The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics
Mistigris.
“Don’t you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a master as yours is worth its weight in gold?” replied the count. “If the civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of those rooms in the Louvre,” he continued, addressing Schinner, “a bourgeois, — as you call us in the studios — ought certainly to pay you twenty thousand. Whereas, if you go to this chateau as a humble decorator, you will not get two thousand.”
“The money is not the greatest loss,” said Mistigris. “The work is sure to be a masterpiece, but he can’t sign it, you know, for fear of compromising her.”
“Ah! I’d return all my crosses to the sovereigns who gave them to me for the devotion that youth can win,” said the count.
“That’s just it!” said Mistigris, “when one’s young, one’s loved; plenty of love, plenty of women; but they do say: ‘Where there’s wife, there’s mope.’”
“What does Madame Schinner say to all this?” pursued the count; “for I believe you married, out of love, the beautiful Adelaide de Rouville, the protegee of old Admiral de Kergarouet; who, by the bye, obtained for you the order for the Louvre ceilings through his nephew, the Comte de Fontaine.”
“A great painter is never married when he travels,” said Mistigris.
“So that’s the morality of studios, is it?” cried the count, with an air of great simplicity.
“Is the morality of courts where you got those decorations of yours any better?” said Schinner, recovering his self-possession, upset for the moment by finding out how much the count knew of Schinner’s life as an artist.
“I never asked for any of my orders,” said the count. “I believe I have loyally earned them.”
“‘A fair yield and no flavor,’” said Mistigris.
The count was resolved not to betray himself; he assumed an air of good-humored interest in the country, and looked up the valley of Groslay as the coucou took the road to Saint-Brice, leaving that to Chantilly on the right.
“Is Rome as fine as they say it is?” said Georges, addressing the great painter.
“Rome is fine only to those who love it; a man must have a passion for it to enjoy it. As a city, I prefer Venice, — though I just missed being murdered there.”
“Faith, yes!” cried Mistigris; “if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been gobbled up. It was that mischief-making tom-fool, Lord Byron, who got you into the scrape. Oh! wasn’t he raging, that buffoon of an Englishman?”
“Hush!” said Schinner. “I don’t want my affair with Lord Byron talked about.”
“But you must own, all the same, that you were glad enough I knew how to box,” said Mistigris.
From time to time, Pierrotin exchanged sly glances with the count, which might have made less inexperienced persons than the five other travellers uneasy.
“Lords, pachas, and thirty-thousand-franc ceilings!” he cried. “I seem to be driving sovereigns. What pourboires I’ll get!”
“And all the places paid for!” said Mistigris, slyly.
“It is a lucky day for me,” continued Pierrotin; “for you know, Pere Leger, about my beautiful new coach on which I have paid an advance of two thousand francs? Well, those dogs of carriage-builders, to whom I have to pay two thousand five hundred francs more, won’t take fifteen hundred down, and my note for a thousand for two months! Those vultures want it all. Who ever heard of being so stiff with a man in business these eight years, and the father of a family? — making me run the risk of losing everything, carriage and money too, if I can’t find before to-morrow night that miserable last thousand! Hue, Bichette! They won’t play that trick on the great coach offices, I’ll warrant you.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said the rapin; “‘your money or your strife.’”
“Well, you have only eight hundred now to get,” remarked the count, who considered this moan, addressed to Pere Leger, a sort of letter of credit drawn upon himself.
“True,” said Pierrotin. “Xi! xi! Rougeot!”
“You must have seen many fine ceilings in Venice,” resumed the count, addressing Schinner.
“I was too much in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then mere trifles,” replied Schinner. “But I was soon cured of that folly, for it was in the Venetian states — in Dalmatia — that I received a cruel lesson.”
“Can it be told?” asked Georges. “I know Dalmatia very well.”
“Well, if you have been there, you know that all the people at that end of the Adriatic are pirates, rovers, corsairs retired from business, as they haven’t been hanged — ”
“Uscoques,” said Georges.
Hearing the right name given, the count, who had been sent by Napoleon on one occasion to the Illyrian provinces, turned his head and looked at Georges, so surprised was he.
“The affair happened in that town where they make maraschino,” continued Schinner, seeming to search for a name.
“Zara,” said Georges. “I’ve been there; it is on the coast.”
“You are right,” said the painter. “I had gone there to look at the country, for I adore scenery. I’ve longed a score of times to paint landscape, which no one, as I think, understands but Mistigris, who will some day reproduce Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and others.”
“But,” exclaimed the count, “if he reproduces one of them won’t that be enough?”
“If you persist in interrupting, monsieur,” said Oscar, “we shall never get on.”
“And Monsieur Schinner was not addressing himself to you in particular,” added Georges.
“‘Tisn’t polite to interrupt,” said Mistigris, sententiously, “but we all do it, and conversation would lose a great deal if we didn’t scatter little condiments while exchanging our reflections. Therefore, continue, agreeable old gentleman, to lecture us, if you like. It is done in the best society, and you know the proverb: ‘we must ‘owl with the wolves.’”
“I had heard marvellous things of Dalmatia,” resumed Schinner, “so I went there, leaving Mistigris in Venice at an inn — ”
“‘Locanda,’” interposed Mistigris; “keep to the local color.”
“Zara is what is called a country town — ”
“Yes,” said Georges; “but it is fortified.”
“Parbleu!” said Schinner; “the fortifications count for much in my adventure. At Zara there are a great many apothecaries. I lodged with one. In foreign countries everybody makes a principal business of letting lodgings; all other trades are accessory. In the evening, linen changed, I sat in my balcony. In the opposite balcony I saw a woman; oh! such a woman! Greek, — that tells all! The most beautiful creature in the town; almond eyes, lids that dropped like curtains, lashes like a paint-brush, a face with an oval to drive Raffaelle mad, a skin of the most delicious coloring, tints well-blended, velvety! and hands, oh! — ”
“They weren’t made of butter like those of the David school,” put in Mistigris.
“You are always lugging in your painting,” cried Georges.
“La, la!” retorted Mistigris; “‘an ounce o’ paint is worth a pound of swagger.’”
“And such a costume! pure Greek!” continued Schinner. “Conflagration of soul! you understand? Well, I questioned my Diafoirus; and he told me that my neighbor was named Zena. Changed my linen. The husband, an old villain, in order to marry Zena, paid three hundred thousand francs to