His Masterpiece by Émile Zola (classic novels for teens .TXT) 📕

yesterday. It’s magnificent. I spent three hours there today. I’ve got hold of what I want⁠—something wonderful, something that’ll knock everything else to pieces. Just look! I station myself under the bridge; in the immediate foreground I have the Port of St. Nicolas, with its crane, its lighters which are being unloaded, and its crowd of labourers. Do you see the idea⁠—it’s Paris at work⁠—all those brawny fellows displaying their bare arms and chests? Then on the other side I have the swimming-baths⁠—Paris at play⁠—and some skiff there, no doubt, to occupy the centre of the composition; but of that I am not as yet certain. I must feel my way. As a matter of course, the Seine will be in the middle, broad, immense.”

While talking, he kept on indicating outlines with his pencil, thickening his strokes over and over again, and tearing the paper in his very energy. She, in order to please him, bent over the sketch, pretending to grow very interested in his explanations. But there was such a labyrinth of lines, such a confusion of summary details, that she failed to distinguish anything.

“You are following me, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes, very beautiful indeed.”

“Then I have the background, the two arms of the rivet with their quays, the Cité, rising up triumphantly in the centre, and standing out against the sky. Ah! that background, what a marvel! People see it every day, pass before it without stopping; but it takes hold of one all the same; one’s admiration accumulates, and one fine afternoon it bursts forth. Nothing in the world can be grander; it is Paris herself, glorious in the sunlight. Ah! what a fool I was not to think of it before! How many times I have looked at it without seeing! However, I stumbled on it after that ramble along the quays! And, do you remember, there’s a dash of shadow on that side; while here the sunrays fall quite straight. The towers are yonder; the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle tapers upward, as slim as a needle pointing to the sky. But no, it’s more to the right. Wait, I’ll show you.”

He began again, never wearying, but constantly retouching the sketch, and adding innumerable little characteristic details which his painter’s eye had noticed; here the red signboard of a distant shop vibrated in the light; closer by was a greenish bit of the Seine, on whose surface large patches of oil seemed to be floating; and then there was the delicate tone of a tree, the gamut of greys supplied by the house frontages, and the luminous cast of the sky. She complaisantly approved of all he said and tried to look delighted.

But Jacques once again forgot what he had been told. After long remaining silent before his book, absorbed in the contemplation of a woodcut depicting a black cat, he began to hum some words of his own composition: “Oh, you pretty cat; oh, you ugly cat; oh, you pretty, ugly cat,” and so on, ad infinitum, ever in the same lugubrious manner.

Claude, who was made fidgety by the buzzing noise, did not at first understand what was upsetting him. But after a time the child’s harassing phrase fell clearly upon his ear.

“Haven’t you done worrying us with your cat?” he shouted furiously.

“Hold your tongue, Jacques, when your father is talking!” repeated Christine.

“Upon my word, I do believe he is becoming an idiot. Just look at his head, if it isn’t like an idiot’s. It’s dreadful. Just say; what do you mean by your pretty and ugly cat?”

The little fellow, turning pale and wagging his big head, looked stupid, and replied: “Don’t know.”

Then, as his father and mother gazed at each other with a discouraged air, he rested his cheek on the open picture-book, and remained like that, neither stirring nor speaking, but with his eyes wide open.

It was getting late; Christine wanted to put him to bed, but Claude had already resumed his explanations. He now told her that, the very next morning, he should go and make a sketch on the spot, just in order to fix his ideas. And, as he rattled on, he began to talk of buying a small camp easel, a thing upon which he had set his heart for months. He kept harping on the subject, and spoke of money matters till she at last became embarrassed, and ended by telling him of everything⁠—the last copper she had spent that morning, and the silk dress she had pledged in order to dine that evening. Thereupon he became very remorseful and affectionate; he kissed her and asked her forgiveness for having complained about the dinner. She would excuse him, surely; he would have killed father and mother, as he kept on repeating, when that confounded painting got hold of him. As for the pawnshop, it made him laugh; he defied misery.

“I tell you that we are all right,” he exclaimed. “That picture means success.”

She kept silent, thinking about her meeting of the morning, which she wished to hide from him; but without apparent cause or transition, in the kind of torpor that had come over her, the words she would have kept back rose invincibly to her lips.

“Madame Vanzade is dead,” she said.

He looked surprised. Ah! really? How did she, Christine, know it?

“I met the old manservant. Oh, he’s a gentleman by now, looking very sprightly, in spite of his seventy years. I did not know him again. It was he who spoke to me. Yes, she died six weeks ago. Her millions have gone to various charities, with the exception of an annuity to the old servants, upon which they are living snugly like people of the middle-classes.”

He looked at her, and at last murmured, in a saddened voice: “My poor Christine, you are regretting things now, aren’t you? She would have given you a marriage portion, have found you a husband! I told you so in days gone by. She would, perhaps, have left you all