* * * * *
Once more in his apartment, Gesa made a light, and looked around him, shivering a little at the comfortless room. In the grey marble chimney-place, stood an iron stove. The orange and blue flowers of the carpet had long taken on a uniform covering of dirt. Two offensive terra-cotta images stood on the mantelpiece. The tenor who was well acquainted in the Rue Steinkerque, and had mounted to the lodging with Gesa before, had explained that these were the work of a certain Vaudreuil, a second Michael Angelo, whose genius was broken in pieces against the hard stupidity of the public.
"Genius!" How the misuse of the word angered him! "Genius! The man has no trace even of talent," Gesa had cried, looking at the disgusting figures.
"Si! Si!" rejoined the tenor. "He spent all his means in trying to convert the world to 'high art,' chiseled and ecce homo--but what will you have? Marble is dear--he grew melancholy, took to drink--and then--il a fini par faire cela."
Whereat Gesa asked shuddering, "What became of him, did he kill himself?"
"No, but he works no longer--his daughter supports him, vous savez! Les filles d'artistes! cela a quelquechose dans le sang. At one time he cursed her and turned her out of doors. But he does not remember that any more, he doesn't remember anything any more. So long as he has his warm room, his game of billiards and his glass of absynthe, he is contented. He lives in the Hotel de Nancy, here on the corner. You can make his acquaintance to-morrow if you like. The young artists treat him sometimes, to hear him spout about art,--it is very funny!"
The Michael Angelo of the Hotel de Nancy was the first thing that occurred to Gesa when he returned to his miserable room. His look sought the two terra-cotta statuettes. He examined them with a morbid curiosity. He took one of them and held it close to his dimly burning lamp in order to see it more distinctly. His artist eye recognized in the figure the traces of very great powers gone astray.
A terrible sob unmanned him, the figure shook in his trembling hand. He let it fall and it broke into a thousand pieces. But they did not charge it in his weekly reckoning. It had no value for any one.
* * * * *
He drank no longer. A nameless dread clutched his heart; red clouds floated before his vision, a fearful lassitude enervated him--but he drank no more and he worked.