XII
M. GROULT’S COLLECTION
ONE beautiful summer afternoon I was driven to a house in the Boulevard Inkermann at Neuilly. From afar off I heard the sound of hunting-horns, and I wondered in what part of Neuilly it was possible to follow the hounds. That was certainly a novelty.
The carriage stopped.
We were at the house of the charming Rachel Boyer, of the Comédie-Française, who had invited me to a matinee. Before reaching the house I crossed a great garden, still pursued by the sound of hunting-horns that were clearly coming nearer. While I was wondering again where the huntsmen could be riding I reached the house.
The mistress of the establishment received me with the greatest cordiality. Rachel Boyer is a charming soul. She beams like a ray of sunlight.
She saw me pricking up my ears with curiosity, for I continued to wonder where the huntsmen were hidden.
She smiled over and over again and with an air of mystery.
I could not restrain myself from asking her where the sounds I had heard came from, and whether a hunting party was in progress in her garden.
She began to laugh openly, and said:
“There isn’t any hunting. These buglers I engage to bid my guests a harmonious and cordial welcome.”
“But I don’t see them anywhere. It is really very pretty.”
“From the moment that I have given you pleasure I have succeeded.”
On that day I made the acquaintance of two persons who were then prominent in the first rank of Parisian notabilities. One was a man of the world, refined, delicate, spiritual, gallant, and possessed of the rare and subtle talent of talking on any subject without in any way involving himself in difficulties. This was M. Cheramy. The other was an older person, with expressive features under thick grey hair. His manner was crabbed and gruff. He expressed himself in phrases that were jerky and brief, but full of natural wit. It was evident that he took a real pleasure in talking to us.
We three, M. Cheramy, he and I, were discussing artistic questions when, in a pause of our conversation, we perceived that we were surrounded by a considerable audience. The effect was magical. Two of us became silent, but M. Cheramy was equal to the situation and, with perfect calmness, put everyone at ease.
We were then in the salon. The grey-haired gentleman caught my attention as well as that of Rachel Boyer, who was talking in the midst of a group some distance away. He made us understand with signs that he wished to speak with us, apart from the others. We slipped away to find out what he wanted.
I expected—it goes without saying, considering his mysterious manner—something extraordinary, and, from the point of view of our companion, I was not far wrong.
“Perhaps!” he said abruptly, “you would like to look at my collection.”
While he pronounced these two words, “my collection,” an air of self-respect shone on his face. Since then I have recalled this experience and have understood it. But I was not at all affected by it then, and I kept wondering what kind of queer character this was. He seemed to me a little out of his mind. I answered him, therefore, without disturbing myself:
“Thank you, sir. I have just seen the Louvre; and I think that is a very pretty col—”
Rachel Boyer broke into my sentence smiling, but with a look as if she were somewhat scandalised. Then she assured the old man that we both were appreciative in the highest degree of the marked favour that he had shown us.
Thereupon we made an appointment, and the little old man left us.
“Why does he want me to see his collection,” I asked Rachel Boyer.
“Why?” she replied. “For no other reason undoubtedly than that he particularly admires you. For, you see, his collection is the most complete of its kind, and in his eyes sacred. I cannot tell you how surprised I was to hear him invite you. Only very rarely, as a matter of fact, does he permit anyone to look at his masterpieces.”
“Really! But who is this gentleman? What does he do?”
“What! You don’t know him! Yet I introduced him to you.”
“You did. But I failed to catch his name.”
Rachel Boyer’s voice bore a tone of deep respect as she said:
“Why, that is M. Groult!”
For my part I was conscious of no new respect, for to tell the truth, I was no further along than before. I did not remember ever having heard his name, and I said so, in all honesty, to Rachel Boyer, who was greatly astonished.
It looked as if I had committed a sacrilege.
She then informed me, that M. Groult was a man who had made an immense fortune in business, a fact that did not leave me gasping with admiration. She added that he was spending a great part of his fortune upon pictures.
“M. Groult,” said Rachel Boyer ecstatically, “has brought together the most beautiful treasures of art that a man has ever possessed.”
That was very interesting, unquestionably, but I kept thinking, quietly, that such a hobby could hardly leave leisure to a man, however rich, to do the good he might do with his money. I believe I should have been much more impressed if I had heard her speak of some of his philanthropies.
I finally concluded, however, that out of regard to my hostess, I should have to believe the collection to be so colossal that everything else was insignificant in comparison with it.
Some days later Rachel Boyer took me, with another of her friends, to see M. Groult’s famous collection. The collection was far from being as interesting to me as the collector, who, by reason of his personality, appeared to me to be much more curious than his works of art.
He led us at first in front of a great show case and, with refined and reverential gestures, disclosed to us the most marvellous imaginable collection of butterflies. There were 18,000 of them. He pointed out four in particular, and told us that he had bought the whole lot for the sake of those, and he added, to my great confusion, that that was because they looked like me.
“These colours are you,” he said almost crudely. “Just see what richness. That rose, that blue, that’s you. It is really you.”
While he was saying that, he kept looking at me just as if he were afraid I might suspect his sincerity and that I should mistake his statements of fact for compliments.
In simple language he expressed the most intense artistic convictions. One felt them to be innate; they came from the depths of his being, and they transformed him to such a degree that I saw him at the moment a transfigured soul.
He took us to another part of the hall, and showed us several panels of something that looked to me like coloured marble, highly polished.
“Look,” he said softly. “There you are again. I bought these panels, for they again are you.”
And turning them toward the light, he caused all the colours of the rainbow to radiate from their surfaces.
“Is it marble?” I asked, in order to have something to say. I felt worried by all this admiration.
He looked at me almost scornfully, and replied:
“Marble, marble, no indeed. These are slabs of petrified wood.”
I supposed that we had seen M. Groult’s collection, for there were enough rooms in it to fit out a little museum. I discovered, however, that we had seen nothing at all. M. Groult opened a door and bade us enter a large gallery where sixty-two Turners awaited our attention.
He raised his forefinger to impose upon us a silence that no one had any intention of breaking. Then he took us from one picture to another, indicating what in his view constituted the charms of each canvas. Finally he came near to me and then, embracing the hall with one big sweep of the hand, said:
“These are your colours. Turner certainly foresaw you when he created them.”
Next he showed his collection of engravings, etchings, and prints, representing the most glorious dancers. All these, he said, were to reveal to me what I based my art upon when I danced. He pointed to a celebrated frieze from Pompeii and then, looking at me fixedly, said:
“Look at that. Those are your motions.”
He drew back to present the pose, and he reproduced one of the motions very seriously in spite of his rheumatism, which hardly allowed him to stand on his legs.
“Now,” said he, “I am going to show you the work of art I am most attached to.”
And, in a large glass-covered recess, he showed me the thing which gave him special pleasure. It was a basin in which a fountain was playing, while around it numerous turtle doves were fluttering.
“It is these cooing birds that make you happy,” I cried. “It is too bad that everybody cannot observe this beautiful and natural picture, side by side with your wonderful collections.”
“Allow my collections to be seen?” he cried. “Never. No one would understand them.”
I realised then to what an extent he cherished each one of these objects, which ought, according to his view, to be regarded only with devotion. In each visitor he saw only an inquisitive person and nothing more. From his standpoint the creators of these masterpieces had entrusted them to him in order that he might care for them and protect them from profane inspection.
“I should like,” he said in his mystic way, “to burn them every one the night before my death if I could do it. It is discouraging, is it not, to abandon them to idle curiosity and indifference?”
M. Groult gave me a new perception of the nature of art and its value. He was acquainted with all the circumstances that had attended the birth of his masterpieces. He spoke of them both as a man of sensibility and as an art critic.
As he bade us adieu he asked me to come again.
One day the curator of the museum at Bucharest came to Paris, and a common friend brought him to my house. Among other things he spoke to me of M. Groult’s famous collection, which no one was permitted to see. I promised him to do my best to secure an invitation for him and I accordingly wrote to M. Groult.
He replied at once, asking me to bring the museum curator to see him.
When the curator expressed his gratitude to M. Groult, he replied:
“It is she whom you ought to thank. I do not care to have strangers here, but she is part of my collection. You will find her here everywhere. Just look.”
He then told the story of the butterflies, adding:
“This is nature as no one can paint it exactly. She has succeeded in it. She is a painter of nature.”
Then he showed the petrified wood and spoke of it, with some difference of expression, much as he had spoken the first time in my presence. Finally he begged his visitor to call upon him every time he came to Paris. As we went away I was obliged to promise to visit him again soon. But, when I had leisure to do so, M. Groult was already too ill to receive me and I never saw him again.
I am glad to have known him, for he was an extraordinary man.