The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [119]
The outing had been planned for a long time. The woman liked the two men and laughed easily and promised them an omelette au lard11 the likes of which could not be found in that “pigsty called Paris.” They savored this lazy day, not yet lit by the sun. Far away, Nanterre was a paradise that they were about to enter.
“I hope you're comfortable,” said Madame François as she turned into rue du Pont-Neuf.
Claude swore that it was “as soft as a bridal bed.” The two of them lay there on their backs, arms folded behind their heads and gazing up at the sky, where the stars were beginning to lose their glow. They kept silent as they rolled along rue de Rivoli, waiting until there were no more buildings in sight. They just listened to the kind woman in the front talking in a soft voice to Balthazar. “Don't strain yourself, my old friend. We're not in any hurry. We'll get there eventually.”
Along the Champs-Elysées, where the painter saw only the tops of trees on both sides and a broad green swath of the Tuileries Garden at the end, he woke up and began talking to himself. As they passed rue de Roule, he looked down the street and could see one of the side doors to Saint Eustache, which could be seen from a long distance under the giant curve of one of the covered alleyways. He kept returning to the subject of the church as he spoke, seeing it as a point of great symbolic value.
“It's an odd juxtaposition,” he said. “That section of the church framed in the avenue of cast iron. One kills the other. Iron will kill off stone, and the time is near … Florent, do you believe in coincidences? I don't think it was merely a desire for symmetry that brought one of Saint Eustache's rosette windows into alignment with Les Halles like this. Don't you see the message? It's modern art, realism or naturalism—whatever you want to call it—springing up in the face of the old art. Don't you think so?”
Since Florent didn't answer, he went on, “This church is an architectural bastard. It houses the death throes of the Middle Ages together with the baby gurgles of the Renaissance. Have you noticed the kind of churches they build nowadays? They could be anything—a library, an observatory, a pigeon coop, barracks, but certainly no one could be persuaded that God dwells in them. The masons of the Lord are dead, and the wise would stop building these ugly stone carcasses in which no one can live … Since the beginning of the century only one original building has been erected, only one that is not a copy from somewhere else but has sprung naturally out of the soil of our times, and that is Les Halles. Do you see it, Florent? A brilliant work that is a shy foretaste of the twentieth century. That is why it frames Saint Eustache. There stands the church with its rosette window, empty of the faithful, while Les Halles spreads out around it, buzzing with life. That's what I think anyway, my good friend.”
Madame François laughed. “You know, Monsieur Claude, whoever made your tongue certainly earned their money. Balthazar is turning his ears to listen to you. Giddyap, Balthazar!”
The wagon slowly made its way along. The avenue was deserted at this hour of the morning, with its empty steel chairs lining both sides and its lawns broken up by bushes in the bluish shadows of the trees. At the traffic circle a man and a woman on horseback passed them at an easy trot. Florent, who was using a bundle of cabbage leaves for a pillow, was still staring up at the sky, where the rosy light of morning was spreading. From time to time he closed his eyes to let the morning freshness cool his face. He was so happy to be leaving Les Halles and moving into clean air that he could barely listen to what was being said.
“It's fine for those who want to encase art in a toy box,” Claude continued after a brief silence. “It's a big thing now to say that art cannot live with science. The products of industry kill poetry. Then all those fools start crying into their flowers as though anyone were trying to harm them. It nauseates me. I would love to answer those idiots with