Artists Wives | Page 6

began around the brandy flasks one of
those lengthy maundering conversations, benumbing like clouds of
tobacco smoke, an immense feeling of disgust would seize hold of him,
and not having the courage to turn out all these poor wretches, he
would himself disappear and remain absent for a week.
[Illustration: p034-045]
"My house is full of imbeciles," he said one day to me. "I dare not
return." With this kind of existence, he no longer wrote. His name was
never seen, and his fortune, squandered in a perpetual craving to have
people in his house, disappeared in the outstretched hands around him.
[Illustration: p035-046]
It was a long time since we had met when I received one morning a line

of his dear little handwriting, formerly so firm, now trembling and
uncertain. "We are in Paris. Come and see me. I am so dull." I found
him with his wife, his child and his dogs, in a lugubrious little
apartment in the Batignolles. The disorder which in this narrow space
could not be spread about, seemed more hideous even than in the
country. While the child and dogs rolled about in rooms the size of a
chessboard compartment, Heurtebise; who was ill, lay with his face to
the wall, in a state of utter prostration. His wife, dressed out as usual,
and ever placid, hardly looked at him. "I don't know what is the matter
with him," she said to me with a gesture of indifference. On seeing me
he had for a moment a return of gaiety, and a minute of his old hearty
laugh, but it was soon stifled. As they had kept up in Paris all their
suburban habits, there appeared at the breakfast hour, in the midst of
this household disorganized by poverty and illness, a parasite, a seedy
looking little bald man, cranky and peevish, of whom they always
spoke as "the man who has read Proudhon." It was thus that Heurtebise,
who probably had never known his name, introduced him to everybody.
When he was asked "Who is that?" he unhesitatingly replied, "Oh! a
very clever fellow, who has thoroughly studied Proudhon." His
knowledge was certainly not very apparent, for this deep thinker rarely
made himself heard except to complain at table of an ill-cooked roast or
a spoilt sauce. On this occasion, the man who had read Proudhon
declared that the breakfast was detestable, which however did not
prevent his devouring the larger half of it himself.
How long and lugubrious this meal by the bedside of my sick friend
appeared to me! The wife gossiped as usual, with a tap now and then to
the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once
did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly
know whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and
ceaseless struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and
he was already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which
however was rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and
then Madame Heurtebise found herself a widow. Then, as no tears had
dimmed her clear eyes, as she always bestowed the same care on her
glossy locks, and as Aubertot and Fajon were still available, she
married Aubertot and Fajon. Perhaps it was Aubertot, perhaps it was

Fajon, perhaps even both of them. In any case, she was able to resume
the life she was fitted for, and the voluble gossip and eternal smile of
the shopwoman.
[Illustration: p038-049]
[Illustration: p041-052]

THE CREDO OF LOVE.
To be the wife of a poet! that had been the dream of her life! but
ruthless fate, instead of the romantic and fevered existence she sighed
for, had doomed her to a peaceful, humdrum happiness, and married
her to a rich man at Auteuil, gentle and amiable, perhaps indeed a trifle
old for her, possessed of but one passion,--perfectly inoffensive and
unexciting--that of horticulture. This excellent man spent his days
pruning, scissors in hand, tending and trimming a magnificent
collection of rose trees, heating a greenhouse, watering flower beds;
and really it must be admitted that, for a poor little heart hungering
after an ideal, this was hardly sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years
her life remained straightforward and uniform, like the smooth sanded
paths in her husband's garden, and she pursued it with measured steps,
listening with resigned weariness to the dry and irritating sound of the
ever-moving scissors, or to the monotonous and endless showers that
fell from the watering pots on to the leafy shrubs. The rabid
horticulturist bestowed on his wife the same scrupulous attention he
gave to his flowers. He carefully regulated the temperature of the
drawing-room, overcrowded with nosegays, fearing for her the April
frosts