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 auréoles, 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.