The Story of the Model — From Memories of Student Days in Paris

On the morning of one of Paris's soft, silvery days, after a short excursion through the Luxembourg Museum, during which we reviewed modern European art from the "Impressionists" to the "Fauves"—Picasso, André Lhote, Maurice Denis, George Desvallières, Jean Marchand, Matisse, and others—down to "academic" canvases by Jean-Paul Laurens and his two sons, and René Inchefry, and Boujon, and others and others still... a visit that served us like bitter coffee, waking us from a daze that would take hold of us whenever we wearied of the unbroken work at the academy, the study from the living "model," and the weight of the professor bearing proudly upon his shoulders the heritage of Ingres and David and the ancient honor of the French school.

We came back brooding, while hope tempted us and tickled our vanity, each of us wanting to be the genius painter capable of dictating his law to his age. Is it just that a slip in Matisse should count as one of art's novelties, while we are measured by the yardstick of David and Ingres, and whatever departs from that yardstick is still an error that must be corrected? Why is Picasso allowed to place one eye above the eyebrow and its sister below the nose, so that his work belongs to the realm of the "metaphysical," while the shifting of an eye a hair's breadth from its place, by a hand with no drum and fife behind it, is an unforgivable sin? Why? Why? And this "why" tormented us and stirred up a raging tempest in our souls.

We reached the academy and found the model sitting waiting for us. "No! We don't want this pose. Who told you this was beautiful? Change it at once." And the poor thing began changing poses—now standing, now leaning, now kneeling, now lying down—while we shouted at her: change these hackneyed poses. She arched her back and twisted her thighs and bent her head and lifted her arms, and nothing pleased us. So we all shouted at her: "Go, go!" And the poor creature went out with a tear in her eyes, complaining of the cruelty of artists and the arrogance of the little creator.

Come, off to the Louvre, to make Rubens and Rembrandt and Titian and Delacroix speak. As for Velázquez, that insoluble riddle, silent as the Sphinx, we had no strength to study him. And while we were walking toward the door, we heard a light knock, and the door opened

and there looked in on us a fair face with reddish-hazel hair, and two deep, sunken eyes in whose pupils a suppressed pain peered out, with a terror drawn upon them and upon all the features of the face; upon the nose, a pride that time had begun to humble; as for the mouth, it was finely drawn—and perhaps it was she herself who had perfected its drawing with the druggist's rouge. We drew back as if before a vision, but one of us gathered his strength and cried, in a voice with a tremor in it we had never known in him: Show us your nakedness.

She answered abjectly:
—For just this I have come. I want work, whatever that work may be.

She took a step into the hall, and we made way for her; then she withdrew to a corner and took off her clothes... She stood upon the model's platform, leaned her back against the wall, and let her arms fall slack, as though they were a heavy burden she wished to cast off. And she stood forth perfect of build, harmonious of line, translucent of coloring, slender without gauntness, rounded of body—such as would make the mouths of Boucher and Fragonard water. Each of us leapt to his easel, spread out his colors, seized his brush, and we began the work with frenzy and with love.

And while we were rapt in the beauty of the subject, the fever of creation sweeping over us under the influence of some god among the gods of art, we heard a faint cry and saw the leaning body before us collapse upon the platform. We ran to her, and the comrade nearest her tried to help her; she could not stand, but a voice in which every summoning echo of life could be heard murmured: —I am hungry; for three days I have tasted nothing but water.

The comrades scattered quick as a flash and came back carrying bread and fruit and wine and cured meats enough for a whole clan, and we began to feed her food and drink, morsel by morsel, as doves feed their squabs, until she had eaten and drunk her fill, and life came back to her body, and calm to her eyes, when she saw fifty eyes gazing at her, wanting to wrest from her the secret of her buried pain—nay, the secret of her hunger, when she possessed such beauty. But silence settled over the hall when she returned to her first stance, and each of us went back to his tools and his colors.

In the rest period the boldest of the comrades approached her and asked her to tell us her story. She shook her head and did not answer. But she could not keep her silence for long against the friendliness with which we showered her; so she sat upon her platform—naked as she was—gathered us around her, and began her story. She said:

I am the daughter of a famous doctor in Lyon. My name is Andrée. From this moment you may call me by that name; and if it does not please you, you may exchange it for any name you wish. I was reared in my parents' house with a religious bourgeois upbringing, and schooled at the nuns' school; my father neglected no side of refinement and culture, and so I obtained my certificate in philosophy, and after it I wanted to study medicine—and here my story began.

I made the acquaintance of a young man among my comrades, charming and handsome. We fell in love and promised each other marriage; but I came to be unable to bear being away from him for a minute, so I told my parents of my love. They went wild, and made me give solemn pledges to cut off every relation with him, for reasons they told me were very grave, and which it was not fitting that I should know... As for me, I had resolved to obey my parents; but when I met Jean—that is his name—I forgot everything and threw myself into his arms weeping, and told him what had happened. He bent over me and assured me of his love and his constancy, and assured me too that he hoped, the moment he passed his final examinations, to win the two crowns: the crown of laurel and the crown of blossom.

My alarm was calmed, and we went back to meeting whenever a meeting offered itself. Everything returned to what it had been, and we lived as two lovers for a time for which people and birds and stars envied us. Until the calamity fell. It was on a stormy night; we had gone to see a sentimental film, and instead of taking me home as usual, my beloved led me to his room—without my offering any resistance...

I do not wish to tell you anything of that night of mine, for my words and your colors are too feeble to describe it or depict it. I had believed I had become the happiest woman in existence—and behold, I was the most wretched woman in the world.

I returned the following evening to my parents' house, and there was a long interrogation that lasted hours, at the end of which I confessed everything. My reward was a slap across my face, a curse from my father's mouth, and expulsion from the house in which I had grown up. So I went out weeping—for a nest whose sky I had filled with song, for a home whose happiness and only hope I had been but yesterday, and for two parents whom manliness and motherhood themselves might envy me.

I went out with bowed head, unconscious of myself, and kept walking, my feet falling to the measures of a tune playing in my ears a despairing strain, death recurring at the beginning and the end of each of its passages. In the darkness... until I reached the edge of the river, and the strain grew stronger. Then I saw specters of bones dancing upon the water—one could hear their rattling and clattering as they writhed and swayed, sinking and rising, receding and drawing near, plunging into the water and climbing above it. Then I saw them leap onto the embankment and form a ring that circled around me, carousing and singing. Then the ring began to tighten and tighten, until the breath of the dancers touched my face and their revels roared in my head; I lost my senses, and a black cloud overshadowed me, plucked me from the dry land, and sank with me into the depths of the flood.

I awoke to a soft, tender voice, and I would not open my eyes for fear of losing the pleasure of that voice. But the voice kept insisting, calling me, imploring me to open my eyes and answer. I did, and found myself in a small white room, all of it white. And the voice that had driven the black cloud from me and brought me back to life was the voice of my mother, kneeling over my bed, holding my head between her hands and washing it with her tears. No sooner had I opened my eyes than she went mad with joy and fell to kissing me and weeping, until the nurse pulled her away from my bed.

I stayed a month in the hospital, and my mother would visit me twice each day. As for my father, I saw nothing of his face; and whenever I asked my mother about him, she would make up excuses to still my questioning... But Jean—where was Jean? Did he not know what had befallen me? Had he not read

the news of my body being pulled from the river in the papers? He must have imagined that I was dead. Poor Jean. He is weeping for me, no doubt, and weeping for a future we had wanted as a beautiful dream, and behold, it had turned into a painful, somber reality. Tomorrow morning I will send him a letter telling him I am still alive, and he will fly to me and take my small head between his strong hands, and look at me with those looks by which he captivated me, with whisperings the heart confides in its own tongue, and let me hear the sweetest of songs, the chastest and the noblest, which youth plays with a mad playing, echoed by the winds and the whirlwinds, till the world dances for us, and the flowers dance, and the sparrows dance.

I wrote to Jean; he did not answer, and he did not come. So I raged against the death that had spat me out, and cursed the life that had reclaimed me. When my days of convalescence ended and the administration informed me that I might now leave the hospital, I went out to the first post office and wrote two letters, one to my mother and the other to Jean. In the first I wanted to say to my mother the things no daughter can help confiding to her mother; and in the second I still had some hope, and I would invent excuses out of whole cloth to justify him before myself, telling myself: perhaps he is ill, or perhaps my letter did not reach him, or perhaps he is even now searching for me in the east of the earth and its west—he cannot possibly have forgotten me. Did he not tell me he would rather die than live far from me? Yes, he told me so, and affirmed it a thousand times.

I sent my word by express post and waited for the answer the whole day long, but it passed without the answer arriving. So I rose, my soul in despair, and went to the first watchmaker's and sold him a watch my mother had given me the day I obtained my certificate in philosophy, and a ring which she too had presented to me, the day I obtained my baccalaureate. I made for the station, took a second-class place, and sat waiting for the night train.

When the train arrived I climbed into the carriage, took a seat, and sank into my musings, coming to myself only at the voice of the conductor announcing our arrival in Paris. I got off not knowing which way to turn, but I walked down the first street in front of me, and read, on a door lit by a lamp, "Hôtel Terminus." I touched the electric button with a twitching finger; the bell whined, and the door opened, and no sooner had I stepped inside than a voice with the note of command in it stopped me: —You want? —To pass the rest of my night. —Have you any luggage? —No. —Thirty francs, paid in advance. —Have you no room less luxurious? —We have none but this: either you pay and go in, or you go away. —I want to sleep. —Come in, then.

I paid her the thirty francs. —Room 28, third floor, on the right. —Bonsoir. And she shut the door. I climbed the stairs feeling my way, for it seemed to me the lights were faint and gave no light. I do not remember whether I took off my clothes or not, but I do remember that the voice that had received me at the door was the one that woke me in the morning.

—I want to know whether you are keeping your room this evening; if so, pay another thirty francs; if not, kindly go.

I went out and walked. Where to? I do not know. I went from street to street until walking wore me out. I bought a newspaper and went to a park to read through its advertisements in hopes of finding work, and found none. And so I stayed a week hunting for work, and no work; the few francs I had with me ran out, and I passed the first day of my life without food, and the second, and this is the third.

This is something of my story. As for my true story, it lies buried here in my breast; I shall not tell it to any man, for among men there is none fit to hear it. Forgive me—I have run on in my talk, so pardon my chatter; and now, to work.

Then she rose to her feet and took her first pose, and each of us went back to his colors, trying to fathom this grievous secret and to picture it after his own fashion...