“And failed,” Mrs. Wilbur interrupted sombrely.
“Having tried that so-called moral existence,” Erard’s voice was domineeringly emphatic, as if drilling a refractory pupil, “and found it incomplete, you will never have doubts about the other occupation of cultivating and enjoying your wits.”
Thus she had enrolled herself under his banner. There need be no further talk about the matter. They sauntered away from the Holbein room into the Long Gallery. In the dim distance where the perspective lines of the picture-covered walls converge, the usual conglomerate public was passing to and fro. A party of Americans was being “put through the Louvre in three hours.” As Erard and his companion skirted the huddling mob of apathetic men and disturbed women, they could hear the cicerone shouting: “Ladies and shentlemen, this is a Teetian, one of the ten greatest pictures in the world. It is valued at one hundred fifty tousand dollar.” Thereupon the mob swayed, from the common impulse to look in one direction; then the voice of the conductor shouted again: “This is by Rubens, the great Flemish painter; the third lady at the right is a picture of his wife.” The bit of personality seemed also to arouse the languor of the herd; but in a moment the set look of vacant wonder settled over the faces once more.
“Thus,” commented Erard, “the run of the world take life. They hear a collection of names and a piece of gossip; and they look and pass on.”
Mrs. Wilbur thought that something might be said on the other side, at least for the intermediate people, but she accepted easily once more Erard’s oracular position. He had not forced her to join the connoisseurs of life; indeed, four years ago, he had advised her to become one of the herd.
They looked casually at one or two more pictures, Erard, to his disciple’s surprise, delivering new opinions quite contrary to those she had imbibed four years ago. All his criticism tended now towards psychology; it was a process of explaining why the human animal enjoyed, not a means of making him enjoy more completely with sympathetic enthusiasm. She reflected that Erard had been writing and publishing and had theories to maintain. In a general way she felt that he was less the artist, the sympathizer and creator, and more the pedant. He laughed at her tremulous excitement over pictures, and in a few minutes the ecstasy she had felt more or less ever since that first morning by the Arno evaporated. She saw that her talk was gush, and was ashamed. He made her feel that fine-art was only a wonderful trick, like the conjurer’s devices, to be cleverly detected and classified. He pawed a picture, figuratively, as M. Berthelot might paw a human animal in measuring its abnormality.
“Well,” he said at last, “it must be time for déjeuner. I have to look over some pictures at three. I have a commission to execute for a Chicago family. Don’t you want to see some fine Monets?”
She felt humiliated in his eyes when she said, “Yes, but I can’t ask you to lunch with me. I am alone at my hotel.”
He shot a quick glance at her. She hadn’t sloughed off the small prejudices yet. “We can go to a restaurant on the rue de Rivoli—that will be on the way.”
As they left the Salon Carré he pointed out a Frenchwoman who was passing on the arm of an elderly man. “That is the famous Claire Desmond. She was for years Dampière’s mistress. He picked her up in Brittany and used her as his model until she grew to be impossible. She is a character in the Quartier.” He went on to relate one or two anecdotes of the picturesque Claire.