Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the time to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to complicate his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of increasing his little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his notary, Cardot, his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary had received about three thousand francs he invested them in some first mortgage, the interest of which he drew himself and added to the quarterly payments made to him by Fougeres. The painter was awaiting the fortunate moment when his property thus laid by would give him the imposing income of two thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum dignitate of the artist and paint pictures; but oh! what pictures! true pictures! each a finished picture! chouette, Koxnoff, chocnosoff! His future, his dreams of happiness, the superlative of his hopes--do you know what it was? To enter the Institute and obtain the grade of officer of the Legion of honor; to side down beside Schinner and Leon de Lora, to reach the Academy before Bridau, to wear a rosette in his buttonhole! What a dream! It is only commonplace men who think of everything.
Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed up his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was not a little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face vulgarly called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted a pumpkin, clothed in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of tintinnabulating baubles. The melon puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin advanced on turnips, improperly called legs. A true painter would have turned the little bottle-vendor off at once, assuring him that he didn't paint vegetables. This painter looked at his client without a smile, for Monsieur Vervelle wore a three-thousand-franc diamond in the bosom of his shirt.
Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang term then much in vogue in the studios.
Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois drew after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of his wife and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her face, and in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head and tied in around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap- rooted, and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly exhibited unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of a first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned her shoulders, as round behind as they were before; consequently, the spherical form of the cocoa-nut was perfect. Her feet, of a kind that painters call abatis, rose above the varnished leather of the shoes in a swelling that was some inches high. How the feet were ever got into the shoes, no one knows.
Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that a Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish spots upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any brows, a leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two honest bows of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of her mother. The faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round the studio, an air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable enthusiasm for Art.
"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said the father, assuming a jaunty air.
"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while the painter's back was turned.
"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou accompanied him to the landing.
"There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
"One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
"Yes, but what a family!"
"Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
"Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my teeth on edge."
"Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he departed.
That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst into his garret that morning.
While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the bottle- dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full of violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel, marvelling at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a demigod. This visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw upon the family its fantastic reflections.
"You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you get it," said the mother.
"No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the means to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I have; as soon as I have taken him the money I never think of it again."
"I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were baskets with holes in them."
"Who is your notary--if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame Vervelle.