LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1883, 6 March 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE PORTRAIT. Maurice was wandering aimlessly in the depth of the forest. It had ceased raining, but the drops of water were still rolling from leaf to leaf with the light sound of a nearly exhausted fountain trickling into its halffilled basin, and in the distance the dark path opened out into a wet glade of a deep green of exquisite softness. The trunks of the trees were very black, their branches blacker still, and the massive boughs of the chesnut trees above the young painter’s head seemed like the high arches of a cathedral at the hour when all is dark in the church and when the colored windows cast into the gloom gleams of light so intense and mysterious that you would think them lit up by a fire of live coals from without. Maurice loved this hour at the decline of day, when after the rain the snn has not shone out and when a gray tint is cast over everything, blending outlines, softening angles, and investing every shape with a smooth and exquisite roundneas. He walked slowly, discovering every moment in the well-known forest some beauty till then unknown, and he was thrilled to the very depths of his being by that tender admiration for nature which is one of the characteristics of genius. Having reached the glade, he looked around him. The grass was green and brilliant; the delicate leaves of the shrubs, shining beneath the water which had washed them, formed a fine, lace like network against the dark background of the great forest beyond. He stopped in order to ses better, to observe better and to take in better the impression of the wet forest, more impressive and more human, so to speak, in its great shadows than beneath the sunshine in all the splendor of the day. The pretty graceful figure of a young girl stood out against the foliage of the birch trees. She advanced with a supple movement, without perceiving Maurice, who, as immoveable as the trunk of a chesnut tree, was watching her. When two steps from him the young girl perceived him. She started, and let fall a few twigs from the fagot of wood that she was carrying on her head. ‘“Yon frightened me,’ said she, smiling ; and her large black eyes shone out merrily beneath the tangle of her blonde hair. He looked at her without answering. A complete harmony, which no words can render, reigned between the slender figure, the laughing face, the lace-like foliage of the glade and the tints (landscape. b =

* Stand still,’ said the young man ; * I am going to take your portrait,’ She wished to push back her hair, which had fallen over her face, but ho prevented her by a gesture. ‘ Remain aa you are.’ He seated himself on a atone and sketched rapidly the outline and featurea of his young model. She waa a peasant, but delicate and refined as the young girls of the peasantry often are before their complete and often tardy development. The eyes were already those of a woman, the smile waa still that of a child.

‘ How old are you ?’ asked the painter, still working. * I shall soon be sixteen ’ * Already 1 I saw you three years ago a little bit of a thing.’ ‘ I waa ve»y little,’ she said, with a pretty laugh, and frank and bold aa a sparrow, ‘ but I grew fast, and on St. John’s Day I shall have lovers.’

‘Why on Et. John’s Day?’ asked the young man, stopping to look at her. * Because one mast have a lover to dance with round the bonfire.’

So soon! That pure brow, those innocent eyes, that childish mouth, all these were to be profaned by the boorish gallantry of a rustic ! Maurice felt a vague jealousy dawn In his heart.

‘ Will you have me for a lover ?' said he, resuming his work. * Oh ! you ! you are a gentleman, and I, lam a peasant; good girls do not listen to gentlemen.’ That is the village code of morals ; the young man answered nothing. ‘ I cannot see any longer ; will you come back here to-morrow, a little earlier ?’ * For my portrait ?' * Tea.’

* I will come back. Good evening, sir.’ She raised her handle of wood and went away into the deepening shadows, beneath the archway of the dark chesnut trees. Maurice went home dreaming of the fairhaired child. He had seen her often, and had always looked at her, but with the eyes of an artist. Row it seemed to him that he iooked at her with eyes of a jealous lover. That night and the next day seemed interminable to him; and long before the appointed hour he was in the glade. He worked alone, and when the yeung girl arrived a little late—already playing the coquette—she waa quite surprised. ‘lt is really myself 1’ said she. * Will you give it to me ?’ ‘No, I will make you a little one for yourself.’ ‘ And that one, what will you do with it ?’ ‘lt will go to Paris, it will be put in a large frame, it will be hung in a beautiful gallery, and every one will come and look at it.’

‘ Ah! yes, I know, in the exhibition.’ ‘Have yon heard of the exhibition 1’ * There are gentlemen painters here who work for the exhibition, as they say, but they never took my portrait.’ ■ Daylight waa fading gently; Maurice found, as on the preceding evening, the exquisite soft tints that had so much charmed him, and bis work advanced a hundred cubits towards posterity.

He saw her again several times beneath the checker daylight of his improvised studio, and he took pleasure in making this work hla best one. Already celebrated, he had no need to make himself a name, and yet he waa sure that this picture would put the seal to his renown.

By this time he was quite satisfied with it. Winter had come, and Maurice loved his little model. He loved her too much to tell her so, too much to sully this field flower of whom he could not make his wife, but enough to suffer at the thought of leaving her. She had none of those qualities which secured the happiness of a life; neither depth of feeling nor the devotion which causes us to forget every thing, nor the past ion which is an excuse for everything ; she was a pretty field flower, a little vain, a little coquettish, with no great faults nor yet great virtues. Maurice knew that she was not for him, and yet he loved the graceful lines of her figure, as yet scarcely developed, and which her home-spun gown, chastely enfolded without disguising. He loved the deep eyes, the laughing month, the fair hair that was always in disorder, the little handkerchief tied across her breast—he loved it all, and it was with reluctance that he went away. We always go away with reluctance when we have nothing to hope for on our return. It Is so hard to leave behind a bit of one’s life, of which nothing is to remain.

He carried away his picture, however, and it was before it that he passed his happiest hoars that Winter, always perfecting a work which was already perfect. The picture was admired ; the critics, who were unanimous In their enthusiasm, declared that such a face could not exist, excepting In the brain of a poet or in the imagination of a painter. Maurice listened, smiling, and kept for himself the secret of the sweet face that had inspired him. He received brilliant offers for his picture ; never had so high a price been offered for any of his works ; but be refused, and he refused also to allow it to be copied. Since he waa never to possess anything of his model bnt her likeness, he intended that should be his alone.

Autumn was drawing near when he returned to the village ; twice had the fires of St. John seen the whirls of the merry dance since he had painted the portrait, and when he thought of the young girl, it was with a smile that was somewhat said, aa he asked himself on which of the village rustics she had fixed her choice.

Hia first pilgrimage on arriving was to the forest of chestnut trees ; at the fall of day—night comes quickly at the beginning of October— he wandered down the long path ; but it was no longer dark ; it was traversed by an amber sunbeam, which seemed to have fastened itself on every one of the leaves which quivered on the branches or crackled beneath his feet.

The odor of the dead leaves brought to him a world of regrets, of remembrances, of bitterness, stirring up within him an unspeakable sadness and a more complete disgust with everything that he had sought up to that time. When he had reached the glade he sat down on the spot where eighteen months before he had made the sketch, which had since crowned hia renown. The cold stone seemed to laugh at him ironically for all that he had suffered.

A peasant girl—a coquette! a matter of great consequence surely I She would have loved me it I had chossn. Many others have loved painters, and have followed them to Paris, and then have disappeared in the sonm of the great city, without loading with chains the one who had initiated them into the mysteries of art and of intellectual life. . . . He is a fool who sacrifices to

chimeras the real goods of this world—the love of a beautiful girl, the glory which talent gives, the fortune which success brings.

While he was thus denying the goda of his youth he saw coming toward him, In the well-known path, the young girl of other days, who had become a woman in one word She was not alone ; a rustic was walking beside her, holding her by the little finger; a fine fellow, for that matter, strong and well made, and richly dressed for a peasant. He bent toward her, and from time to time wiped away with his lips a tear from the young girl’s cheek. On seeing Maurice they stopped, confused and surprised. ' And it was for that,’ thought he, ‘ that I respected this flower!’ And he was thinking with contemptuous pity of his folly when the young girl addressed him— ‘ They will not let ns marry, air,’ said she, her voice broken with sobs. ‘ I am poor ; he has some property, and his mother will not have me for a daughter-in-law. She talks of disinheriting him.’ ‘And you two do not wish him to be disinherited, do you?’ said Maurice ironically. ‘ Indeed I’ answered the lad, ‘ We must live.’

* That is only too true ! I pity you, my children. ’

They went away. Maurice, left alone, with his head bowed down on his hands, thought for a long time. His idle fancy had flown away—nothing remained of the slender young girl bat a peasant who was still handsome, but very near becoming an ordinary matron. ‘ So it is with our dreams,’ said he, rising, ‘ The only sure thing that we gather from them is to do a little good with them.’^ The same evening he wrote to Paris, and a few days later ho presented himself at the young girl’s house. * I have sold your portrait,’ he said to her, in the presence of her astonished mother ; I received a large snm for it. It is qnite a fortune. I have brought it to yon in order that you may marry your lover.