Her dark hair was done over her ears in the fashion made popular by Mlle. Cleo de Merode.
Philip's eyes wandered to her, and Cronshaw, having finished the recitation of his verses, smiled upon him indulgently.
"You were not listening," he said.
"Oh yes, I was."
"I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration of the statement I just made.
What is art beside love?
I respect and applaud your indifference to fine poetry when you can contemplate the meretricious charms of this young person."
She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and he took her arm.
"Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the divine comedy of love."
"Fichez-moi la paix," she said, and pushing him on one side continued her perambulation.
"Art," he continued, with a wave of the hand, "is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life."
Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length.
He spoke with rotund delivery.
He chose his words carefully.
He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his hearers at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound advice.
He talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose.
He grew remarkably drunk, and then he began to recite poetry, his own and Milton's, his own and Shelley's, his own and Kit Marlowe's.
At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.
"I shall go too," said Philip.
Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listening, with a sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw's maunderings.
Lawson accompanied Philip to his hotel and then bade him good-night.
But when Philip got to bed he could not sleep.
All these new ideas that had been flung before him carelessly seethed in his brain.
He was tremendously excited.
He felt in himself great powers.
He had never before been so self-confident.
"I know I shall be a great artist," he said to himself. "I feel it in me."
A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but even to himself he would not put it into words:
"By George, I believe I've got genius."
He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more than one glass of beer, it could have been due only to a more dangerous intoxicant than alcohol.
XLIII
On Tuesdays and Fridays masters spent the morning at Amitrano's, criticising the work done.
In France the painter earns little unless he paints portraits and is patronised by rich Americans; and men of reputation are glad to increase their incomes by spending two or three hours once a week at one of the numerous studios where art is taught.
Tuesday was the day upon which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano's.
He was an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but these were an object of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the progress of art and angrily impatient with that tas de farceurs whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging.
Foinet, on the other hand, who visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult man to get on with.
He was a small, shrivelled person, with bad teeth and a bilious air, an untidy gray beard, and savage eyes; his voice was high and his tone sarcastic.
He had had pictures bought by the Luxembourg, and at twenty-five looked forward to a great career; but his talent was due to youth rather than to personality, and for twenty years he had done nothing but repeat the landscape which had brought him his early success.
When he was reproached with monotony, he answered:
"Corot only painted one thing.
Why shouldn't I?"
He was envious of everyone else's success, and had a peculiar, personal loathing of the impressionists; for he looked upon his own failure as due to the mad fashion which had attracted the public, sale bete, to their works.
The genial disdain of Michel Rollin, who called them impostors, was answered by him with vituperation, of which crapule and canaille were the least violent items; he amused himself with abuse of their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis to accentuate his ribald scorn.
Nor did he conceal his contempt for the students whose work he examined.
By them he was hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to tears, which again aroused his ridicule; and he remained at the studio, notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered too bitterly from his attacks, because there could be no doubt that he was one of the best masters in Paris.
Sometimes the old model who kept the school ventured to remonstrate with him, but his expostulations quickly gave way before the violent insolence of the painter to abject apologies.
It was Foinet with whom Philip first came in contact.
He was already in the studio when Philip arrived. He went round from easel to easel, with Mrs. Otter, the massiere, by his side to interpret his remarks for the benefit of those who could not understand French.
Fanny Price, sitting next to Philip, was working feverishly.
Her face was sallow with nervousness, and every now and then she stopped to wipe her hands on her blouse; for they were hot with anxiety.