Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/308

end, he had sought to exhaust it in Francine’s arms. Thus it often happened that good chances of work knocked at his door without Jacques answering, because he would have had to disturb himself, and he found it more comfortable to dream by the light of his beloved’s eyes.

When Francine was dead the sculptor went to see his old friends the Water-drinkers again. But Lazare’s spirit predominated in this club, in which each of the members lived petrified in the egoism of art. Jacques did not find what he came there in search of. They scarcely understood his despair, which they strove to appease by argument, and seeing this small degree of sympathy, Jacques preferred to isolate his grief rather than see it laid bare by discussion. He broke off, therefore, completely with the Water-drinkers and went away to live alone.

Five or six days after Francine’s funeral, Jacques went to a monumental mason of the Montparnasse cemetery and offered to conclude the following bargain with him. The mason was to furnish Francine’s grave with a border, which Jacques reserved the right of designing, and in addition to supply the sculptor with a block of white marble. In return for this Jacques would place himself for three months at his disposition, either as journeyman stonecutter or sculptor. The monumental mason had then several important orders on hand. He visited Jacques’s studio, and in presence of several works, begun there, had proof that the chance which gave him the sculptor’s services was a lucky one for him. A week later, Francine’s grave had a border, in the midst of which the wooden cross had been replaced by a stone one with her name graven on it.

Jacques had luckily to do with an honest fellow who understood that a couple of hundredweight of cast-iron, and three square feet of Pyrenean marble, were no pay-