And the Quarter said, “Ho-ho! You chaps who didn’t believe it was a ’collage’. He-he! What do you say now? She’s chucked up everything, to go and live in the country with him.”
In August or September I ran down to the farmhouse near Villiers-St.-Jacques, and passed a week with them. I found a mightily changed Monsieur Edouard, and a curiously changed P’tit-Bleu, as well. He was fat and rosy, he who had been so thin and white. And she—she was grave. Yes, P’tit-Bleu was grave: sober, staid, serious. And her impish, mocking black eyes shone with a strange, serious, calm light.
Monsieur Edouard (with whom my relations had long before this become confidential) drew me apart, and told me he was having an exceedingly bad time of it.
“She’s really too absurd, you know. She’s a martinet, a tyrant. Opium is to me what tobacco is to you, and does me no more harm. I need it for my work. Oh, in moderation; of course one can be excessive. Yet she refuses to let me have a tenth of my proper quantity. And besides, how utterly senseless it is, keeping me down here in the country. I’m dying of ennui. There’s not a person I can have any sort of intellectual sympathy with, for miles in every direction. An artist needs the stimulus of contact with his fellows. It’s indispensable. If she’d only let me run up to Paris for a day or two at a time, once a month say. Couldn’t you persuade her to let me go back with you? She’s the most awful screw, you know. It’s the French lower-middle-class parsimony. I’m never allowed to have twopence in my pocket. Yet whose money is it? Where does it come from? I really can’t think why I submit, why I don’t break away from her, and follow my own wishes. But the poor little thing is fond of me; she attached herself to me. I don’t know what would become of her if I cast her off. Oh, don’t fancy that I don’t appreciate her. Her intentions are excellent. But she lacks wisdom, and she enjoys the exercise of power. I wish you’d speak with her.”
P’tit-Bleu also drew me apart.
“Please don’t call me P’tit-Bleu any more. Call me Jeanne. I have put all that behind me—all that P’tit-Bleu signifies. I hate to think of it, to be reminded of it. I should like to forget it.”
When I had promised not to call her P’tit-Bleu any more, she went on, replying to my questions, to tell me of their life.
“Of course, everybody thinks I am his mistress. You can’t convince them I’m not. But that’s got to be endured. For the rest, all is going well. You see how he is improved. I give him fifteen drops of laudanum, morning, noon, and night. Fifteen drops—it is nothing, I could take it myself, and never know it. And he used to drink off an ounce—an ounce, mon cher—at a time, and then want more at the end of an hour. Yes! Oh, he complains, he complains of everything, he frets, he is not contented. But he has not walked twenty miles in bare feet, as you said he would. And he is working. You will see his pictures.”
“And you—how do you pass your time? What do you do?”
“I pose for him a good deal. And then I have much sewing to do. I take in sewing for Madame Deschamps, the Deputy’s wife, to help make the ends meet. And then I read. Madame Deschamps lends me books.”