Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/309

ment for three months’ work by Jacques, whose talent had brought him in several thousand francs. He offered to give the artist a share in his business, but Jacques would not consent. The lack of variety in the subjects for treatment was repugnant to his inventive disposition, besides he had what he wanted, a large block of marble, from the recesses of which he wished to evolve a masterpiece destined for Francine’s grave.

At the beginning of spring, Jacques’s position improved. His friend the doctor put him in relation with a great foreign nobleman who had come to settle in Paris, and who was having a magnificent mansion built in one of the most fashionable districts. Several celebrated artists had been called in to contribute to the luxury of this little palace. A chimney-piece was commissioned from Jacques. I can still see his design, it was charming; the whole poetry of winter was expressed in the marble that was to serve as a frame to the flames. Jacques’s studio was too small, he asked for and obtained a room in the mansion, as yet uninhabitated, to execute his task in. A fairly large sum was even advanced him on the price agreed on for his work. Jacques began by repaying his friend the doctor the money the latter had lent him at Francine’s death, then he hurried to the cemetery to cover the earth beneath which his mistress slept, with flowers.

But spring had been there before him, and on the girl’s grave a thousand flowers were springing at hazard amongst the grass. The artist had not the courage to pull them up, for he thought that these flowers might perhaps hold something of his dead love. As the gardener asked him what was to be done with the roses and pansies he had brought with him, Jacques bade him plant them on a neighboring grave, newly dug, the grave of some poor creature, without any border and having no other memorial over it than a