The Nabob [56]
a vigilant and kind guardian. Occasionally, when, in the studio, somebody--her father most likely of all--uttered a risky jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of the tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia's attention.
He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins, endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was left.
But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which, from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.
Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia's progress a certain consolation for his own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which, on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a less mournful lodging.
During the last period of her father's life, Felicia--a great artist and still a mere child--used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although her father's pupil, Felicia already felt her own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.
These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter's logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to be intractable. Thus the /Joueur de Boules/, her first exhibited work, which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong, that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.
Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also her son; but the doctor's age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to have with him, even in his wife's absence, this young girl whose fifteen
He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins, endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was left.
But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which, from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.
Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia's progress a certain consolation for his own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which, on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a less mournful lodging.
During the last period of her father's life, Felicia--a great artist and still a mere child--used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although her father's pupil, Felicia already felt her own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.
These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter's logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to be intractable. Thus the /Joueur de Boules/, her first exhibited work, which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong, that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.
Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also her son; but the doctor's age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to have with him, even in his wife's absence, this young girl whose fifteen