The Hidden Masterpiece | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

THE HIDDEN MASTERPIECE
by HONORE DE BALZAC

Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley

THE HIDDEN MASTERPIECE
CHAPTER I

On a cold morning in December, towards the close of the year 1612, a
young man, whose clothing betrayed his poverty, was standing before
the door of a house in the Rue des Grands-Augustine, in Paris. After
walking to and fro for some time with the hesitation of a lover who
fears to approach his mistress, however complying she may be, he
ended by crossing the threshold and asking if Maitre Francois Porbus
were within. At the affirmative answer of an old woman who was
sweeping out one of the lower rooms the young man slowly mounted
the stairway, stopping from time to time and hesitating, like a newly
fledged courier doubtful as to what sort of reception the king might
grant him.
When he reached the upper landing of the spiral ascent, he paused a
moment before laying hold of a grotesque knocker which ornamented
the door of the atelier where the famous painter of Henry
IV.--neglected by Marie de Medicis for Rubens--was probably at work.
The young man felt the strong sensation which vibrates in the soul of
great artists when, in the flush of youth and of their ardor for art, they
approach a man of genius or a masterpiece. In all human sentiments
there are, as it were, primeval flowers bred of noble enthusiasms, which
droop and fade from year to year, till joy is but a memory and glory a
lie. Amid such fleeting emotions nothing so resembles love as the
young passion of an artist who tastes the first delicious anguish of his
destined fame and woe,--a passion daring yet timid, full of vague
confidence and sure discouragement. Is there a man, slender in fortune,
rich in his spring-time of genius, whose heart has not beaten loudly as
he approached a master of his art? If there be, that man will forever
lack some heart-string, some touch, I know not what, of his brush,
some fibre in his creations, some sentiment in his poetry. When
braggarts, self-satisfied and in love with themselves, step early into the
fame which belongs rightly to their future achievements, they are men
of genius only in the eyes of fools. If talent is to be measured by
youthful shyness, by that indefinable modesty which men born to glory
lose in the practice of their art, as a pretty woman loses hers among the
artifices of coquetry, then this unknown young man might claim to be
possessed of genuine merit. The habit of success lessens doubt; and
modesty, perhaps, is doubt.

Worn down with poverty and discouragement, and dismayed at this
moment by his own presumption, the young neophyte might not have
dared to enter the presence of the master to whom we owe our
admirable portrait of Henry IV., if chance had not thrown an
unexpected assistance in his way. An old man mounted the spiral
stairway. The oddity of his dress, the magnificence of his lace ruffles,
the solid assurance of his deliberate step, led the youth to assume that
this remarkable personage must be the patron, or at least the intimate
friend, of the painter. He drew back into a corner of the landing and
made room for the new-comer; looking at him attentively and hoping to
find either the frank good-nature of the artistic temperament, or the
serviceable disposition of those who promote the arts. But on the
contrary he fancied he saw something diabolical in the expression of
the old man's face,--something, I know not what, which has the quality
of alluring the artistic mind.
Imagine a bald head, the brow full and prominent and falling with deep
projection over a little flattened nose turned up at the end like the noses
of Rabelais and Socrates; a laughing, wrinkled mouth; a short chin
boldly chiselled and garnished with a gray beard cut into a point;
sea-green eyes, faded perhaps by age, but whose pupils,