Part 2 (1/2)

”If I showed myself thus to another, you would love me no longer, and I should feel myself unworthy of you. Obedience to your fancies was a natural and simple thing, was it not? Even against my own will, I am glad and even proud to do thy dear will. But for another, out upon it!”

”Forgive me, my Gillette,” said the painter, falling upon his knees; ”I would rather be beloved than famous. You are fairer than success and honors. There, fling the pencils away, and burn these sketches! I have made a mistake. I was meant to love and not to paint. Perish art and all its secrets!”

Gillette looked admiringly at him, in an ecstasy of happiness! She was triumphant; she felt instinctively that art was laid aside for her sake, and flung like a grain of incense at her feet.

”Yet he is only an old man,” Poussin continued; ”for him you would be a woman, and nothing more. You--so perfect!”

”I must love you indeed!” she cried, ready to sacrifice even love's scruples to the lover who had given up so much for her sake; ”but I should bring about my own ruin. Ah! to ruin myself, to lose everything for you!... It is a very glorious thought! Ah! but you will forget me.

Oh I what evil thought is this that has come to you?”

”I love you, and yet I thought of it,” he said, with something like remorse, ”Am I so base a wretch?”

”Let us consult Pere Hardouin,” she said.

”No, no! Let it be a secret between us.”

”Very well; I will do it. But you must not be there,” she said. ”Stay at the door with your dagger in your hand; and if I call, rush in and kill the painter.”

Poussin forgot everything but art. He held Gillette tightly in his arms.

”He loves me no longer!” thought Gillette when she was alone. She repented of her resolution already.

But to these misgivings there soon succeeded a sharper pain, and she strove to banish a hideous thought that arose in her own heart. It seemed to her that her own love had grown less already, with a vague suspicion that the painter had fallen somewhat in her eyes.

II--CATHERINE LESCAULT

Three months after Poussin and Porbus met, the latter went to see Master Frenhofer. The old man had fallen a victim to one of those profound and spontaneous fits of discouragement that are caused, according to medical logicians, by indigestion, flatulence, fever, or enlargement of the spleen; or, if you take the opinion of the Spiritualists, by the imperfections of our mortal nature. The good man had simply overworked himself in putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to his mysterious picture. He was lounging in a huge carved oak chair, covered with black leather, and did not change his listless att.i.tude, but glanced at Porbus like a man who has settled down into low spirits.

”Well, master,” said Porbus, ”was the ultramarine bad that you sent for to Bruges? Is the new white difficult to grind? Is the oil poor, or are the brushes recalcitrant?”

”Alas!” cried the old man, ”for a moment I thought that my work was finished, but I am sure that I am mistaken in certain details, and I can not rest until I have cleared my doubts. I am thinking of traveling. I am going to Turkey, to Greece, to Asia, in quest of a model, so as to compare my picture with the different living forms of Nature. Perhaps,”

and a smile of contentment stole over his face, ”perhaps I have Nature herself up there. At times I am half afraid that a breath may waken her, and that she will escape me.”

He rose to his feet as if to set out at once.

”Aha!” said Porbus, ”I have come just in time to save you the trouble and expense of a journey.”

”What?” asked Frenhofer in amazement.

”Young Poussin is loved by a woman of incomparable and flawless beauty.

But, dear master, if he consents to lend her to you, at the least you ought to let us see your work.”

The old man stood motionless and completely dazed.

”What!” he cried piteously at last, ”show you my creation, my bride?

Rend the veil that has kept my happiness sacred? It would be an infamous profanation. For ten years I have lived with her; she is mine, mine alone; she loves me. Has she not smiled at me, at each stroke of the brush upon the canvas? She has a soul--the soul that I have given her.

She would blush if any eyes but mine should rest on her. To exhibit her!