VI

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.

"Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"

"How much do you want?"

"Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if

the fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit

of me left. What a crew!"

"I'll write you a line for my notary."

"Have you got a notary?"

"Yes."

"That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a

perfumer's sign."