The grandfather was represented seated in a garden chair, holding on his knees his horn snuff-box and his handkerchief of blue cotton. His striking face stood out well detached from the background of trees; the black velvet cap sloping jauntily towards his ear gave effect to the shrewd Socratic face; his blue eyes twinkled with humour; the nose was broad and retroussé; the white forked beard spread itself over an ancient vest of the colour of dead leaves; the hands, painted like life, were crossed upon the grey trousers.
Before this picture, so true, so frank, of such marvellous intensity of familiar life, the public stood delighted, and the name of Bastien-Lepage, unknown before, figured the next day in the first place in the articles on the Salon.
II.
It was in front of this picture that I first met Jules. Having looked in my catalogue for the name of the painter, I was delighted to find that he was from the Meuse, and born at that same Damvillers where I had once lived.
The heavy soil of our department is not fruitful in artists. When it has produced one it takes a rest for a few centuries.
Since Ligier Richier, the celebrated sculptor, born at the end of the fifteenth century, the Meuse could only claim credit for the painter Yard a clever decorator of churches and houses in the time of Duke Stanislas; so I was quite proud to find that Bastien-Lepage was a fellow countryman of mine. A few moments later a mutual friend introduced us to each other.
I saw before me a young man, plainly dressed, small, fair, and muscular; his pale face, with its square determined brow, short nose, and spiritual lips, scarcely covered with a blond moustache, was lighted up by two clear blue eyes whose straight and piercing look told of loyalty and indomitable energy. There was roguishness as well as manliness in that mobile face with its flattened features, and a certain cool audacity alternated with signs of sensitiveness and sparkling fun and gaiety.
Remembrances of our native province, our common love of the country and of life in the open air, soon established kindly relations between us, and after two or three meetings we had entered upon a close friendship.
The portrait of the grandfather had won for him a third medal, and had ensured him a place in the sunshine.
It was not yet a money success, but it was a certain degree of fame; he might go back to his village with his heart at rest, his head high. The State had just bought his picture, La Chanson du Printemps (The Song of Spring), and orders were beginning to come in.