The Beggar.
By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
The more he become master of his brush, the more the rustic work haunted him. He was still a thorough countryman. Although he had now at intervals the refinements of elegance and little bursts of worldliness; although he had exchanged the modest atelier in the Impasse du Maine for a house in the Quartier Monceau, the world soon wearied him, and he was glad to go back to his village.
This six weeks’ absence, of which he speaks in his letter to his friend Baude, was spent in an excursion to Venice, and in Switzerland. He came back only half delighted, and brought back only a few unimportant sketches.
Italy and the splendours of Venetian art had left him cold. In this world of history and mythology he was not at home. He sickened for his meadows and his Meusian forests.
During his rapid visits to Paris in 1881 and 1882, the painting of various portraits, notably that of Madame Juliette Drouet, and the compulsory tax of visits and soirées occupied him almost entirely. We saw but little of him. But these successes, and the adulation lavished upon him in Parisian drawing-rooms, did not change him.
He was still the loyal, joyous comrade, faithful to old ties; very good, very simple; happy as a child when he found himself in a circle of intimate friends.
We were both members and even founders of an Alsace-Lorraine dinner, the Dîner de l’Est, which was always given in summer in the country. One of the last meetings at which he was present, took place at the end of May, 1881.
A boat had been engaged, which was to take the diners to the bridge at Suresnes, and to bring them back at night. When we arrived at the landing-stage, a blind man was standing by the footbridge, attended by a young girl, who held out her sebilla to the passers-by.
“Come, gentlemen! all of you, put your hands in your pockets!” gaily commanded Bastien, and he passed over first, preaching by example. And the eighty, or a hundred guests of the Dîner de l’Est, passed one after another over the footbridge, each one leaving in the child’s sebilla a coin, large or small.
When we were on the deck, Bastien turned round to look at the blind man and his girl, who were amazed at this unexpected windfall, and were slowly counting their money.