Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/311

Rh him about his exclusiveness, he replied with conviction:

"Laugh all you want, my friend. But I'd have you know that in order to secure for my eyes the voluptuousness and the caress of that young blackguard's gesture of the other day, I'd willingly become a farmer myself, in order to hire that helot. Perhaps he is a bad lot, an intractable character, a dishonest servant, but, though he were a drunkard, a thief and a rake, I'd pardon his vices as little peccadilloes because of his superior plasticity. He and the others whom we have been watching do not lack grace, and I agree with you that their movements are identical. Briefly, it*s the same receipt, the same broth; only the marrow-bone is lacking."

"Well, it's a good thing you don't know in what kitchen this marrow-bone, as you call him, has gone to give a relish to the soup!"

"Yes, because I should be capable of engaging him at once."

And, as Marbol began to laugh harder than ever:

"Oh! keep quiet," begged his friend. "If you were really an artist, you would understand that!"

And in returning, downcast and sullen, he did not again open his lips the whole way.

Little by little the poise, the good sense, the wholesome mind of Bergmans displeased him. He began to weary of his friends. He now went so far as to find his inseparable triumvirate too indifferent, too prudent. He reproached the painter with the thickness and the opacity of his pictures, his lack of curiosity and comprehension. The wholesomeness, the luxuriance, the glad optimism of Vyveloy's genius no longer procured him the joy of former days.