THERESE RAQUIN
CHAPTER XXV
At the expiration of four months, Laurent thought of taking advantage of the
profit he had calculated on deriving from his marriage. He would have abandoned
his wife, and fled from the spectre of Camille, three days after the wedding,
had not his interest detained him at the shop in the arcade. He accepted his
nights of terror, he remained in the anguish that was choking him, so as not to
be deprived of the benefit of his crime.
If he parted from Therese, he would again be plunged in poverty, and be
forced to retain his post; by remaining with her, he would, on the contrary, be
able to satisfy his inclination for idleness, and to live liberally, doing
nothing, on the revenue Madame Raquin had placed in the name of his wife. Very
likely he would have fled with the 40,000 francs, had he been able to realise
them; but the old mercer, on the advice of Michaud, had shown the prudence to
protect the interests of her niece in the marriage contract.
Laurent, in this manner, found himself attached to Therese by a powerful
bond. As a set-off against his atrocious nights, he determined at least to be
kept in blissful laziness, well fed, warmly clothed, and provided with the
necessary cash in his pocket to satisfy his whims. At this price alone, would he
consent to sleep with the corpse of the drowned man.
One evening, he announced to Madame Raquin and his wife that he had sent in
his resignation, and would quit his office at the end of a fortnight. Therese
gave a gesture of anxiety. He hastened to add that he intended taking a small
studio where he would go on with his painting. He spoke at length about the
annoyance of his employment, and the broad horizons that Art opened to him. Now
that he had a few sous and could make a bid for success, he wished to see
whether he was not capable of great achievements.
The speech he made on this subject simply concealed a ferocious desire to
resume his former studio life. Therese sat with pinched lips without replying;
she had no idea of allowing Laurent to squander the small fortune that assured
her liberty. When her husband pressed her with questions in view of obtaining
her consent, she answered curtly, giving him to understand that if he left his
office, he would no longer be earning any money, and would be living entirely at
her expense.
But, as she spoke, Laurent observed her so keenly, that he troubled her, and
arrested on her lips the refusal she was about to utter. She fancied she read in
the eyes of her accomplice, this menacing threat:
"If you do not consent, I shall reveal everything."
She began to stammer, and Madame Raquin exclaimed that the desire of her dear
son was no more than what was just, and that they must give him the means to
become a man of talent. The good lady spoilt Laurent as she had spoilt Camille.
Quite mollified by the caresses the young man lavished on her, she belonged to
him, and never failed to take his part.
It was therefore decided that Laurent should have a studio, and receive one
hundred francs a month pocket-money. The budget of the family was arranged in
this way: the profits realised in the mercery business would pay the rent of the
shop and apartment, and the balance would almost suffice for the daily expenses
of the family; Laurent would receive the rent of his studio and his one hundred
francs a month, out of the two thousand and a few hundred francs income from the
funded money, the remainder going into the general purse. In that way the
capital would remain intact. This arrangement somewhat tranquillised Therese,
who nevertheless made her husband swear that he would never go beyond the sum
allowed him. But as to that matter, she said to herself that Laurent could not
get possession of the 40,000 francs without her signature, and she was
thoroughly determined that she would never place her name to any document.
On the morrow, Laurent took a small studio in the lower part of the Rue
Mazarine, which his eye had been fixed on for a month. He did not mean to leave
his office without having a refuge where he could quietly pass his days far away
from Therese. At the end of the fortnight, he bade adieu to his colleagues.
Grivet was stupefied at his departure. A young man, said he, who had such a
brilliant future before him, a young man who in the space of four years, had
reached a salary that he, Grivet, had taken twenty years to attain! Laurent
stupefied him still more, when he told him he was going to give his whole time
to painting.
At last the artist installed himself in his studio, which was a sort of
square loft about seven or eight yards long by the same breadth. The ceiling
which inclined abruptly in a rapid slope, was pierced by a large window
conveying a white raw light to the floor and blackish walls. The sounds in the
street did not ascend so high. This silent, wan room, opening above on the sky,
resembled a hole, or a vault dug out of grey clay. Laurent furnished the place
anywise; he brought a couple of chairs with holes in the rush seats, a table
that he set against the wall so that it might not slip down, an old kitchen
dresser, his colour-box and easel; all the luxury in the place consisted of a
spacious divan which he purchased for thirty francs from a second-hand dealer.
He remained a fortnight without even thinking of touching his brushes. He
arrived between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, smoked, stretched himself
on the divan, and awaited noon, delighted that it was morning, and that he had
many hours of daylight before him. At twelve he went to lunch. As soon as the
meal was over, he hastened back, to be alone, and get away from the pale face of
Therese. He next went through the process of digestion, sleeping spread out on
the divan until evening. His studio was an abode of peace where he did not
tremble. One day his wife asked him if she might visit this dear refuge. He
refused, and as, notwithstanding his refusal, she came and knocked at the door,
he refrained from opening to her, telling her in the evening that he had spent
the day at the Louvre Museum. He was afraid that Therese might bring the spectre
of Camille with her.
Idleness ended by weighing heavily on his shoulders, so he purchased a canvas
and colours, and set to work. As he had not sufficient money to pay models, he
resolved to paint according to fancy, without troubling about nature, and he
began the head of a man.
But at this time, he did not shut himself up so much as he had done; he
worked for two or three hours every morning and passed the afternoon strolling
hither and thither in Paris and its vicinity. It was opposite the Institut, on
his return from one of these long walks, that he knocked up against his old
college friend, who had met with a nice little success, thanks to the good
fellowship of his comrades, at the last Salon.
"What, is it you?" exclaimed the painter. "Ah! my poor Laurent, I hardly
recognise you. You have lost flesh."
"I am married," answered Laurent in an embarrassed tone.
"Married, you!" said the other. "Then I am not surprised to see you look so
funny: and what are you doing now?"
"I have taken a small studio," replied Laurent; "and I paint a little, in the
morning."
Then, in a feverish voice, he briefly related the story of his marriage, and
explained his future plans. His friend observed him with an air of astonishment
that troubled and alarmed him. The truth was that the painter no longer found in
the husband of Therese, the coarse, common fellow he had known formerly. It
seemed to him that Laurent was acquiring a gentlemanly bearing; his face had
grown thinner, and had taken the pale tint of good taste, while his whole frame
looked more upright and supple.
"But you are becoming a handsome chap," the artist could not refrain from
exclaiming. "You are dressed like an ambassador, in the latest style. Who's your
model?"
Laurent, who felt the weight of the examination he was undergoing, did not
dare to abruptly take himself off.
"Will you come up to my studio for a moment?" he at last asked his friend,
who showed no signs of leaving him.
"Willingly," answered the latter.
The painter, who could not understand the change he noticed in his old
comrade, was anxious to visit his studio. He had no idea of climbing five floors
to gaze on the new pictures of Laurent, which assuredly would disgust him; he
merely wished to satisfy his curiosity.
When he had reached the studio, and had glanced at the canvases hanging
against the walls, his astonishment redoubled. They comprised five studies, two
heads of women, and three of men painted with real vigour. They looked thick and
substantial, each part being dashed off with magnificent dabs of colour on a
clear grey background. The artist quickly approached, and was so astounded that
he did not even seek to conceal his amazement.
"Did you do those?" he inquired of Laurent.
"Yes," replied the latter. "They are studies that I intend to utilise in a
large picture I am preparing."
"Come, no humbug, are you really the author of those things?"
"Eh! Yes. Why should I not be the author of them?"
The painter did not like to answer what he thought, which was as follows:
"Because those canvases are the work of an artist, and you have never been
anything but a vile bungler."
For a long time, he remained before the studies in silence. Certainly they
were clumsy, but they were original, and so powerfully executed that they
indicated a highly developed idea of art. They were life-like. Never had this
friend of Laurent seen rough painting so full of high promise. When he had
examined all the canvases, he turned to the author of them and said:
"Well, frankly, I should never have thought you capable of painting like
that. Where the deuce did you learn to have talent? It is not usually a thing
that one acquires."
And he considered Laurent, whose voice appeared to him more gentle, while
every gesture he made had a sort of elegance. The artist had no idea of the
frightful shock this man had received, and which had transformed him, developing
in him the nerves of a woman, along with keen, delicate sensations. No doubt a
strange phenomenon had been accomplished in the organism of the murderer of
Camille. It is difficult for analysis to penetrate to such depths. Laurent had,
perhaps, become an artist as he had become afraid, after the great disorder that
had upset his frame and mind.
Previously, he had been half choked by the fulness of his blood, blinded by
the thick vapour of breath surrounding him. At present, grown thin, and always
shuddering, his manner had become anxious, while he experienced the lively and
poignant sensations of a man of nervous temperament. In the life of terror that
he led, his mind had grown delirious, ascending to the ecstasy of genius. The
sort of moral malady, the neurosis wherewith all his being was agitated, had
developed an artistic feeling of peculiar lucidity. Since he had killed, his
frame seemed lightened, his distracted mind appeared to him immense; and, in
this abrupt expansion of his thoughts, he perceived exquisite creations, the
reveries of a poet passing before his eyes. It was thus that his gestures had
suddenly become elegant, that his works were beautiful, and were all at once
rendered true to nature, and life-like.
The friend did not seek further to fathom the mystery attending this birth of
the artist. He went off carrying his astonishment along with him. But before he
left, he again gazed at the canvases and said to Laurent:
"I have only one thing to reproach you with: all these studies have a family
likeness. The five heads resemble each other. The women, themselves, have a
peculiarly violent bearing that gives them the appearance of men in disguise.
You will understand that if you desire to make a picture out of these studies,
you must change some of the physiognomies; your personages cannot all be
brothers, or brothers and sisters, it would excite hilarity."
He left the studio, and on the landing merrily added:
"Really, my dear boy, I am very pleased to have seen you. Henceforth, I shall
believe in miracles. Good heavens! How highly respectable you do look!"
As he went downstairs, Laurent returned to the studio, feeling very much
upset. When his friend had remarked that all his studies of heads bore a family
likeness, he had abruptly turned round to conceal his paleness. The fact was
that he had already been struck by this fatal resemblance. Slowly entering the
room, he placed himself before the pictures, and as he contemplated them, as he
passed from one to the other, ice-like perspiration moistened his back.
"He is quite right," he murmured, "they all resemble one another. They
resemble Camille."
He retired a step or two, and seated himself on the divan, unable to remove
his eyes from the studies of heads. The first was an old man with a long white
beard; and under this white beard, the artist traced the lean chin of Camille.
The second represented a fair young girl, who gazed at him with the blue eyes of
his victim. Each of the other three faces presented a feature of the drowned
man. It looked like Camille with the theatrical make-up of an old man, of a
young girl, assuming whatever disguise it pleased the painter to give him, but
still maintaining the general expression of his own countenance.
There existed another terrible resemblance among these heads: they all
appeared suffering and terrified, and seemed as though overburdened with the
same feeling of horror. Each of them had a slight wrinkle to the left of the
mouth, which drawing down the lips, produced a grimace. This wrinkle, which
Laurent remembered having noticed on the convulsed face of the drowned man,
marked them all with a sign of vile relationship.
Laurent understood that he had taken too long a look at Camille at the
Morgue. The image of the drowned man had become deeply impressed on his mind;
and now, his hand, without his being conscious of it, never failed to draw the
lines of this atrocious face which followed him everywhere.
Little by little, the painter, who was allowing himself to fall back on the
divan, fancied he saw the faces become animated. He had five Camilles before
him, five Camilles whom his own fingers had powerfully created, and who, by
terrifying peculiarity were of various ages and of both sexes. He rose, he
lacerated the pictures and threw them outside. He said to himself that he would
die of terror in his studio, were he to people it with portraits of his victim.
A fear had just come over him: he dreaded that he would no more be able to
draw a head without reproducing that of the drowned man. He wished to ascertain,
at once, whether he were master of his own hand. He placed a white canvas on his
easel; and, then, with a bit of charcoal, sketched out a face in a few lines.
The face resembled Camille. Laurent swiftly effaced this drawing and tried
another.
For an hour he struggled against futility, which drove along his fingers. At
each fresh attempt, he went back to the head of the drowned man. He might indeed
assert his will, and avoid the lines he knew so well. In spite of himself, he
drew those lines, he obeyed his muscles and his rebellious nerves. He had first
of all proceeded rapidly with his sketches; he now took pains to pass the stick
of charcoal slowly over the canvas. The result was the same: Camille, grimacing
and in pain, appeared ceaselessly.
The artist sketched the most different heads successively: the heads of
angels, of virgins with aureoles, of Roman warriors with their helmets, of fair,
rosy children, of old bandits seamed with scars; and the drowned man always,
always reappeared; he became, in turn, angel, virgin, warrior, child and bandit.
Then, Laurent plunged into caricature: he exaggerated the features, he
produced monstrous profiles, he invented grotesque heads, but only succeeded in
rendering the striking portrait of his victim more horrible. He finished by
drawing animals, dogs and cats; but even the dogs and cats vaguely resembled
Camille.
Laurent then became seized with sullen rage. He smashed the canvas with his
fist, thinking in despair of his great picture. Now, he must put that idea
aside; he was convinced that, in future, he would draw nothing but the head of
Camille, and as his friend had told him, faces all alike would cause hilarity.
He pictured to himself what his work would have been, and perceived upon the
shoulders of his personages, men and women, the livid and terrified face of the
drowned man. The strange picture he thus conjured up, appeared to him
atrociously ridiculous and exasperated him.
He no longer dared to paint, always dreading that he would resuscitate his
victim at the least stroke of his brush. If he desired to live peacefully in his
studio he must never paint there. This thought that his fingers possessed the
fatal and unconscious faculty of reproducing without end the portrait of
Camille, made him observe his hand in terror. It seemed to him that his hand no
longer belonged to him.