SHADOWS BEFORE
Who, in all France, a week ago, had heard of Bernay-sur-Mer? Upon whose lips to-day was not the name of that little Mediterranean village? Men, the great men of France, came at the bidding of their confrere, the American millionaire art-critic; came sceptically—and stayed to wonder. And because there were no accommodations in Bernay-sur-Mer, they made their headquarters at Marseilles, and their daily pilgrimages from there; an arrangement that, if in a measure inconvenient, was not without its compensation, for at Marseilles was being made the plaster cast of that exquisite little figure, fashioned so amazingly from scarcely more than mud, that marked a new epoch to them in the world of sculpture, the birth of a supreme genius, a surpassing glory for the art of France!
They came and watched Jean at his work; for there was clay now such as Jean had never imagined, clay that seemed to give form itself, of its own initiative, to wonderful conceptions. They watched and marvelled; and at night they carried him back with them to Marseilles to fête him, until indeed to Jean the world of yesterday was as some vast haze, befogged, that had shut down behind him.
"In a year, with the study of technique in Paris!" murmured Henry Bliss ecstatically.
And old Bidelot, seventy years of age, grizzle-haired, the most caustic, bitter critic of them all, stormed in his wrath.
"Technique! You talk of technique—for him! He is a school in himself—a school that will revolutionise the art. You talk of technique for a genius awakened out of the sleep of ignorance, who in a day accomplishes undying work that no other man in Paris, in Rome—bah! where you will—could accomplish in twice a lifetime! You are senile, my poor friend Bliss—you are in your dotage!"
Jean Laparde! Was it possible that this was Jean Laparde? The simple fisherfolk stared awe-struck at each other, at the metamorphosis that had come to Bernay-sur-Mer, at the great people who came and went, to whom one instinctively lifted one's hat—the great people who now lifted their hats to Jean. It was true! Could they not see with their own eyes? One, too, then, should lift one's hat to Jean. And did not the good Father Anton read to them from the newspapers that all France was ringing with the name of Jean Laparde?
"Sacré nom d'un miracle!" swore Pierre Lachance heavily. "And once he made clay poupées for little Ninon! Bon Dieu, think of that!"
Bernay-sur-Mer had set Jean apart, above itself.
But the old curé was troubled in his heart. And one night, after a week had gone since the American strangers had come to Bernay-sur-Mer, Father Anton shook his head over his newspaper as he read of Jean Laparde—and found difficulty with his spectacles, for his thoughts were of Marie-Louise.