"Now this, mon cher," said Müller, taking off his hat with a flourish to the young lady at the comptoir, "is the immortal Café Procope."
I looked round, and found myself in a dingy, ordinary sort of Café, in no wise differing from any other dingy, ordinary sort of Café in that part of Paris. The decorations were ugly enough to be modern. The ceiling was as black with gas-fumes and tobacco smoke as any other ceiling in any other estaminet in the Quartier Latin. The waiters looked as waiters always look before midday--sleepy, discontented, and unwashed. A few young men of the regular student type were scattered about here and there at various tables, reading, smoking, chatting, breakfasting, and reading the morning papers. In an alcove at the upper end of the second room (for there were two, one opening from the other) stood a blackened, broken-nosed, plaster bust of Voltaire, upon the summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a particularly rakish-looking hat. Just in front of this alcove and below the bust stood a marble-topped table, at one end of which two young men were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the matutinal absinthe.
"And this," said Müller, with another flourish, "is the still more immortal table of the still more supremely immortal Voltaire. Here he was wont to rest his sublime elbows and sip his demi-tasse. Here, upon this very table, he wrote that famous letter to Marie Antoinette that Fréron stole, and in revenge for which he wrote the comedy called l'Ecossaise; but of this admirable satire you English, who only know Voltaire in his Henriade and his history of Charles the Twelfth, have probably never heard till this moment! Eh bien! I'm not much wiser than you--so never mind. I'll be hanged if I've ever read a line of it. Anyhow, here is the table, and at this other end of it we'll have our breakfast."
It was a large, old-fashioned, Louis Quatorze piece of furniture, the top of which, formed from a single slab of some kind of gray and yellow marble, was stained all over with the coffee, wine, and ink-splashes of many generations of customers. It looked as old--nay, older--than the house itself.
The young men who were playing at dominoes looked up and nodded, as three or four others had done in the outer room when we passed through.
"Bonjour, l'ami," said the one who seemed to be winning. "Hast thou chanced to see anything of Martial, coming along!"
"I observed a nose defiling round the corner of the Rue de Bussy," replied Müller, "and it looked as if Martial might be somewhere in the far distance, but I didn't wait to see. Are you expecting him?"
"Confound him--yes! We've been waiting more than half an hour."
"If you have invited him to breakfast," said Müller, "he is sure to come."
"On the contrary, he has invited us to breakfast."
"Ah, that alters the case," said Müller, philosophically. "Then he is sure not to come." "Garçon!"
A bullet-headed, short-jacketed, long-aproned waiter, who looked as if he had not been to bed since his early youth, answered the summons,
"M'sieur!"
"What have you that you can especially recommend this morning?"
The waiter, with that nasal volubility peculiar to his race, rapidly ran over the whole vegetable and animal creation.
Müller listened with polite incredulity.
"Nothing else?" said he, when the other stopped, apparently from want of breath.
"Mais oui, M'sieur!" and, thus stimulated, the waiter, having "exhausted worlds and then imagined new," launched forth into a second and still more impossible catalogue.
Müller turned to me.
"The resources of this establishment, you observe," he said, very gravely, "are inexhaustible. One might have a Roc's egg à la Sindbad for the asking."
The waiter looked puzzled, shuffled his slippered feet, and murmured something about "oeufs sur le plat."
"Unfortunately, however," continued Müller, "we are but men--not fortresses provisioning for a siege. Antoine, mon enfant, we know thee to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent; but we will be content with a vol-au-vent of fish, a bifteck aux pommes frites, an omelette sucrée, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux with the yellow seal. Now vanish!"
The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished accordingly.
Meanwhile more students had come in, and more kept coming. Hats and caps cropped up rapidly wherever there were pegs to hang them on, and the talking became fast and furious.
I soon found that everybody knew everybody at the Café Procope, and that the specialty of the establishment was dominoes--just as the specialty of the Café de la Régence is chess. There were games going on before long at almost every table, and groups of lookers-on gathered about those who enjoyed the reputation of being skilful players.
Gradually breakfast after breakfast emerged from some mysterious nether world known only to the waiters, and the war of dominoes languished.
"These are all students, of course," I said presently, "and yet, though I meet a couple of hundred fellows at our hospital lectures, I don't see a face I know."
"You would find some by this time, I dare say, in the other room," replied Müller. "I brought you in here that you might sit at Voltaire's table, and eat your steak under the shadow of Voltaire's bust; but this salon is chiefly frequented by law-students--the other by medical and art students. Your place, mon chér, as well as mine, is in the outer sanctuary."
"That infernal Martial!" groaned one of the domino-players at the other end of the table. "So ends the seventh game, and here we are still. Parbleu! Horace, hasn't that absinthe given you an inconvenient amount of appetite?"
"Alas! my friend--don't mention it. And when the absinthe is paid for, I haven't a sou."
"My own case precisely. What's to be done?"
"Done!" echoed Horace, pathetically. "Shade of Apicius! inspire me...but, no--he's not listening."
"Hold! I have it. We'll make our wills in one another's favor, and die."
"I should prefer to die when the wind is due East, and the moon at the full," said Horace, contemplatively.
"True--besides, there is still la mère Gaudissart. Her cutlets are tough, but her heart is tender. She would not surely refuse to add one more breakfast to the score!"
Horace shook his head with an air of great despondency.
"There was but one Job," said he, "and he has been dead some time. The patience of la mère Gaudissart has long since been entirely exhausted."
"I am not so sure of that. One might appeal to her feelings, you know--have a presentiment of early death--wipe away a tear... Bah! it is worth the effort, anyhow."
"It is a forlorn hope, my dear fellow, but, as you say, it is worth the effort. Allons donc! to the storming of la mère Gaudissart!"
And with this they pushed aside the dominoes, took down their hats, nodded to Müller, and went out.
"There go two of the brightest fellows and most improvident scamps in the whole Quartier," said my companion. "They are both studying for the bar; both under age; both younger sons of good families; and both destined, if I am not much mistaken, to rise to eminence by-and-by. Horace writes for Figaro and the Petit Journal pour Rire--Théophile does feuilleton work--romances, chit-chat, and political squibs--rubbish, of course; but clever rubbish, and wonderful when one considers what boys they both are, and what dissipated lives they lead. The amount of impecuniosity those fellows get through in the course of a term is something inconceivable. They have often only one decent suit between them--and sometimes not that. To-day, you see, they are at their wits' end for a breakfast. They have run their credit dry at Procope and everywhere else, and are gone now to a miserable little den in the Rue du Paon, kept by a fat good-natured old soul called la mère Gaudissart. She will perhaps take compassion on their youth and inexperience, and let them have six sous worth of horsebeef soup, stale bread, and the day before yesterday's vegetables. Nay, don't look so pitiful! We poor devils of the Student Quartier hug our Bohemian life, and exalt it above every other. When we have money, we cannot find windows enough out of which to fling it--when we have none, we start upon la chasse au diner, and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. We revel in the extremes of fasting and feasting, and scarcely know which we prefer."
"I think your friends Horace and Théophile are tolerably clear as to which they prefer," I remarked, with a smile.
"Bah! they would die of ennui if they had always enough to eat! Think how it sharpens a man's wits if--given the time, the place, and the appetite--he has every day to find the credit for his dinners! Show me a mathematical problem to compare with it as a popular educator of youth!"
"But for young men of genius, like Horace and Théophile..."
"Make yourself quite easy, mon cher. A little privation will do them no kind of harm. They belong to that class of whom it has been said that 'they would borrow money from Harpagon, and find truffles on the raft of the Medusa.' But hold! we are at the end of our breakfast. What say you? Shall we take our demi-tasse in the next room, among our fellow-students of physic and the fine arts?"
The society of the outer salon differed essentially from the society of the inner salon at the Café Procope. It was noisier--it was shabbier--it was smokier. The conversation in the inner salon was of a general character on the whole, and, as one caught sentences of it here and there, seemed for the most part to relate to the literature and news of the day--to the last important paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, to the new drama at the Odéon, or to the article on foreign politics in the Journal des Débats. But in the outer salon the talk was to the last degree shoppy, and overflowed with the argot of the studios. Some few medical students were clustered, it is true, in a corner near the door; but they were so outnumbered by the artists at the upper end of the room, that these latter seemed to hold complete possession, and behaved more like the members of a recognised club than the casual customers of a café. They talked from table to table. They called the waiters by their Christian names. They swaggered up and down the middle of the room with their hats on their heads, their hands in their pockets, and their pipes in their mouths, as coolly as if it were the broad walk of the Luxembourg gardens.
And the appearance of these gentlemen was not less remarkable than their deportment. Their hair, their beards, their clothes, were of the wildest devising. They seemed one and all to have started from a central idea, that central idea being to look as unlike their fellow-men as possible; and thence to have diverged into a variety that was nothing short of infinite. Each man had evidently modelled himself upon his own ideal, and no two ideals were alike. Some were picturesque, some were grotesque; and some, it must be admitted, were rather dirty ideals, into the realization of which no such paltry considerations as those of soap, water, or brushes were permitted to enter.
Here, for instance, were Roundhead crops and flowing locks of Cavalier redundancy--steeple-crowned hats, and Roman cloaks draped bandit-fashion--moustachios frizzed and brushed up the wrong way in the style of Louis XIV.--pointed beards and slouched hats, after the manner of Vandyke---patriarchal beards à la Barbarossa--open collars, smooth chins, and long undulating locks of the Raffaelle type--coats, blouses, paletots of inconceivable cut, and all kinds of unusual colors--in a word, every eccentricity of clothing, short of fancy costume, in which it was practicable for men of the nineteenth century to walk abroad and meet the light of day.
We had no sooner entered this salon, taken possession of a vacant table, and called for coffee, than my companion was beset by a storm of greetings.
"Holà! Müller, where hast thou been hiding these last few centuries, mon gaillard?"
"Tiens! Müller risen from the dead!"
"What news from là bas, old fellow?"
To all which ingenious pleasantries my companion replied in kind--introducing me at the same time to two or three of the nearest speakers. One of these, a dark young man got up in the style of a Byzantine Christ, with straight hair parted down the middle, a bifurcated beard, and a bare throat, was called Eugène Droz. Another--big, burly, warm-complexioned, with bright open blue eyes, curling reddish beard and moustache, slouched hat, black velvet blouse, immaculate linen, and an abundance of rings, chains, and ornaments--was made up in excellent imitation of the well-known portrait of Rubens. This gentleman's name, as I presently learned, was Caesar de Lepany.
When we came in, these two young men, Droz and De Lepany, were discussing, in enthusiastic but somewhat unintelligible language, the merits of a certain Monsieur Lemonnier, of whom, although till that moment ignorant of his name and fame, I at once perceived that he must be some celebrated chef de cuisine.
"He will never surpass that last thing of his," said the Byzantine youth. "Heavens! How smooth it is! How buttery! How pulpy!"
"Ay--and yet with all that lusciousness of quality, he never wants piquancy," added De Lepany.
"I think his greens are apt to be a little raw," interposed Müller, taking part in the conversation.
"Raw!" echoed the first speaker, indignantly. "Eh, mon Dieu! What can you be thinking of! They are almost too hot!"
"But they were not so always, Eugène," said he of the Rubens make-up, with an air of reluctant candor. "It must be admitted that Lemonnier's greens used formerly to be a trifle--just a trifle--raw. Evidently Monsieur Müller does not know how much he has taken to warming them up of late. Even now, perhaps, his olives are a little cold."
"But then, how juicy his oranges are!" exclaimed young Byzantine.
"True--and when you remember that he never washes--!"
"Ah, sacredie! yes--there is the marvel!"
And Monsieur Eugène Droz held up his hands and eyes with all the reverent admiration of a true believer for a particularly dirty dervish.
"Who, in Heaven's name, is this unclean individual who used to like his vegetables underdone, and never washes?" whispered I in Müller's ear.
"What--Lemonnier! You don't mean to say you never heard of Lemonnier?"
"Never, till now. Is he a cook?"
Müller gave me a dig in the ribs that took my breath away.
"Goguenard!" said he. "Lemonnier's an artist--the foremost man of the water-color school. But I wouldn't be too funny if I were you. Suppose you were to burst your jocular vein--there'd be a catastrophe!"
Meanwhile the conversation of Messieurs Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush.
"Queroulet!" said Lepany, with a contemptuous flourish of his pipe. "Who spoke of Queroulet? Bah!--a miserable plodder, destitute of ideality--a fellow who paints only what he sees, and sees only what is commonplace--a dull, narrow-souled, unimaginative handicraftsman, to whom a tree is just a tree; and a man, a man; and a straw, a straw, and nothing more!"
"That's a very low-souled view to take of art, no doubt," croaked in a grating treble voice the youth with the club-foot; "but if trees and men and straws are not exactly trees and men and straws, and are not to be represented as trees and men and straws, may I inquire what else they are, and how they are to be pictorially treated?"
"They must be ideally treated, Monsieur Valentin," replied Lepany, majestically.
"No doubt; but what will they be like when they are ideally treated? Will they still, to the vulgar eye, be recognisable for trees and men and straws?"
"I should scarcely have supposed that Monsieur Valentin would jest upon such a subject as a canon of the art he professes," said Lepany, becoming more and more dignified.
"I am not jesting," croaked Monsieur Valentin; "but when I hear men of your school talk so much about the Ideal, I (as a realist) always want to know what they themselves understand by the phrase."
"Are you asking me for my definition of the Ideal, Monsieur Valentin?"
"Well, if it's not giving you too much trouble--yes."
Lepany, who evidently relished every chance of showing off, fell into a picturesque attitude and prepared to hold forth. Valentin winked at one or two of his own clique, and lit a cigar.
"You ask me," began Lepany, "to define the Ideal--in other words, to define the indefinite, which alas! whether from a metaphysical, a philosophical, or an aesthetic point of view, is a task transcending immeasurably my circumscribed powers of expression."
"Gracious heavens!" whispered Müller in my ear. "He must have been reared from infancy on words of five syllables!"
"What shall I say?" pursued Lepany. "Shall I say that the Ideal is, as it were, the Real distilled and sublimated in the alembic of the imagination? Shall I say that the Ideal is an image projected by the soul of genius upon the background of the universe? That it is that dazzling, that unimaginable, that incommunicable goal towards which the suns in their orbits, the stars in their courses, the spheres with all their harmonies, have been chaotically tending since time began! Ideal, say you? Call it ideal, soul, mind, matter, art, eternity,... what are they all but words? What are words but the weak strivings of the fettered soul that fain would soar to those empyrean heights where Truth, and Art, and Beauty are one and indivisible? Shall I say all this..."
"My dear fellow, you have said it already--you needn't say it again," interrupted Valentin.
"Ay; but having said it--having expressed myself, perchance with some obscurity...."
"With the obscurity of Erebus!" said, very deliberately, a fat student in a blouse.
"Monsieur!" exclaimed De Lepany, measuring the length and breadth of the fat student with a glance of withering scorn.
The Byzantine was no less indignant.
"Don't heed them, mon ami!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Thy definition is sublime-eloquent!"
"Nay," said Valentin, "we concede that Monsieur de Lepany is sublime; we recognise with admiration that he is eloquent; but we submit that he is wholly unintelligible."
And having delivered this parting shot, the club-footed realist slipped his arm through the arm of the fat student, and went off to a distant table and a game at dominoes.
Then followed an outburst of offended idealism. His own clique crowded round Lepany as the champion of their school. They shook hands with him. They embraced him. They fooled him to the top of his bent. Presently, being not only as good-natured as he was conceited, but (rare phenomenon in the Quartier Latin!) a rich fellow into the bargain, De Lepany called for champagne and treated his admirers all around.
In the midst of the chatter and bustle which this incident occasioned, a pale, earnest-looking man of about five-and-thirty, coming past our table on his way out of the Café, touched Müller on the arm, bent down, and said quietly:--
"Müller, will you do me a favor!"
"A hundred, Monsieur," replied my companion; half rising, and with an air of unusual respect and alacrity.
"Thanks, one will be enough. Do you see that man yonder, sitting alone in the corner, with his back to the light?"
"I do."
"Good--don't look at him again, for fear of attracting his attention. I have been trying for the last half hour to get a sketch of his head, but I think he suspected me. Anyhow he moved so often, and so hid his face with his hands and the newspaper, that I was completely baffled. Now it is a remarkable head--just the head I have been wanting for my Marshal Romero--and if, with your rapid pencil and your skill in seizing expression, you could manage this for me...."
"I will do my best," said Müller.
"A thousand thanks. I will go now; for when I am gone he will be off his guard. You will find me in the den up to three o'clock. Adieu."
Saying which, the stranger passed on, and went out.
"That's Flandrin!" said Müller.
"Really?" I said. "Flandrin! And you know him?"
But in truth I only answered thus to cover my own ignorance; for I knew little at that time of modern French art, and I had never even heard the name of Flandrin before.
"Know him!" echoed Müller. "I should think so. Why, I worked in his studio for nearly two years."
And then he explained to me that this great painter (great even then, though as yet appreciated only in certain choice Parisian circles, and not known out of France) was at work upon a grand historical subject connected with the Spanish persecutions in the Netherlands--the execution of Egmont and Horn, in short, in the great square before the Hôtel de Ville in Brussels.
"But the main point now," said Müller, "is to get the sketch--and how? Confound the fellow! while he keeps his back to the light and his head down like that, the thing is impossible. Anyhow I can't do it without an accomplice. You must help me."
"I! What can I do?"
"Go and sit near him--speak to him--make him look up--keep him, if possible, for a few minutes in conversation--nothing easier."
"Nothing easier, perhaps, if I were you; but, being only myself, few things more difficult!"
"Nevertheless, my dear boy, you must try, and at once. Hey --presto!--away!"
Placed where we were, the stranger was not likely to have observed us; for we had come into the room from behind the corner in which he was sitting, and had taken our places at a table which he could not have seen without shifting his own position. So, thus peremptorily commanded, I rose; slipped quietly back into the inner salon, made a pretext of looking at the clock over the door; and came out again, as if alone and looking for a vacant seat.
The table at which he had placed himself was very small--only just big enough to stand in a corner and hold a plate and a coffee-cup; but it was supposed to be large enough for two, and there were evidently two chairs belonging to it. On one of these, being alone, the stranger had placed his overcoat and a small black bag. I at once saw and seized my opportunity.
"Pardon, Monsieur," I said, very civilly, "will you permit me to hang these things up?"
He looked up, frowned, and said abruptly:--
"Why, Monsieur?"
"That I may occupy this chair."
He glanced round; saw that there was really no other vacant; swept off the bag and coat with his own hands; hung them on a peg overhead; dropped back into his former attitude, and went on reading.
"I regret to have given you the trouble, Monsieur," I said, hoping to pave the way to a conversation.
But a little quick, impatient movement of the hand was his only reply. He did not even raise his head. He did not even lift his eyes from the paper.
I called for a demi-tasse and a cigar; then took out a note-book and pencil, assumed an air of profound abstraction, and affected to become absorbed in calculations.
In the meanwhile, I could not resist furtively observing the appearance of this man whom a great artist had selected as his model for one of the darkest characters of mediæval history.
He was rather below than above the middle height; spare and sinewy; square in the shoulders and deep in the chest; with close-clipped hair and beard; grizzled moustache; high cheek-bones; stern impassive features, sharply cut; and deep-set restless eyes, quick and glancing as the eyes of a monkey. His face, throat, and hands were sunburnt to a deep copper-color, as if cast in bronze. His age might have been from forty-five to fifty. He wore a thread-bare frock-coat buttoned to the chin; a stiff black stock revealing no glimpse of shirt-collar; a well-worn hat pulled low over his eyes; and trousers of dark blue cloth, worn very white and shiny at the knees, and strapped tightly down over a pair of much-mended boots.
The more I looked at him, the less I was surprised that Flandrin should have been struck by his appearance. There was an air of stern poverty and iron resolution about the man that arrested one's attention at first sight. The words "ancien militaire" were written in every furrow of his face; in every seam and on every button of his shabby clothing. That he had seen service, missed promotion, suffered unmerited neglect (or, it might be, merited disgrace), seemed also not unlikely.
Watching him as he sat, half turned away, half hidden by the newspaper he was reading, one elbow resting on the table, one brown, sinewy hand supporting his chin and partly concealing his mouth, I told myself that here, at all events, was a man with a history--perhaps with a very dark history. What were the secrets of his past? What had he done? What had he endured? I would give much to know.
My coffee and cigar being brought, I asked for the Figaro, and holding the paper somewhat between the stranger and myself, watched him with increasing interest.
I now began to suspect that he was less interested in his own newspaper than he appeared to be, and that his profound abstraction, like my own, was assumed. An indefinable something in the turn of his head seemed to tell me that his attention was divided between whatever might be going forward in the room and what he was reading. I cannot describe what that something was; but it gave me the impression that he was always listening. When the outer door opened or shut, he stirred uneasily, and once or twice looked sharply round to see what new-comer entered the café. Was he anxiously expecting some one who did not come? Or was he dreading the appearance of some one whom he wished to avoid? Might he not be a political refugee? Might he not be a spy?
"There is nothing of interest in the papers to-day, Monsieur," said, making another effort to force him into conversation.
He affected not to hear me.
I drew my chair a little nearer, and repeated the observation.
He frowned impatiently, and without looking up, replied:--
"Eh, mon Dieu, Monsieur!--when there is a dearth of news!"
"There need not, even so, be a dearth of wit. Figaro is as heavy to-day as a government leader in the Moniteur."
He shrugged his shoulders and moved slightly round, apparently to get a better light upon what he was reading, but in reality to turn still more away from me. The gesture of avoidance was so marked, that with the best will in the world, it would have been impossible for me to address him again. I therefore relapsed into silence.
Presently I saw a sudden change flash over him.
Now, in turning away from myself, he had faced round towards a narrow looking-glass panel which reflected part of the opposite side of the room; and chancing, I suppose, to lift his eyes from the paper, he had seen something that arrested his attention. His head was still bent; but I could see that his eyes were riveted upon the mirror. There was alertness in the tightening of his hand before his mouth--in the suspension of his breathing.
Then he rose abruptly, brushed past me as if I were not there, and crossed to where Müller, sketch-book in hand, was in the very act of taking his portrait.
I jumped up, almost involuntarily, and followed him. Müller, with an unsuccessful effort to conceal his confusion, thrust the book into his pocket.
"Monsieur," said the stranger, in a low, resolute voice, "I protest against what you have been doing. You have no right to take my likeness without my permission."
"Pardon, Monsieur, I--I beg to assure you--" stammered Müller.
"That you intended no offence? I am willing to suppose so. Give me up the sketch, and I am content."
"Give up the sketch!" echoed Müller.
"Precisely, Monsieur."
"Nay--but if, as an artist, I have observed that which leads me to desire a--a memorandum--let us say of the pose and contour of a certain head," replied Müller, recovering his self-possession, "it is not likely that I shall be disposed to part from my memorandum."
"How, Monsieur! you refuse?"
"I am infinitely sorry, but--"
"But you refuse?"
"I certainly cannot comply with Monsieur's request."
The stranger, for all his bronzing, grew pale with rage.
"Do not compel me, Monsieur, to say what I must think of your conduct, if you persist in this determination," he said fiercely.
Müller smiled, but made no reply.
"You absolutely refuse to yield up the sketch?"
"Absolutely."
"Then, Monsieur, c'est une infamie--et vous êtes un lâche!"
But the last word had scarcely hissed past his lips before Müller dashed his coffee dregs full in the stranger's face.
In one second, the table was upset--blows were exchanged--Müller, pinned against the wall with his adversary's hands upon his throat, was striking out with the desperation of a man whose strength is overmatched--and the whole room was in a tumult.
In vain I attempted to fling myself between them. In vain the waiters rushed to and fro, imploring "ces Messieurs" to interpose. In vain a stout man pushed his way through the bystanders, exclaiming angrily:--
"Desist, Messieurs! Desist, in the name of the law! I am the proprietor of this establishment--I forbid this brawling--I will have you both arrested! Messieurs, do you hear?"
Suddenly the flush of rage faded out of Müller's face. He gasped--became livid. Lepany, Droz, myself, and one or two others, flew at the stranger and dragged him forcibly back.
"Assassin!" I cried, "would you murder him?"
He flung us off, as a baited bull flings off a pack of curs. For myself, though I received only a backhanded blow on the chest, I staggered as if I had been struck with a sledgehammer.
Müller, half-fainting, dropped into a chair.
There was a tramp and clatter at the door--a swaying and parting of the crowd.
"Here are the sergents de ville!" cried a trembling waiter.
"He attacked me first," gasped Müller. "He has half strangled me."
"Qu'est ce que ça me fait!" shouted the enraged proprietor. "You are a couple of canaille! You have made a scandal in my Café. Sergents, arrest both these gentlemen!"
The police--there were two of them, with their big cocked hats on their heads and their long sabres by their sides--pushed through the circle of spectators. The first laid his hand on Müller's shoulder; the second was about to lay his hand on mine, but I drew back.
"Which is the other?" said he, looking round.
"Sacredie!" stammered the proprietor, "he was here--there--not a moment ago!"
"Diable!" said the sergent de ville, stroking his moustache, and staring fiercely about him. "Did no one see him go?"
There was a chorus of exclamations--a rush to the inner salon--to the door--to the street. But the stranger was nowhere in sight; and, which was still more incomprehensible, no one had seen him go!
"Mais, mon Dieu!" exclaimed the proprietor, mopping his head and face violently with his pocket-handkerchief, "was the man a ghost, that he should vanish into the air?"
"Parbleu! a ghost with muscles of iron," said Müller. "Talk of the strength of a madman--he has the strength of a whole lunatic asylum!"
"He gave me a most confounded blow in the ribs, anyhow!" said Lepany.
"And nearly broke my arm," added Eugène Droz.
"And has given me a pain in my chest for a week," said I, in chorus.
"If he wasn't a ghost," observed the fat student sententiously, "he must certainly be the devil."
The sergents de ville grinned.
"Do we, then, arrest this gentleman?" asked the taller and bigger of the two, his hand still upon my friend's shoulder.
But Müller laughed and shook his head.
"What!" said he, "arrest a man for resisting the devil? Nonsense, mes amis, you ought to canonize me. What says Monsieur le propriétaire?"
Monsieur the proprietor smiled.
"I am willing to let the matter drop," he replied, "on the understanding that Monsieur Müller was not really the first offender."
"Foi d'honneur! He insulted me--I threw some coffee in his face--he flung himself upon me like a tiger, and almost choked me, as all here witnessed. And for what? Because I did him the honor to make a rough pencilling of his ugly face ... Mille tonnerres!--the fellow has stolen my sketch-book!"
The sketch-book was undoubtedly gone, and the stranger had undoubtedly taken it. How he took it, and how he vanished, remained a mystery.
The aspect of affairs, meanwhile, was materially changed. Müller no longer stood in the position of a leniently-treated offender. He had become accuser, and plaintiff. A grave breach of the law had been committed, and he was the victim of a bold and skilful tour de main.
The police shook their heads, twirled their moustaches, and looked wise.
It was a case of premeditated assault--in short, of robbery with violence. It must be inquired into--reported, of course, at head-quarters, without loss of time. Would Monsieur be pleased to describe the stolen sketch-book? An oblong, green volume, secured by an elastic band; contains sketches in pencil and water-colors; value uncertain--Good. And the accused ... would Monsieur also be pleased to describe the person of the accused? His probable age, for instance; his height; the color of his hair, eyes, and beard? Good again. Lastly, Monsieur's own name and address, exactly and in full. Très-bon. It might, perhaps, be necessary for Monsieur to enter a formal deposition to-morrow morning at the Prefecture of Police, in which case due notice would be given.
Whereupon he who seemed to be chief of the twain, having entered Müller's replies in a greasy pocket-book of stupendous dimensions, which he seemed to wear like a cuirass under the breast of his uniform, proceeded to interrogate the proprietor and waiters.
Was the accused an habitual frequenter of the cafe?--No. Did they remember ever to have seen him there before?--No. Should they recognise him if they saw him again? To this question the answers were doubtful. One waiter thought he should recognise the man; another was not sure; and Monsieur the proprietor admitted that he had himself been too angry to observe anything or anybody very minutely.
Finally, having made themselves of as much importance and asked as many questions as possible, the sergents de ville condescended to accept a couple of-petits verres a-piece, and then, with much lifting of cocked hats and clattering of sabres, departed.
Most of the students had ere this dropped off by twos and threes, and were gone to their day's work, or pleasure--to return again in equal force about five in the afternoon. Of those that remained, some five or six came up when the police were gone, and began chatting about the robbery. When they learned that Flandrin had desired to have a sketch of the man's head; when Müller described his features, and I his obstinate reserve and semi-military air, their excitement knew no bounds. Each had immediately his own conjecture to offer. He was a political spy, and therefore fearful lest his portrait should be recognised. He was a conspirator of the Fieschi school. He was Mazzini in person.
In the midst of the discussion, a sudden recollection flashed upon me.
"A clue! a clue!" I shouted triumphantly. "He left his coat and black bag hanging up in the corner!"
Followed by the others, I ran to the spot where I had been sitting before the affray began. But my exultation was shortlived. Coat and bag, like their owner, had disappeared.
Müller thrust his hands into his pockets, shook his head, and whistled dismally.
"I shall never see my sketch-book again, parbleu!" said he. "The man who could not only take it out of my breast-pocket, but also in the very teeth of the police, secure his property and escape unseen, is a master of his profession. Our friends in the cocked hats have no chance against him."
"And Flandrin, who is expecting the sketch," said I; "what of him?"
Müller shrugged his shoulders.
"Next to being beaten," growled he, "there's nothing I hate like confessing it. However, it has to be done--so the sooner the better. Would you like to come with me? You'll see his studio."
I was only too glad to accompany him; for to me, as to most of us, there was ever a nameless charm in the picturesque litter of an artist's studio. Müller's own studio, however, was as yet the only one I had seen. He laughed when I said this.
"If your only notion of a studio is derived from that specimen," said he, "you will he agreeably surprised by the contrast. He calls his place a 'den,' but that's a metaphor. Mine is a howling wilderness."
Arriving presently at a large house at the bottom of a courtyard in the Rue Vaugirard, he knocked at a small side-door bearing a tiny brass plate not much larger than a visiting-card, on which was engraved--"Monsieur Flandrin."
The door opened by some invisible means from within, and we entered a passage dimly lighted by a painted glass door at the farther end. My companion led the way down this passage, through the door, and into a small garden containing some three or four old trees, a rustic seat, a sun-dial on an antique-looking fragment of a broken column, and a little weed-grown pond about the size of an ordinary drawing-room table, surrounded by artificial rock-work.
At the farther extremity of this garden, filling the whole space from wall to wall, and occupying as much ground as must have been equal to half the original enclosure, stood a large, new, windowless building, in shape exactly like a barn, lighted from a huge skylight in the roof, and entered by a small door in one corner. I did not need to be told that this was the studio.
But if the outside was like a barn, the inside was like a beautiful mediæval interior by Cattermole--an interior abounding in rich and costly detail; in heavy crimson draperies, precious old Italian cabinets, damascened armor, carved chairs with upright backs and twisted legs, old paintings in massive Florentine frames, and strange quaint pieces of Elizabethan furniture, like buffets, with open shelves full of rare and artistic things--bronzes, ivory carvings, unwieldy Majolica jars, and lovely goblets of antique Venetian glass laced with spiral ornaments of blue and crimson and that dark emerald green of which the secret is now lost for ever.
Then, besides all these things, there were great folios leaning piled against the walls, one over the other; and Persian rugs of many colors lying here and there about the floor; and down in one corner I observed a heap of little models, useful, no doubt, as accessories in pictures--gondolas, frigates, foreign-looking carts, a tiny sedan chair, and the like.
But the main interest of the scene concentrated itself in the unfinished picture, the hired model (a brawny fellow in a close-fitting suit of black, leaning on a huge two-handed sword), and the artist in his holland blouse, with the palette and brushes in his hand.
It was a very large picture, and stood on a monster easel, somewhat towards the end of the studio. The light from above poured full upon the canvas, while beyond lay a background of shadow. Much of the subject was as yet only indicated, but enough was already there to tell the tragic story and display the power of the painter. There, high above the heads of the mounted guards and the assembled spectators, rose the scaffold, hung with black. Egmont, wearing a crimson tabard, a short black cloak embroidered with gold, and a hat ornamented with black and white plumes, stood in a haughty attitude, as if facing the square and the people. Two other figures, apparently of an ecclesiastic and a Spanish general, partly in outline, partly laid in with flat color, were placed to the right of the principal character. The headsman stood behind, leaning upon his sword. The slender spire of the Hôtel de Ville, surmounted by its gilded archangel glittering in the morning sun, rose high against a sky of cloudless blue; while all around was seen the well-known square with its sculptured gables and decorated façades--every roof, window, and balcony crowded with spectators.
Unfinished though it was, I saw at once that I was brought face to face with what would some day be a famous work of art. The figures were grandly grouped; the heads were noble; the sky was full of air; the action of the whole scene informed with life and motion.
I stood admiring and silent, while Müller told his tale, and Flandrin paused in his work to listen.
"It is horribly unlucky," said he. "I had not been able to find a portrait of Romero and, faute de mieux, have been trying for days past to invent the right sort of head for him--of course, without success. You never saw such a heap of failures! But as for that man at the café, if Providence had especially created him for my purpose, he could not have answered it better."
"I believe I am as sorry as you can possibly be," said Müller.
"Then you are very sorry indeed," replied the painter; and he looked even more disappointment than he expressed.
"I'm afraid I can't do it," said Müller, after a moment's silence; "but if you'll give me a pencil and a piece of paper, and credit me with the will in default of the deed, I will try to sketch the head from memory."
"Ah? if you can only do that! Here is a drawing block--choose what pencils you prefer--or here are crayons, if you like them better."
Müller took the pencils and block, perched himself on the corner of a table, and began. Flandrin, breathless with expectation, looked over his shoulder. Even the model (in the grim character of Egmont's executioner) laid aside his two-handed sword, and came round for a peep.
"Bravo! that's just his nose and brow," said Flandrin, as
Müller's rapid hand flew over the paper. "Yes--the likeness
comes with every touch ... and the eyes, so keen and furtive.
... Nay, that eyelid should be a little more depressed at
the
corner.... Yes, yes--just so. Admirable! There!--don't attempt to
work it up. The least thing might mar the likeness. My dear fellow,
what a service you have rendered me!"
"Quatre-vingt mille diables!" ejaculated the model, his eyes riveted upon the sketch.
Müller laughed and looked.
"Tiens! Guichet," said he, "is that meant for a compliment?"
"Where did you see him?" asked the model, pointing down at the sketch.
"Why? Do you know him?"
"Where did you see him, I say?" repeated Guichet, impatiently.
He was a rough fellow, and garnished every other sentence with an oath; but he did not mean to be uncivil.
"At the Café Procope."
"When?"
"About an hour ago. But again, I repeat--do you know him?"
"Do I know him? Tonnerre de Dieu!"
"Then who and what is he?"
The model stroked his beard; shook his head; declined to answer.
"Bah!" said he, gloomily, "I may have seen him, or I may be mistaken. 'Tis not my affair."
"I suspect Guichet knows something against this interesting stranger," laughed Flandrin. "Come, Guichet, out with it! We are among friends."
But Guichet again looked at the drawing, and again shook his head.
"I'm no judge of pictures, messieurs," said he. "I'm only a poor devil of a model. How can I pretend to know a man from such a griffonage as that?"
And, taking up his big sword again, he retreated to his former post over against the picture. We all saw that he was resolved to say no more.
Flandrin, delighted with Müller's sketch, put it, with many thanks and praises, carefully away in one of the great folios against the wall.
"You have no idea, mon cher Müller," he said, "of what value it is to me. I was in despair about the thing till I saw that fellow this morning in the Café; and he looked as if he had stepped out of the Middle Ages on purpose for me. It is quite a mediæval face--if you know what I mean by a mediæval face."
"I think I do," said Müller. "You mean that there was a moyen-âge type, as there was a classical type, and as there is a modern type."
"Just so; and therein lies the main difficulty that we historical painters have to encounter. When we cannot find portraits of our characters, we are driven to invent faces for them--and who can invent what he never sees? Invention must be based on some kind of experience; and to study old portraits is not enough for our purpose, except we frankly make use of them as portraits. We cannot generalize upon them, so as to resuscitate a vanished type."
"But then has it really vanished?" said Müller. "And how can we know for certain that the mediæval type did actually differ from the type we see before us every day?"
"By simple and direct proof--by studying the epochs of portrait painting. Take Holbein's heads, for instance. Were not the people of his time grimmer, harder-visaged, altogether more unbeautiful than the people of ours? Take Petitot's and Sir Peter Lely's. Can you doubt that the characteristics of their period were entirely different? Do you suppose that either race would look as we look, if resuscitated and clothed in the fashion of to-day?"
"I am not at all sure that we should observe any difference," said Müller, doubtfully.
"And I feel sure we should observe the greatest," replied Flandrin, striding up and down the studio, and speaking with great animation. "I believe, as regards the men and women of Holbein's time, that their faces were more lined than ours; their eyes, as a rule, smaller--their mouths wider--their eyebrows more scanty--their ears larger--their figures more ungainly. And in like manner, I believe the men and women of the seventeenth century to have been more fleshy than either Holbein's people or ourselves; to have had rounder cheeks, eyes more prominent and heavy-lidded, shorter noses, more prominent chins, and lips of a fuller and more voluptuous mould."
"Still we can't be certain how much of all this may be owing to the mere mannerisms of successive schools of art," urged Müller, sticking manfully to his own opinion. "Where will you find a more decided mannerist than Holbein? And because he was the first portrait-painter of his day, was he not reproduced with all his faults of literalness and dryness by a legion of imitators? So with Sir Peter Lely, with Petitot, with Vandyck, with every great artist who painted kings and queens and court beauties. Then, again, a certain style of beauty becomes the rage, and-a skilful painter flatters each fair sitter in turn by bringing up her features, or her expression, or the color of her hair, as near as possible to the fashionable standard. And further, there is the dress of a period to be taken into account. Think of the family likeness that pervades the flowing wigs of the courts of Louis Quatorze and Charles the Second--see what powder did a hundred years ago to equalize mankind."
Flandrin shook his head.
"Ingenious, mon garçon" said he; "ingenious, but unsound The cut of a fair lady's bodice never yet altered the shape of her nose; neither was it the fashion of their furred surtouts that made Erasmus and Sir Thomas More as like as twins. What you call the 'mannerism' of Holbein is only his way of looking at his fellow-creatures. He and Sir Antonio More were the most faithful of portrait-painters. They didn't know how to flatter. They painted exactly what they saw--no more, and no less; so that every head they have left us is a chapter in the history of the Middle Ages. The race--depend on't--the race was unbeautiful; and not even the picturesque dress of the period (which, according to your theory, should have helped to make the wearers of it more attractive) could soften one jot of their plainness."
"I can't bring myself to believe that we were all so ugly--French, English, and Germans alike--only a couple of centuries ago," said Müller.
"That is to say, you prefer to believe that Holbein, and Lucas Cranach, and Sir Antonio More, and all their school, were mannerists. Nonsense, my dear fellow--nonsense! It is Nature who is the mannerist. She loves to turn out a certain generation after a particular pattern; and when she is tired of that pattern, she invents another. Her fancies last, on the average about, a hundred years. Sometimes she changes the type quite abruptly; sometimes modifies it by gentle, yet always perceptible, degrees. And who shall say what her secret processes are? Education, travel, intermarriage with foreigners, the introduction of new kinds of food) the adoption of new habits, may each and all have something to do with these successive changes; but of one point at least we may be certain--and that is, that we painters are not responsible for her caprices. Our mission is to interpret Dame Nature more or less faithfully, according to our powers; but beyond interpretation we cannot go. And now (for you know I am as full of speculations as an experimental philosopher) I will tell you another conclusion I have come to with regard to this subject; and that is that national types were less distinctive in mediæval times than in ours. The French, English, Flemish, and Dutch of the Middle Ages, as we see them in their portraits, are curiously alike in all outward characteristics. The courtiers of Francis the First and their (James, and the lords and ladies of the court of Henry the Eighth, resemble each other as people of one nation. Their features are, as it were, cast in one mould. So also with the courts of Louis Quatorze and Charles the Second. As for the regular French face of to-day, with its broad cheek-bones and high temples running far up into the hair on either side, that type does not make its appearance till close upon the advent of the Reign of Terror. But enough! I shall weary you with theories, and wear out the patience of our friend Guichet, who is sufficiently tired already with waiting for a head that never comes to be cut off as it ought. Adieu--adieu. Come soon again, and see how I get on with Marshal Romero."
Thus dismissed, we took our leave and left the painter to his work.
"An extraordinary man!" said Müller, as we passed out again through the neglected garden and paused for a moment to look at some half-dozen fat gold and silver fish that were swimming lazily about the little pond. "A man made up of contradictions--abounding in energy, yet at the same time the dreamiest of speculators. An original thinker, too; but wanting that basis which alone makes original thinking of any permanent value."
"But," said I, "he is evidently an educated man."
"Yes--educated as most artists are educated; but Flandrin has as strong a bent for science as for art, and deserved something better. Five years at a German university would have made of him one of the most remarkable men of his time. What did you think of his theory of faces?"
"I know nothing of the subject, and cannot form a judgment; but it sounded as if it might be true."
"Yes--just that. It may be true, and it may not. If true, then for my own part I should like to pursue his theory a step further, and trace the operation of these secret processes by means of which I am, happily, such a much better-looking fellow than my great-great-great-great-grandfather of two hundred years ago. What, for instance, has the introduction of the potato done for the noses of mankind?"
Chatting thus, we walked back as far as the corner of the Rue Racine, where we parted; I to attend a lecture at the École de Médecine, and Müller to go home to his studio in the Rue Clovis.