"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man who does not doubt his ability.
In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless, fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and restlessness were for him the internal goad of inspiration.
The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.
Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.
"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely. "Life cannot always be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are essentially respectable."
Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.
The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as any one.
And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,[A] a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity. He moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his whole life in it, indifferent to its beautiful decorations.
It would not be any trouble for him to undertake the preparation of a speech. That was his specialty. Academic receptions and works for members of Congress were his best field. He understood that the master needed him—a painter!
And Renovales, who was beginning to find this Maltrana fellow attractive in spite of his insolence, drew himself up to his full height in the majesty of his fame. If it was a question of doing a picture for admission, he was the man. But a speech!