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

to wait until the heat produced a slight thaw, and then with great care he stripped the figure, baring the head first, then the bosom, and then the hips, well pleased at finding everything intact, and smiling like a lover at a woman fondly adored.

“Well, what do you think of it?”

Claude, who had only previously seen a little rough model of the statue, nodded his head, in order that he might not have to answer immediately. Decidedly, that good fellow Mahoudeau was turning traitor, and drifting towards gracefulness, in spite of himself, for pretty things ever sprang from under his big fingers, former stonecutter though he was. Since his colossal Vintaging Girl, he had gone on reducing and reducing the proportions of his figures without appearing to be aware of it himself, always ready to stick out ferociously for the gigantic, which agreed with his temperament, but yielding to the partiality of his eyes for sweetness and gracefulness. And indeed real nature broke at last through inflated ambition. Exaggerated still, his Bathing Girl was already possessed of great charm, with her quivering shoulders and her tightly-crossed arms that supported her breast.

“Well, you don’t like her?” he asked, looking annoyed.

“Oh, yes, I do! I think you are right to tone things down a bit, seeing that you feel like that. You’ll have a great success with this. Yes, it’s evident it will please people very much.”

Mahoudeau, whom such praises would once have thrown into consternation, seemed delighted. He explained that he wished to conquer public opinion without relinquishing a tithe of his convictions.

“Ah! dash it! it takes a weight off my mind to find you pleased,” said he, “for I should have destroyed it if you had told me to do so, I give you my word! Another fortnight’s work, and I’ll sell my skin to no matter whom in order to pay the moulder. I say, I shall have a fine show at the Salon, perhaps get a medal.”

He laughed, waved his arms about, and then, breaking off:

“As we are not in a hurry, sit down a bit. I want to get the wraps quite thawed.”

The stove, which was becoming red hot, diffused great heat. The figure, placed close by, seemed to revive under the warm air that now crept up her from her shins to her neck. And the two friends, who had sat down, continued looking the statue full in the face, chatting about it and noting each detail. The sculptor especially grew excited in his delight, and indulged in caressing gestures.

All at once, however, Claude fancied he was the victim of some hallucination. To him the figure seemed to be moving; a quiver like the ripple of a wavelet crossed her stomach, and her left hip became straightened, as if the right leg were about to step out.

“Have you noticed the smooth surface just about the loins?” Mahoudeau went on, without noticing anything. “Ah, my boy, I took great pains over that!”

But by degrees the whole statue was becoming animated. The loins swayed and the bosom swelled, as with a deep sigh, between the parted arms. And suddenly the head drooped, the thighs bent, and the figure came forward like a living being, with all the wild anguish, the grief-inspired spring of a woman who is flinging herself down.

Claude at last understood things, when Mahoudeau uttered a terrible cry. “By heavens, she’s breaking to pieces!⁠—she is coming down!”

The clay, in thawing, had snapped the weak wooden trusses. There came a cracking noise, as if bones indeed were splitting; and Mahoudeau, with the same passionate gesture with which he had caressed the figure from afar, working himself into a fever, opened both arms, at the risk of being killed by the fall. For a moment the bathing girl swayed to and fro, and then with one crash came down on her face, broken in twain at the ankles, and leaving her feet sticking to the boards.

Claude had jumped up to hold his friend back.

“Dash it! you’ll be smashed!” he cried.

But dreading to see her finish herself off on the floor, Mahoudeau remained with hands outstretched. And the girl seemed to fling herself on his neck. He caught her in his arms, winding them tightly around her. Her bosom was flattened against his shoulder and her thighs beat against his own, while her decapitated head rolled upon the floor. The shock was so violent that Mahoudeau was carried off his legs and thrown over, as far back as the wall; and there, without relaxing his hold on the girl’s trunk, he remained as if stunned lying beside her.

“Ah! confound it!” repeated Claude, furiously, believing that his friend was dead.

With great difficulty Mahoudeau rose to his knees, and burst into violent sobs. He had only damaged his face in the fall. Some blood dribbled down one of his cheeks, mingling with his tears.

“Ah! curse poverty!” he said. “It’s enough to make a fellow drown himself not to be able to buy a couple of rods! And there she is, there she is!”

His sobs grew louder; they became an agonising wail; the painful shrieking of a lover before the mutilated corpse of his affections. With unsteady hands he touched the limbs lying in confusion around him; the head, the torso, the arms that had snapped in twain; above aught else the bosom, now caved in. That bosom, flattened, as if it had been operated upon for some terrible disease, suffocated him, and he unceasingly returned to it, probing the sore, trying to find the gash by which life had fled, while his tears, mingled with blood, flowed freely, and stained the statue’s gaping wounds with red.

“Do help me!” he gasped. “One can’t leave her like this.”

Claude was overcome also, and his own eyes grew moist from a feeling of artistic brotherliness. He hastened to his comrade’s aide, but the sculptor, after claiming his assistance, persisted in picking up the remains by himself, as if dreading the rough handling of