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Artists' Wives By: Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) |
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By Alphonse Daudet Translated by Laura Ensor Illustrated by De Bieler, Myrbach; And Rossi [Illustration: Frontispiece] [Illustration: Titlepage] [Illustration: p007 018]
PROLOGUE. Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar in
mouth, two friends a poet and a painter were talking together one
evening after dinner . It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softly
beneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of the
conversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of the
vast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by a
glass roof through which the sombre blue shades of the night penetrated
unhindered. The portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward, as if to
listen, alone stood out a little from the shadow; young with intelligent
eyes, a grave and sweet mouth and a spirituel smile which seemed to
defend the husband's easel from fools and disparagers. A low chair
pushed away from the fire, two little blue shoes lying on the carpet,
indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from the
next room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared,
came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; the
pretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over the
artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poet
breathed in with delight: " Decidedly, my dear fellow?" he said to his friend, "you were in the
right. There are no two ways of being happy. Happiness lies in this and
in nothing else. You must find me a wife! "
THE PAINTER. Good Heavens, no! not on any account. Find one for yourself, if you are
bent upon it. As for me, I will have nothing to do with it.
THE POET. And why?
THE PAINTER. Because because artists ought never to marry.
THE POET. That's rather too good. You dare to say that, and the lamp does not
go out suddenly, and the walls don't fall down upon your head! But just
think, wretch, that for two hours past, you have been setting before me
the enviable spectacle of the very happiness you forbid me. Are you by
chance like those odious millionaires whose well being is in creased by
the sufferings of others, and who better enjoy their own fireside when
they reflect that it is raining out of doors, and that there are plenty
of poor devils without a shelter?
THE PAINTER. Think of me what you will. I have too much affection for you to help
you to commit a folly an irreparable folly.
THE POET. Come! what is it? You are not satisfied? And yet it seems to me that
one breathes in happiness here, just as freely as one does the air of
heaven at a country window.
THE PAINTER. You are right, I am happy, completely happy, I love my wife with all my
heart. When I think of my child, I laugh aloud to myself with pleasure.
Marriage for me has been a harbour of calm and safe waters, not one in
which you make fast to a ring on the shore, at the risk of rusting
there for ever, but one of those blue creeks where sails and masts are
repaired for fresh excursions into unknown countries, I never worked as
well as I have since my marriage. All my best pictures date from then.
THE POET. Well then!
THE PAINTER. My dear fellow, at the risk of seeming a coxcomb, I will say that I
look upon my happiness as a kind of miracle, something abnormal and
exceptional. Yes! the more I see what marriage is, the more I look back
with terror at the risk I ran. I am like those who, ignorant of the
dangers they have unwittingly gone through, turn pale when all is over,
amazed at their own audacity.
THE POET. But what then are these terrible dangers?
THE PAINTER. The first and greatest of all, is the loss or degradation of one's
talent. This should count, I think, with an artist. For observe that
at this moment, I am not speaking of the ordinary conditions of life. I
grant you, that in general marriage is an excellent thing, and that the
majority of men only begin to be of some account when the family circle
completes them or makes them greater... Continue reading book >>
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