We set out along with one of my old friends and the painter’s young brother. For a week we walked with our bags on our backs through the forest country of the Argonne, going through woods from Varennes to La Chalade, and from Islettes to Beaulieu. The weather was rainy and unpleasant enough, but we were none the less gay for that, never winking when the rain came down, visiting the glass-works, admiring the deep gorges in the forests, the solitary pools in the midst of the woods, the miles of green and misty avenues at the foot of the hills.
Jules Bastien was always the leader. When we arrived at our resting place in an evening, after a day of walking in the rain, he almost deafened us with scraps of café-concert songs, with which his memory was stored.
I seem still to hear in the dripping night that voice, clear and vibrating, now silent for ever….
As we went along he told me of his plans for the future.
He wanted to tell the whole story of country life in a series of large pictures: hay-making, harvest, seed-time, the lovers, the burial of a young girl…. He also wanted to paint a peasant woman as Jeanne d’Arc, at the moment when the idea of her divine mission is taking possession of her brain; then, a Christ in the Tomb.
Together we made a plan for publishing a series of twelve compositions: Les Mois Rustiques (The Months in the Country), for which he was to furnish the drawings and I the text.
From time to time we stopped at the opening of a wood or at the entrance of a village, and Jules would make a hasty sketch, little thinking that the wild and simple peasants of the Argonne would take us for Germans surreptitiously making notes of their roads and passes. At Saint Rouin, while we were looking on at a Pilgrimage, we had nearly been taken as spies. I have told this story elsewhere.[1] The remembrance of it amused us for a long time.
After eight days of this vagabond life we separated at Saint Mihiel, where Bastien wished to see the group of statues of the sepulchre, the chef d’œuvre of Ligier Richier, before beginning his Christ in the Tomb.
Shortly afterwards he gave an account of this visit in a letter to his friend Baude, the engraver:
“Our too short walk through the Argonne has been very interesting, and ended with a visit to the grand chef d’œuvre of Ligier Richier at Saint Mihiel. You must see that some day. I have seen nothing in sculpture so touching. France ought to know better and to be prouder of that great Lorraine artist. You will see a photograph of this masterpiece when you come to me….”