Vendetta | Page 6

and patriotic, and he maintained among them that easy,

brilliant, half-ironical tone, and that freedom of judgment which
characterize painters.
He had carried his scrupulous precaution into the arrangements of the
locality where his pupils studied. The entrance to the attic above his
apartments was walled up. To reach this retreat, as sacred as a harem, it
was necessary to go up a small spiral staircase made within his own
rooms. The studio, occupying nearly the whole attic floor under the
roof, presented to the eye those vast proportions which surprise
inquirers when, after attaining sixty feet above the ground-floor, they
expect to find an artist squeezed into a gutter.
This gallery, so to speak, was profusely lighted from above, through
enormous panes of glass furnished with those green linen shades by
means of which all artists arrange the light. A quantity of caricatures,
heads drawn at a stroke, either in color or with the point of a knife, on
walls painted in a dark gray, proved that, barring a difference in
expression, the most distinguished young girls have as much fun and
folly in their minds as men. A small stove with a large pipe, which
described a fearful zigzag before it reached the upper regions of the
roof, was the necessary and infallible ornament of the room. A shelf ran
round the walls, on which were models in plaster, heterogeneously
placed, most of them covered with gray dust. Here and there, above this
shelf, a head of Niobe, hanging to a nail, presented her pose of woe; a
Venus smiled; a hand thrust itself forward like that of a pauper asking
alms; a few "ecorches," yellowed by smoke, looked like limbs snatched
over-night from a graveyard; besides these objects, pictures, drawings,
lay figures, frames without paintings, and paintings without frames
gave to this irregular apartment that studio physiognomy which is
distinguished for its singular jumble of ornament and bareness, poverty
and riches, care and neglect. The vast receptacle of an "atelier," where
all seems small, even man, has something of the air of an Opera
"coulisse"; here lie ancient garments, gilded armor, fragments of stuffs,
machinery. And yet there is something mysteriously grand, like thought,
in it; genius and death are there; Diana and Apollo beside a skull or
skeleton, beauty and destruction, poesy and reality, colors glowing in
the shadows, often a whole drama, motionless and silent. Strange

symbol of an artist's head!
At the moment when this history begins, a brilliant July sun was
illuminating the studio, and two rays striking athwart it lengthwise,
traced diaphanous gold lines in which the dust was shimmering. A
dozen easels raised their sharp points like masts in a port. Several
young girls were animating the scene by the variety of their expressions,
their attitudes, and the differences in their toilets. The strong shadows
cast by the green serge curtains, arranged according to the needs of
each easel, produced a multitude of contrasts, and the piquant effects of
light and shade. This group was the prettiest of all the pictures in the
studio.
A fair young girl, very simply dressed, sat at some distance from her
companions, working bravely and seeming to be in dread of some
mishap. No one looked at her, or spoke to her; she was much the
prettiest, the most modest, and, apparently, the least rich among them.
Two principal groups, distinctly separated from each other, showed the
presence of two sets or cliques, two minds even here, in this studio,
where one might suppose that rank and fortune would be forgotten.
But, however that might be, these young girls, sitting or standing, in the
midst of their color-boxes, playing with their brushes or preparing them,
handling their dazzling palettes, painting, laughing, talking, singing,
absolutely natural, and exhibiting their real selves, composed a
spectacle unknown to man. One of them, proud, haughty, capricious,
with black hair and beautiful hands, was casting the flame of her glance
here and there at random; another, light- hearted and gay, a smile upon
her lips, with chestnut hair and delicate white hands, was a typical
French virgin, thoughtless, and without hidden thoughts, living her
natural real life; a third was dreamy, melancholy, pale, bending her
head like a drooping flower; her neighbor, on the contrary, tall, indolent,
with Asiatic habits, long eyes, moist and black, said but little, and
reflected, glancing covertly at the head of Antinous.
Among them, like the "jocoso" of a Spanish play, full of wit and
epigrammatic sallies, another girl was watching the rest with a
comprehensive glance, making them laugh, and tossing up her head,

too lively and arch not to be pretty. She appeared to rule the first group
of girls, who were the daughters of bankers, notaries, and merchants,
--all rich, but aware of the imperceptible