Pierre Grassou

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.

"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.

"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."

Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.

"Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with his lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All things are magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your palette, and warm up those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots; come, butter it well in. Do you pretend to have more sense than Nature?"

"Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that note."

Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear: —

"Won't that country lout spoilt it?"

"If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be worth a thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.

Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who was stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very uneasy at his co-operation in her daughter's portrait.

"Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette, and taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to d'Arthez' chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora the tops of the doors – masterpieces! Come and see us."

And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at Virginie.

"Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.

"A great artist," answered Grassou.

There was silence for a moment.

"Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my portrait? He frightened me."

"He has only done it good," replied Grassou.

"Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you," said Madame Vervelle.

The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.

The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man of genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out to his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how little attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.

"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with mere merchants."

This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was charming to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such compliments. The honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart of gold, that loyal soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow, decorated by royalty itself with the Legion of honor, put himself under arms to go out to Ville d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of the year. The painter went modestly by public conveyance, and he could not but admire the beautiful villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a park of five acres at the summit of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble view of the landscape. Marry Virginie, and have that beautiful villa some day for his own!

He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a kindliness, a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was indeed a day of triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about the grounds on the nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be for the steps of so great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed and combed, and the lawns had just been mown. The pure country air wafted to the nostrils a most enticing smell of cooking. All things about the mansion seemed to say:

"We have a great artist among us."

Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified step. These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou for seven hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its magnificence, Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their grand theatrical effect, – the opening of the picture gallery illuminated by lamps, the reflections of which were managed with the utmost care. Three neighbours, also retired merchants, an old uncle (from whom were expectations), an elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a number of other guests invited to be present at this ovation to a great artist followed Grassou into the picture gallery, all curious to hear his opinion of the famous collection of pere Vervelle, who was fond of oppressing them with the fabulous value of his paintings. The bottle-merchant seemed to have the idea of competing with King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of Versailles.

The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read in black letters on a gold ground:

Rubens

Dance of fauns and nymphs

RembrandtInterior of a dissecting room. The physician van Trompinstructing his pupils

In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and dusted. Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not undrawn in presence of young ladies.

Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon his lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art. He was Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard Douw! He was twenty great masters all by himself.

"What is the matter? You've turned pale!"

"Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The painter took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a corner on pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then the rage.

"You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"

"Yes, all originals."

"Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall point out to you."

Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to examine each picture.

"Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached the last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."

"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is nothing at all!"

"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand francs' worth of pictures?"

"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear, "and I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand francs the whole lot."

"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's 'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard Douw!"

"And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw the meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in Elie's shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had required of him.

Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur de Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou) advanced so much that when the portraits were finished he presented them gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his wife.

At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He earns some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs' worth of canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and he lives with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who agree delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on earth. Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in which he is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not a family portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue du Temple that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs less than five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois families have for employing him is this: —

"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year with his notary."

As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May 12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying to them: —

"The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."

Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh at his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and that the feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still works on; he aims for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter. And – oh! vengeance which dilates his heart! – he buys the pictures of celebrated artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these true works of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the collection at Ville d'Avray.

There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than that of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and truly obliging.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy

Bridau, Joseph

The Purse

A Bachelor's Establishment

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Start in Life

Modeste Mignon

Another Study of Woman

Letters of Two Brides

Cousin Betty

The Member for Arcis

Cardot (Parisian notary)

The Muse of the Department

A Man of Business

Jealousies of a Country Town

The Middle Classes

Cousin Pons

Grassou, Pierre

A Bachelor's Establishment

Cousin Betty

The Middle Classes

Cousin Pons

Lora, Leon de

The Unconscious Humorists

A Bachelor's Establishment

A Start in Life

Honorine

Cousin Betty

Beatrix

Magus, Elie

The Vendetta

A Marriage Settlement

A Bachelor's Establishment

Cousin Pons

Schinner, Hippolyte

The Purse

A Bachelor's Establishment

A Start in Life

Albert Savarus

The Government Clerks

Modeste Mignon

The Imaginary Mistress

The Unconscious Humorists