"A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
"Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our notary too."
"Take care! don't move," said the painter.
"Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about you'll make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then you'd understand."
"Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle Vervelle to her parents.
"Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn certain things. When you are married--well, till then, keep quiet."
During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate with the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As they went away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite of this separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally awakened her curiosity.
"Decorated--thirty-seven years old--an artist who gets orders--puts his money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de Fougeres! not a bad name--doesn't look like a bad man either! One might prefer a merchant; but before a merchant retires from business one can never know what one's daughter may come to; whereas an economical artist--and then you know we love Art-- Well, we'll see!"
While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible to stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard, and looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a series of the oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of metals; a tawny yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of red- haired women, and he turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage what man would ever care about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty fades,--but ugliness remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That night when he went to bed the painter had come to think Virginie Vervelle charming.
When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on clean linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and chosen a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with pointed toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of the artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes, and turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou thought these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace; happily she didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did she look like?
During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty. This flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of the artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the mother.
"What! for nothing?" they said.
Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
"You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money," said old Vervelle.
At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of pictures which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens, Gerard Douw, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle, ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of pictures."
"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was nearly finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The notary had spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou was, he said, one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by thirty-six thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now saved about ten thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest; in short, he was incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark had enormous weight in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of nothing but the celebrated painter Fougeres.
The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie, he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three Vervelles bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed to consider as one of their residences; there was to them an inexplicable attraction in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic abode. Abyssus abyssum, the commonplace attracts the commonplace. Toward the end of the sitting the stairway shook, the door was violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he came like a whirlwind, his hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face as he looked about him, casting everywhere the lightning of his glance; then he walked round the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou, pulling his coat together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but in vain, to button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule of cloth.
"Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
"Ah!"
"The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do you paint such things as that?"
"Hold your tongue!"
"Ah! to be sure, yes."
The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary apparition, passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades deeper.