that shall be life for me afterward."
The door opened, and the two lovers entered Porbus, who was surprised by the beauty of Gillette, whose eyes were full of tears. He hurried her, trembling from head to foot, into the presence of the old painter.
"Here!" he cried, "is she not worth all the masterpieces in the world!"
Frerembled. There stood Gillette iless and childlike attitude of some timid and i Geian, carried off by brigands, and fronted with a slave mert. A shamefaced red flushed her face, her eyes drooped, her hands hung by her side, her strength seemed to have failed her, her tears protested against this e. Poussin cursed himself in despair that he should have brought his fair treasure from its hiding-place. The lover overcame the artist, and tless doubts assailed Poussi when he saw youth dawn in the old mans eyes, as, like a painter, he dised every line of the form hiddeh the young girls vesture. Then the lovers savage jealousy awoke.
"Gillette!" he cried, "let us go."
The girl turned joyously at the cry and the tone in which it was uttered, raised her eyes to his, looked at him, and fled to his arms.
"Ah! then you love me," she cried; "you love me!" and she burst into tears.
She had spirit enough to suffer in silence, but she had nth to hide her joy.
"Oh! leave her with me for one moment," said the old painter, "and you shall pare her with my Catherine... yes--I sent."
Frenhofers words likewise came from him like a lovers cry. His vanity seemed to be engaged for his semblance of womanhood; he anticipated the triumph of the beauty of his owiohe beauty of the living girl.
"Do not give him time to ge his mind!" cried Porbus, striking Poussin on the shoulder. "The flower of love soon fades, but the flower of art is immortal."
"Then am I only a woman now for him?" said Gillette. She was watg Poussin and Porbus closely.
She raised her head proudly; she gla Frenhofer, and her eyes flashed; then as she saw how her lover had fallen again to gazing at the portrait which he had taken at first fiione--
"Ah!" she cried; "let us go up to the studio. He never gave me such a look."
The sound of her voice recalled Poussin from his dreams.
"Old man," he said, "do you see this blade? I will plu into your heart at the first cry from this young girl; I will set fire to your house, and no one shall leave it alive. Do you uand?"
Nicolas Poussin scowled; every word was a menace. Gillette took fort from the young painters bearing, a more from that gesture, and almost fave him for sacrifig her to his art and his glorious future.
Porbus and Poussin stood at the door of the studio and looked at each other in sile first the painter of the Saint Mary of Egypt hazarded some exclamations: "Ah! she has taken off her clothes; he told her to e into the light--he is paring the two!" but the sight of the deep distress in Poussins face suddenly silenced him; and though old painters no longer feel these scruples, so petty in the presence of art, he admired them because they were so natural and gracious in the lover. The young ma his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and his ear was almost glued to the door. The two men standing in the shadow might have been spirators waiting for the hour when they might strike down a tyrant.
"e in, e in," cried the old man. He was radiant with delight. "My work is perfect. I show her now with pride. Never shall painter, brushes, colors, light, and vas produce a rival for Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtezan!"
Porbus and Poussin, burning with eager curiosity, hurried into a vast studio. Everything was in disorder and covered with dust, but they saw a few pictures here and there upon the wall. They stopped first of all in admiration before the life-size figure of a artially draped.
"Oh! never mind that," said Frenhofer; "that is a rough daub that I made, a study, a pose, it is nothing. These are my failures," he went on, indig the enting positions upon the walls of the studio.
This s for such works of art struck Porbus and Poussin dumb with amazement. They looked round for the picture of which he had spoken, and could not discover it.
"Look here!" said the old man. His hair was disordered, his face aglow with a more than humaation, his eyes glittered, he breathed hard like a young lover frenzied by love.
"Aha!" he cried, "you did not expect to see such perfe! You are looking for a picture, and you see a woman before you. There is such depth in that vas, the atmosphere is so true that you ot distinguish it from the air that surrounds us. Where is art? Art has vanished, it is invisible! It is the form of a living girl that you see before you. Have I not caught the very hues of life, the spirit of the living lihat defihe figure? Is there not the effect produced there like that which all natural objects present imosphere about them, or fishes ier? Do you see how the figure stands out against the background? Does it not seem to you that you pass your hand along the back? But then for seven years I studied and watched how the daylight blends with the objects on which it falls. And the hair, the light pours over it like a flood, does it not?... Ah! she breathed, I am sure that she breathed! Her breast--ah, see! Who would not fall on his knees before her? Her pulses throb. She will rise to her feet. Wait!"
"Do you see anything?" Poussin asked of Porbus.
"No... do you?"
"I see nothing."
The two painters left the old man to his ecstasy, and tried to ascertaiher the light that fell full upon the vas had in some way ralized all the effect for them. They moved to the right a of the picture; they came in front, bending down and standing upright by turns.
"Yes, yes, it is really vas," said Frenhofer, who mistook the nature of this minute iigation.
"Look! the vas is on a stretcher, here is the easel; indeed, here are my colors, my brushes," aook up a brush and held it out to them, all unsuspicious of their thought.
"The old _la_ is laughing at us," said Poussin, ing once more toward the supposed picture. "I see nothing there but fused masses of color and a multitude of fantastical lihat go to make a dead wall of paint."
"We are mistaken, look!" said Porbus.
In a er of the vas, as they came hey distinguished a bare foot emerging from the chaos of color, half-tints and vague shadows that made up a dim, formless fog. Its living delicate beauty held them spellbound. This fragment that had escaped an inprehensible, slow, and gradual destru seemed to them like the Parian marble torso of some Venus emerging from the ashes of a ruiown.
"There is a womah," exclaimed Porbus, calling Poussins attention to the coats of paint with which the old artist had overlaid and cealed his work in the quest of perfe.
Both artists .urned involuntarily to Frehey began to have some uanding, vague though it was, of the ecstasy in which he lived.
"He believes it in all good faith," said Porbus.
"Yes, my friend," said the old man, rousing himself from his dreams, "it needs faith, faith in art, and you must live for long with your work to produce such a creation. What toil some of those shadows have e. Look! there is a faint shadow there upon the cheek beh the eyes--if you saw that on a human face, it would seem to you that you could never re with paint. Do you think that that effect has not cost unheard of toil?
"But not only so, dear Porbus. Look closely at my work, and you will uand more clearly what I was saying as to methods of modeling and outline. Look at the high lights on the bosom, and see how by tou touch, thickly laid on, I have raised the surface so that it catches the light itself and blends it with the lustrous whiteness of the high lights, and how by an opposite process, by flattening the surface of the paint, and leaving no trace of the passage of the brush, I have succeeded in softening the tours of my figures and enveloping them in half-tints until the very idea of drawing, of the means by which the effect is produced, fades away, and the picture has the roundness and relief of nature. e closer. You will see the manner of w better; at a little dista ot be seen. There I Just there, it is, I think, very plainly to be seen," and with the tip of his brush he pointed out a patch of transparent color to the two painters.
Porbus, laying a hand on the old artists shoulder, turo Poussin with a "Do you know that in him we see a very great painter?"
"He is even more of a poet than a painter," Poussin answered gravely.
"There," Porbus tinued, as he touched the vas, "Use the utmost limit of our art oh."
"Beyond that point it loses itself in the skies," said Poussin.
"What joys lie there on this piece of vas!" exclaimed Porbus.
The old man, deep in his own musings, smiled at the woman he alone beheld, and did not hear.
"But sooner or later he will find out that there is nothing there!" cried Poussin.
"Nothing on my vas!" said Frenhofer, looking in turn at either painter and at his picture.
"What have you done?" muttered Porbus, turning to Poussin.
The old man clutched the young painters arm and said, "Do you see nothing? clodpatel Huguenot! varlet! cullion! What brought you here into my studio?--My good Porbus," he went on, as he turo the painter, "are you also making a fool of me? Answer! I am your friend. Tell me, have I ruined my picture after all?"
Porbus hesitated and said nothing, but there was sutolerable ay in the old mans white face that he poio the easel.
"Look!" he said.
Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture, and staggered back.
"Nothing! nothing! After ten years of work..." He sat down a.
"So I am a dotard, a madman, I have her talent nor power! I am only a rich man, who works for his own pleasure, and makes nress, I have dohing after all!"
He looked through his tears at his picture. Suddenly he rose and stood proudly before the two painters.
"By the body and blood of Christ," he cried with flashing eyes, "you are jealous! You would have me think that my picture is a failure because you want to steal her from me! Ah! I see her, I see her," he cried "she is marvelously beautiful..."
At that moment Poussin heard the sound of weeping; Gillette was croug fotten in a er. All at ohe painter once more became the lover. "What is it, my angel?" he asked her.
"Kill me!" she sobbed. "I must be a vile thing if I love you still, for I despise you.... I admire you, and I hate you! I love you, and I feel that I hate you even now!"
While Gillettes words sounded in Poussins ears, Frenhof er drew a green serge c over his "Catherine" with the sober deliberation of a jeweler who locks his drawers when he suspects his visitors to be expert thieves. He gave the two painters a profoundly astute glahat expressed to the full his suspis, and his pt for them, saw them out of his studio with impetuous haste and in silence, until from the threshold of his house he bade them "Good-by, my young friends!"
That farewell struck a chill of dread into the two painters. Porbus, in ay, went again on the morrow to see Frenhofer, and learhat he had died in the night after burning his vases.
Paris, February, 1832.
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