Meta Holdenis, a novel from the French of Victor Cherbuliez

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I WAS about twenty-five years old, and for three years had been studying painting in the studio of a master whom you know, when I received a letter from my father, a good Burgundy cooper, lately retired from business, which obliged me to start for Beaune in great haste. My valise was soon strapped. To tell the truth, I was uneasy, and not well satisfied with my conduct ; I dreaded the paternal face and frowns. Not that I had any very heavy misdeeds on my conscience ; I was passionately fond of painting, and could work for three weeks straight along without indulging in the least recreation ; but there were times when I would break loose, and then commit two or three big follies all in one breath. What makes the pleasures of youth so expensive is chiefly vanity. I was crazy to have people speak of me, and liked to stun the fellows in the pit ; but this admiration of my friends cost me considerable money, and my finances were generally at a low ebb. I had not yet meditated over the maxim of that wiseacre, who said, “ There is so great a difference between the man whose fortune is already made and him who has yet to make it that they are two creatures of entirely different species.”

On arriving home, I found my father in a little paved court-yard where he liked to smoke his pipe. Folding his arms, he scrutinized for a while in silence

META HOLDEmS, my rather showy toilet, which was, to be sure, not that of a poor studio devil, and shook three times his big Burgundian head, whose bald spots shone like the staves of his casks ; then, perching himself upon a barrel — “ Tony Flamerin, my only son,” said he to me, “ stand there, before me in the sun, and look down on the ground ; you will see there the shadow of a fool.”

“ There are pardonable follies,” I replied, with considerable assurance. “ Mine will soon be at an end.”

“Yes, on the straw or in the poor-house,” retorted he dryly, sending forth, one after the other, big puffs from his pipe ; then, raising his voice — “ Tony Flamerin, you wished to become a painter. You stupidly fancy yourself a man of talent ; the only talent I know you to possess is to squander your property. It is the fault of your poor mother. God rest her soul ! She had made up her mind that you were too delicate, that your hands were too white to become a cooper, like your good-man father. Well ! we send young master in apprenticeship to a wholesale merchant of Lyons, who dismisses him at the end of the year for besmearing his memorandum-books with landscapes. Meanwhile, the worthy woman dies, leaving to this good-for-nothing fellow her whole personal fortune, twenty-eight thousand five hundred francs ; and I, wearied out with useless remonstrances, allow that rare genius to go and study painting in Paris. . . . Tony, look again at your shadow, and tell me whether it is not indeed the shadow of a fool ! Tony, just count up if you please, how much there is left of those twenty-eight thousand five hundred francs of your late mother,”

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I looked at my shadow : it was not that of a fool ; it had a kind of contrite air, and seemed much troubled in its conscience.

“Tony,” continued he, “you have spent three years in Paris ; you have not earned there a red copper ; on the other hand, you have spent sixteen thousand francs, without mentioning the centimes.”

“ Two thousand the first year,” I said ; “ four thousand the second, eight thousand the third — a geometrical progression. I confess it was going it rather strong, but then ! — ”

I involuntarily smacked my lips and smiled, for I could not help recalling at that moment a certain pretty, sprightly face, ... I shook my head, the face disappeared as through a trap-door, and I saw nothing before me but the big, round eyes of my father, flashing with rage.

“ I really believe you are jesting ! ” cried he, throwing his pipe on the ground, where it broke into pieces.

“ Heaven forbid ! I am never more serious than when I look like laughing.” And I approached him to embrace him. He pushed me ofiP. However, I confessed my faults with so much humility, I made so many promises to mend my ways, that he softened down.

“ Enough of these grimaces and protestations ! ” said he. “ I have a proposition to communicate to you, which, if you refuse, all shall be over between us ; I shall never want to ^e you again.”

I begged him to explain himself, and received the following information : My uncle Gedeon Flamerin had emigrated twelve years previous to America, where he had made a fortune in a banking-house, and become a person of note. Having remained a bachelor, and, his solitude growing irksome, he wrote to my father, offering to take me to his house, to see to my success in life, in short to adopt me as his son, his partner, his successor; three qualifications which made me shudder. He required only that, before embarking for New York, I should spend a few months at Hamburg and London, where I should learn German and English. The postscript of his letter appeared to me still more astounding ; it ran as follows : “ My nephew Tony is, it appears, a sort of hair-brained fellow. No great harm ; youth must sow its wild-oats : but too much is too much. Get him a wife. There is nothing like it to stop the galop of a young man and bring him to a moderate pace. If Tony can find at Beaune or Hamburg a nice girl that would consent to become my daughter-in-law, I shall be happy to welcome her at my house.

I could contain myself no longer ; the mere mention of a wife exasperated me. “ Make a husband of me — oh ! that is too much ! ” I cried. “ The letter is anything but welcome, and the postscript is odious. The devil ! if one hands people a glass of wine they do not relish, one should at least see that there are no flies at the bottom.”

“ Think it over,” cried my father, whose wrath was kindled afresh. “Your uncle offers you a fortune ; you may sacrifice it to your oil-painting, if you like, only I tell you one thing — don’t depend any longer on

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me. I commenced life with nothing ; by dint of hard work I amassed four thousand francs’ income, and I tell you that, as sure as I am a Burgundian, I mean to live long and comfortably ; I am just cut out for that. You will have nothing from me till you have buried me ; depend on that ” — striking his forehead — “ it’s written here I ” The motion was expressive, and left me in no doubt as to his earnestness. “ To-morrow,” he added, “ I shall settle with you, and shall turn over to you what remains of your mother’s bequest — twelve thousand-odd francs, for I do not mean to be your banker any longer, and to have to protect your pennies against yourself. You may make a mouthful of it I When you shall have no other choice left between New York and the hospital, perhaps you will consent to taste your uncle’s wine ; you may have yet to swallow the glassful and the flies at the bottom too. Amen ! ”

Had I followed my inclinations, I would have returned post-haste to Paris ; but, notwithstanding my uncle’s bad opinion of me, I was not quite such a hair-brained fellow as he thought. I did not believe in half-way artists — a painter without talent seemed to me always some sort of a fool. Although I had considerable faith in my genius, I had also at times my misgivings. The profoundest convictions have their days of weakness. After having turned the matter over in my mind — “ There may be,” thought I, ‘‘ some means of coming to terms both with Providence and my good uncle Gedeon, and, since he wishes me to go to Germany and learn German, I will go there ; it will not hinder

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me from painting. In a year hence I shall know who I am and what I am worth.” In consequence of this reasoning, I determined to go and study, not at Hamburg, but at Dresden, for I could not live without a picture-gallery.

I was not long making up my mind ; my natural vivacity cannot brook delays. I at once communicated my intentions to my father, keeping, in the mean time, certain side-thoughts to myseK. He rewarded me for this act of submission by a vigorous blow on my back, and draining his wine-cellar during the fortnight I spent with him, so as to keep me in good-humor. One morning I bade him farewell, and I left, carrying with me his blessing in my heart, and thirteen thousand francs in my pocket — a considerable surprise to the latter.

Heaven, meanwhile, had decreed that I should learn German before reaching Germany. I traveled from Beaune to Geneva in company with a corpulent gentleman, middle-aged, with fresh and rosy complexion, and of pleasing and dignified countenance. His name was Benedict Holdenis. He had a certain unctuous way of expressing himself about things in general, and especially about improving the condition of the suffering classes, upon Kindergartens, and the necessity of developing early in little girls moral refiection and the sentiment of the beautiful. I fancied at first that this philanthropist was some Protestant ecclesiastic ; but he informed me that he was a merchant, that he had left Elberfeld ten years before to establish himself at Geneva, where he conducted a large hardware

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business. His conversation, I confess, was rather too high-flown for me, still I pretended to enjoy it — I felt under such great obligations to him for having taken me, on the strength of my cravat and my good looks, for a young nobleman traveling for his pleasure. He asked me in a discreet tone where my father’s property was situated. I told him the truth, but with so much art in my explanations that it in no wise diminished the favorable opinion he had formed of me. Not to conceal anything from you, I must own also that I sought and found an opportunity to open before him my pocket-book, the obesity of which called forth a to me very flattering exclamation ; he did not suspect that, like the Gascon philosopher, I carried all I was worth with me. O youth ! what a simpleton thou art ! In short, we became such good friends that on leaving the cars he offered me his services, gave me his address, and made me promise to come to see him if I should make any stay at Geneva.

My intention at first had been to continue my journey without stopping; but who does what he wishes ? In leaving the waiting-room of the railway-station, I ran against a specimen of real gentry — an American, six feet high, called Harris — whose acquaintance, as an idler, I had made in Paris. He used to come at rare intervals to the studio, to study painting at his leisure moments ; but his chief occupation was to spend his income and while away the time, in which attempt, however, he scarcely ever succeeded. He could find nothing entertaining in Geneva ; in beholding me, he raised his big arms to heaven, and blessed Providence

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for sending his spleen so unhoped-for a prey. Persuaded by his eloquence, I went to engage a room at the Hôtel des Bergues, where he was stopping ; and for two weeks we did nothing from morning till night but sail on the lake, where more than once we were in danger of capsizing. We spent our nights in interminable piquet-games, beer-drinking, and throwing the empty mugs at each other’s head.

One day we took a long horseback-ride. I was riding a chestnut full of pluck and fire ; and Plarris, who was an adept in horsemanship, and rather chary of his compliments, having deigned to praise my talents in that direction, I flattered myself that I was cutting something of a figure in the world. In the evening we stopped at a country inn for refreshments. At the extremity of the arbor, where we had taken our seats, sat a family, just finishing a rural meal. A young girl of about eighteen, apparently the oldest of the children, stood facing me at the table, evidently fulfilling the duties of major-domo, for she was carving a fowl. To protect herself against the sun that here and there slid through the foliage, she had put a fichu on her head. It was this which first attracted my attention, but the face underneath it interested me far more. Harris asked me jestingly what I could find to admire in so ugly a creature ; but I gave him to understand that he was no judge in the matter.

This ugly creature, as he called her, was a brunette ; rather short than tall, with chestnut hair, eyes of the clearest and sweetest blue ; indeed, two veritable turquoises, and a beauty -mole on the left cheek. She

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was neither handsome nor pretty : her nose was too heavy, her chin too square ; her mouth too large, her lips too thick ; but she had, on the other hand, that peculiar charm of I don’t know what, which bewitches : a nectarine complexion ; cheeks like those fruits one longs to bite into ; a face that resembles no other face; an ingenuous air, a caressing look, an angelic smile, and a singing voice. Her way of carving fowls was indeed adorable ! Her four younger sisters, and two little brothers, were holding up their plates to her, opening their beaks like so many little chickens waiting for their food. She helped them all to their satisfaction. Her father, who had his back to me, called to her in a honeyed voice and German accent, which sounded strangely familiar to me, “Meta, you keep nothing to yourself, my dear ! ” She replied in German, and she must have said something charming, for he cried, Allerliebst ! an exclamation I had no need of going to Dresden to understand. At the same time he turned toward me, and I recognized the venerable face of my traveling-companion.

M. Holdenis, who was to live henceforth in my memory as the father of the most charming ugly creature I had ever met, remembered me at once, and, as I advanced toward him, received me with open arms. He asked permission to introduce me to Madame Holdenis, a large, stout woman, round as a ball, rosy, ugly, and not the least charming. I excused myself for not having called on him before, and did not leave till I had obtained an invitation to dinner for the next day.

“ Look here ! ” said Harris, somewhat sulkily, as

META HOLDENIS.

we had again mounted our horses, “ what do you mean with these Holdenises ? ”

‘‘ I want to paint the portrait of their daughter,” I replied ; “ I have never had my imagination so inflamed as it was this evening.”

“ You are insane ! ” cried he, striking his horse a sharp blow. “ The girl, to be sure, is good-looking enough ; she has a pretty hand, a pretty form, fine arms, and through her chemisette I could see the beginning of superb shoulders. I might even add, to please you, that her bust may some day develop into fine proportions ; but I assure you that all the rest is not worth a straw.”

“ And I tell you, my good friend,” I retorted, “that you have no artist’s eye. Beauty is too indefinable a thing to express. Mademoiselle Meta Holdenis will some day be an object of great admiration.”

M. Holdenis lived in a comfortable country-house, five minutes’ walk from the town. The place was called Florissant, and the house Mon-Nid ; you will see by-and-by that I have had good reasons for remembering these names. I was punctual at the rendezvous, despite Harris, who had sworn to make me miss it. M. Holdenis welcomed me with the most amiable cordiality. He collected immediately his seven children, placed them like organ-pipes all in a row, according to age and size, and gave me their names. I had to listen to the story of their precocious exploits, their winning ways, their natural wit. I expressed my delight and put Madame Holdenis into ecstasy. “They are the very children of their mother ! ” said the husband and.

looking lovingly at her, he kissed chivalrously both her very red hands.

During this time, the busy Meta came and went, lighting the lamps, making bouquets to stand on the mantel-piece, sliding into the dining-room to help the servant in setting the table, and from there darting into the kitchen to give an eye to the roast. Her father told me that they called her, in the house, little mouse, das Mciuschen^ because she moved about so noiselessly ; she had the secret of being everywhere at once.

The meal seemed to me delicious, for had she not had a hand in it ? But what appeared still more admirable was the appetite of my host ; I was, indeed, afraid he would hurt himself : all went off well, however ; we took our coffee on the veranda, in the starlight — the honeysuckle and jasmines intoxicating us with their perfume. “ What matters it whether one lives in a palace or in a hut?” remarked Monsieur Holdenis, to me, “ provided one keeps a window open to a bit of blue sky ? ”

Having called back his progeny, he arranged them in a circle and made them sing psalms. Meta beat the time for the young concert-singers, and at times gave them the key-note ; she had a nightingale-voice, pure as crystal.

We returned into the parlor. Games followed the psalms, until, the clock having struck ten, the worthy pastor of the flock made a sign, well understood by all, which stopped all merriment and introduced familyworship. He then opened an enormous folio Bible, over which, bending his patriarchal head, he remained a few moments silent as if to collect his thoughts, and then began to improvise a homily upon the text of the Apocalypse : “ These are the two olive-trees, and the two candlesticks, standing before the God of the earth.” I thought I understood him to mean that the two candlesticks represented Monsieur and Madame Holdenis ; the little Holdenises were as yet only bits of candles, but with proper efforts were expected to grow into wax-tapers.

As soon as he had closed his big Bible, I rose to take my leave. He grasped both my hands, and, looking at me tenderly with tears in his eyes, said : “ Behold our every-day life. You have found Germany even in this foreign country. I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but Germany is the only place in the world that knows what real family life means — that perfect union of souls, that poetic and ideal sentiment of things. And,” added he, with an amiable smile, “ I do not think I am mistaken when I say that you seem to me worthy in every way to become a German.”

I assured him, looking sideways at Meta, that he was not mistaken ; that I felt within me something that looked very much like a touch of divine grace. Half an hour later I repeated the same to Harris, who was waiting for me, furiously impatient, before two bottles of rum and a pack of cards. “ Out of what holy-water font do you come ? ” cried he, when he saw me ; “ you smell of virtue half a mile off.” And, taking a brush, he dusted me from head to foot. He further tried to make me promise that I would not return to Floris-

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sant ; but in vain. To punish me, he attempted to make me drunk, but, when one thinks of Meta, one does not get intoxicated on mere rum.

If Mon-Nid proved to my taste, my dear madame, the compliment was reciprocated, for Mon-Nid was also well pleased with me ; I felt a welcome guest there ; was made a great deal of ; was liked, in short. When I submitted my project to learn German, to M. Holdenis, he offered with a rare kindness to give me every day a lesson ; and, as on the same occasion I expressed to him a great desire to paint his daughter’s portrait, he granted me the request without very much ado. The consequence was, that the nephew of my uncle Gedeon spent every day several hours in the sanctuary of virtue ; the time given to Ollendorf’s grammar, however, was by no means the most agreeable : not that M. Holdenis was a bad teacher, but his disquisitions seemed to me rather long-winded. He repeated too often that the French were a giddy people, that their poets and artists were devoid of ideality, that Corneille and Racine were cold rhetoricians, that La Fontaine was wanting in grace and Molière in mirth. He demonstrated also, at too great a length, that the German was the only language that could express the depths of the soul and the infinitude of sentiment.

On the other hand, I always found Meta’s sittings too short. The portrait I had undertaken was to me the most attractive I had ever attempted, but also the most laborious of tasks. I often despaired of going creditably through with it, so hard was it for me to

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express what I saw and felt. Is there anything more difficult than to reproduce with the brush the charm that is not beautiful ? to fix on the canvas a face without decided lineaments and features, whose whole worth rests on ingenuousness of expression, on blushing candor, on the caresses of the eye, and the luminous grace of the smile? Nor was that all: there lurked in that angelic face something else, which I strove in vain to render. There are all sorts of angels, you know, madame : those we see in Germany are different, again, from those of other countries ; their eyes, which are sometimes turquoise-color, have that peculiarity that they promise, in mystic language, pleasures which turn out to be no pleasures at all, and only troubles and pains. Whoever has traveled in your country will understand what I mean ; he must surely have met with women of adorable candor, who breathe the very voluptuousness they seem ignorant of — virginal innocences, capable of converting a libertine to marriage and virtue, because he imagines that he will not lose anything by it ; in short, angels sublimely ignorant of all vice, but to whom, again, nothing vicious would be a matter of surprise. But enough of that ; I only wished to explain to you why I despaired of succeeding with Meta’s portrait. She seemed always very willing to sit for me, and appeared to like my company. She was, in turns, serious and playful. When serious, she would question me about the Louvre, or the history of painting. When inclined to merriment, she amused herself talking German to me, and made me repeat ten times the same word after her. I generally

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answered as well as I could, making use of all I knew; my cock-and-bull stories made her sometimes laugh until the tears came. I gained by it the right of calling her by her pet name Mailschen, which I managed to bring in in all I had to say ; and, as the word was hard to pronounce, it proved the most useful of exercises to me. At the end of every sitting, and to pay me for my trouble, she would recite to me “ The King of Thule.” She recited with exquisite taste, and whenever she came to the last lines —

her eyes filled with tears, and her voice became so faint and trembling that it seemed to die away. She sang that beautiful song so often to me that I soon knew it by heart, and indeed know it yet.

These were our amusements. There was another in which I alone indulged. I often wondered, looking at her, whether I loved that amiable girl as a lover or as an artist. I soon learned, however, what to think about it. She used to fix her hair with a sort of careless grace. One morning, as she had had the unfortunate caprice to smooth it down close to her face, and hide certain wandering curls that played on her forehead, I lectured her on the subject, and told her that a cold correctness was the death of art. Thereupon she began to laugh, untied sportively her abundant hair, which fell like a shower over her face, and, with her elbows on her knees, looked through the chestnutwaves fixedly at me with those sky-blue eyes. I have

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told you before what may be sometimes read in the eyes of these German angels. I hardly know exactly what hers meant, but I felt plainly that I did not love them for art’s sake ; and that same day, coming back to my hotel, I talked so wildly to Harris on the subject that he declared to me in the most contemptuous tones that, in his opinion, I was a lost man ; that I was about drowning myself in a cup of mük, which for an artist is certainly the most despicable of ends.

It is certain that, to my great astonishment, the most domestic ideas began to bud in my romantic brain ; catching my head with both hands, I would sometimes ask myself if it was still my own. From day to day, from sitting to sitting, I felt the aversion I had conceived for marriage gradually diminish. It seemed to me even that there was some sense in Uncle Gedeon’s postscript. I persuaded myself that an accomplished housewife was a great resource, and an excellent thing in the life of an artist ; a housewife that unites with an innocent heart a cultivated mind, the love for the beautiful, and that particular grace of manner that scatters flowers on thë^ paths of life ; a housewife that can weep in reciting “ The King of Thule,” and who understands how to cover up the lower pleasures of this world with leaves of roses culled in heaven. To cap the climax, M. Holdenis praised to me one evening the German custom of long betrothals. “ Look,” said he, in a lyrical tone — “ look now at some young man who is about leaving his home to battle with the world. Y ou will find him walk contemptuously by the noisy pleasures of the capital, and the wild, un-

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rulj doings of the children of the age. What is it that guards him against temptations ? What talisman, what amulet, protects him against all witchcraft and all stain ? Ah ! it is the sweet and chaste image of his light or dark haired bride which he carries with him engraved in his heart ! She awaits him ; he has promised to return to her with a pure soul and pure hands. The angel of chaste love watches over him, and keeps the tempter off.” Shall I confess it — this speech, which might as well as not have been an harangue ad hominem^ sounded eloquent to my ears ! This shows how far I was gone.

The strongest spur to love is jealousy. Now, for two weeks I had been annoyed by an ominous guest, who came regularly every day to Florissant — a certain Baron Griineck, whom I heartily wished back in his native Pomerania. He was an old bachelor, bordering on sixty, an odd little man with a cough, much bent, wearing a wig, and with legs so stiff that they seemed to be all of one piece. I think he suffered from a sort of articulary rheumatism ; perhaps, also, in his younger days, he had swallowed a cavalry-sabre, which he had not yet digested.

What provoked me was, the ado that was made over this clown. A few remarks, moreover, dropped unawares, together with his officious attentions and fawning assiduities, set me a-thinking. He would always take a seat by Meta, and had a strange way of looking at her — eyes into eyes. He recited madiigals to her, presented her with emblematical bouquets tied with long black-and-white ribbons, whereon were

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pictured Potsdam and the King of Prussia passing his cavalry in review. During our sittings he would often whisper to her in German, of which protracted gibberish I could not understand a word, and which used to act dreadfully on my nerves. One day, when she was thirsty, he went to get her a glass of water. She drank half ; he took the glass from her, and swallowed the rest at one draught, crying, “ It is nectar !”