“Votre cœur est un luth suspendu!
Aussitôt qu’on le touche, il résonne. …
What a pity you have not also the musical organization!”
“Oh, but I have, monsieur; you heard me sing ‘Ben Bolt,’ didn’t you? What makes you say that?”
Svengali was confused for a moment. Then he said: “When I play the ‘Rosemonde’ of Schubert, matemoiselle, you look another way and smoke a cigarette. … You look at the big Taffy, at the Little Billee, at the pictures on the walls, or out of window, at the sky, the chimney-pots of Notre Dame de Paris; you do not look at Svengali!—Svengali, who looks at you with all his eyes, and plays you the ‘Rosemonde’ of Schubert!”
“Oh, maïe, aïe!” exclaimed Trilby; “you do use lovely language!”
“But never mind, matemoiselle; when your pain arrives, then shall you come once more to Svengali, and he shall take it away from you, and keep it himself for a soufenir of you when you are gone. And when you have it no more, he shall play you the ‘Rosemonde’ of Schubert, all alone for you; and then, ‘Messieurs les étutiants, montez à la chaumière!’ … because it is gayer! And you shall see nothing, hear nothing, think of nothing but Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!”
Here he felt his peroration to be so happy and effective that he thought it well to go at once and make a good exit. So he bent over Trilby’s shapely freckled hand and kissed it, and bowed himself out of the room, without even borrowing his five-franc piece.
“He’s a rum ’un, ain’t he?” said Trilby. “He reminds me of a big hungry spider, and makes me feel like a fly! But he’s cured my pain! he’s cured my pain! Ah! you don’t know what my pain is when it comes!”
“I wouldn’t have much to do with him, all the same!” said the Laird. “I’d sooner have any pain than have it cured in that unnatural way, and by such a man as that! He’s a bad fellow, Svengali—I’m sure of it! He mesmerized you; that’s what it is—mesmerism! I’ve often heard of it, but never seen it done before. They get you into their power, and just make you do any blessed thing they please—lie, murder, steal—anything! and kill yourself into the bargain when they’ve done with you! It’s just too terrible to think of!”
So spake the Laird, earnestly, solemnly, surprised out of his usual self, and most painfully impressed—and his own impressiveness grew upon him and impressed him still more. He loomed quite prophetic.
Cold shivers went down Trilby’s back as she listened. She had a singularly impressionable nature, as was shown by her quick and ready susceptibility to Svengali’s hypnotic influence. And all that day, as she posed for Durien (to whom she did not mention her adventure), she was haunted by the memory of Svengali’s big eyes and the touch of his soft, dirty fingertips on her face; and her fear and her repulsion grew together.
And “Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!” went ringing in her head and ears till it became an obsession, a dirge, a knell, an unendurable burden, almost as hard to bear as the pain in her eyes.
“Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!”
At last she asked Durien if he knew him.
“Parbleu! Si je connais Svengali!”
“Quest-ce que t’en penses?”
“Quand il sera mort, ça fera une fameuse crapule de moins!”
“Chez Carrel”
Carrel’s atelier (or painting-school) was in the Rue Notre Dame des Potirons St. Michel, at the end of a large courtyard, where there were many large dirty windows facing north, and each window let the light of heaven into a large dirty studio.
The largest of these studios, and the dirtiest, was Carrel’s, where some thirty or forty art students drew and painted from the nude model every day but Sunday from eight till twelve, and for two hours in the afternoon, except on Saturdays, when the afternoon was devoted to much-needed Augean sweepings and cleanings.
One week the model was male, the next female, and so on, alternating throughout the year.
A stove, a model-throne, stools, boxes, some fifty strongly built low chairs with backs, a couple of score easels and many drawing-boards, completed the mobilier.
The bare walls were adorned with endless caricatures—des charges—in charcoal and white chalk; and also the scrapings of many palettes—a polychromous decoration not unpleasing.
For the freedom of the studio and the use of the model each student paid ten francs a month to the massier, or senior student, the responsible bellwether of the flock; besides this, it was expected of you, on your entrance or initiation, that you should pay for your footing—your bienvenue—some thirty, forty, or fifty francs, to be spent on cakes and rum punch all round.
Every Friday Monsieur Carrel, a great artist, and also a stately, well-dressed, and most courteous gentleman (duly decorated with the red rosette of the Legion of Honor), came for two or three hours and went the round, spending a few minutes at each drawing-board or easel—ten or even twelve when the pupil was an industrious and promising one.
He did this for love, not money, and deserved all the reverence with which he inspired this somewhat irreverent and most unruly company, which was made up of all sorts.
Graybeards who had been drawing and painting there for thirty years and more, and remembered other masters than Carrel, and who could draw and paint a torso almost as well as Titian or Velasquez—almost, but not quite—and who could never do anything else,
