"On that day which completed the year since my lady had been made one of the citizens of Eternal Life, I was sitting in a place apart, where, remembering me of her, I was drawing an angel upon certain tablets, and as I drew, I turned my eyes and saw beside me persons to whom it was fitting to do honour, and who were looking at what I did : and, according as it was told to me afterwards, they had been there a while before I perceived them. Observing whom, I rose for salutation and said, 'Another was present with me.' "
Vita Nuova, Dante Alighieri, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Translation
"That one," said Mme Marie-Therese Belloc, pointing with her umbrella. It quivered just the slightest bit. "The one on the left," she added, so that there might be no doubt.
Behind the tall arched windows that enabled viewing of the unclaimed corpses, and the framing green curtains that almost gave the scene before her the appearance of a stage, there were a mere two bodies left of the dead from the uprising in this section. The attendants had told her they would soon be buried in paupers graves, as most of the others were that had been left unclaimed. In the June heat the bodies had begun to spoil, and – no longer any use for the dissecting rooms – they would be buried hastily. "We waited on these two," the man escorting her had said, "they didn't have any identifying papers – most of the others left notes as to the disposal of their bodies – but they were largely unmarred, so we left them until last."
Unmarred was correct. She held a scented handkerchief to her nose, refusing to gag as Mimi, her maid, was doing. The air stank of stale blood and decay, no matter how scrubbed the floors, and she remembered with a shudder the blood that was said to have stained the Seine red when they brought the bodies in, laying them out on the Morgue's quay. But the bodies before her, lying on the slabs that were angled for better viewing through the windows by those who looked for their dead in the Paris morgue or out of morbid curiosity, had been washed and made presentable. There were white sheets draped from the waist down for the sake of the cadavers' modesty, and their clothing hung on hooks alongside the slabs. The face of the man she had come to claim was relaxed and perfectly peaceful, smiling almost – She had seen the dead appear to smile before, the muscles of the face easing into the slackness of death. In this case, though, there was a genuine sense of calm to the unshaven, rough looking young man, as if the end had come as a friend to ease him from life and not as the result of the disfiguring four neat bullet holes in his chest.
"There can be no doubt of it," Marie-Therese declared. "That is my nephew, Guillaume Grantaire."
The attendant nodded and wrote a note in the ledger he carried with him, and then handed it to a boy that stood nearby.
"We'll prepare the papers for you to claim him," he said, with a touch of deference due to Mme Belloc for her rank, and sympathy for her loss. Not too much of either, though, she thought – after all, Guillaume – Guy, she allowed herself to think of him now, remembering the little boy he had been, her little nephew Guy – had been a traitor who had met a traitor's end.
"What can he have been doing on a barricade?" she mused aloud.
"He was one of the bodies recovered from the rue de la Chanvrerie" the attendant said, somewhat defensively, as if she had implied there might be an error. "The fighting was particularly savage there, and there can be no doubt that he was one of them."
"I do not doubt that he was there," she responded with dignity. "But you did not know my nephew. He would have needed conviction to die, a belief –and that was one thing my nephew certainly lacked." She surprised herself with the bitterness in her tone. That wound, she had thought, was long ago finally cauterized – the day that her nephew had shown up drunk in the early hours for the last time, mauling her maid and throwing up on the Aubusson rug in her reception room, and she had, once again and this time with every intention of finality, thrown him out. That had been over a year before. She had thought herself done with him, her duty to her sister, Guy's mother, having been quitted by those years of caring for him, of supporting him with money and an open door, of trying to convince him to turn his feet from the path they were on.
And now, this. His motives were inscrutable to her. Had it been some ridiculous accident? Had he been one of the few genuinely caught behind a barricade, unlike all those insurgents who claimed it as an excuse now that the barricades had fallen? Or had he been there for some sort of savage amusement?
"Let's away, Madame," Mimi said urgently, finally emerging from behind the hands that were clamped firmly over her mouth and nose.
"Yes…quite" she said stiffly. "I'll have one of my household attend you with the funeral arrangements" she said to the man, who nodded.
"As quickly as possible, please" he said, and she winced. Yes, one could not leave the dead to spoil in the heat like the bloated dead cats and dogs that floated down the Seine. She left the building with her back ramrod straight, ignoring the curious glances of those who sought to see more ostensible grief on the face of one emerging from the Morgue. She would never give them the satisfaction –
It was only when she was safely in her carriage that she allowed herself to give way a little, slumping back into the seat and passing her hand over her eyes. Guy, she thought. A bright eyed little boy who had painted figures on the walls of her front hall when he was three –
"Home, Madame?" Mimi asked gently. She shook her head.
"No, let us have this entire sad and sorry business attended to at once – tell the driver to take us to his rooms."
"Look after him" had been her sister's simple charge when he came to Paris to study as a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, and she had been happy to do so. Their visits together had been rare, as her sister lived with her dreadful merchant husband in far away Carcassonne and Marie-Therese had not cared to make the long journey to visit more than once or twice, any more than the Grantaires had the means to travel frequently to Paris. Her sister had married beneath herself, undoubtedly, and the marriage was soon only a formal arrangement, but Marie-Therese had never ceased to love the children that it produced, and particularly the little boy with the red-apple flush in his cheeks to match those he had a fondness for stealing from orchards.
Grantaire, with his ugly big mouth and ungainly nose, was never going to be handsome, but he was open-hearted and generous, and his aunt was often the recipient of his messily enthusiastic kisses as a toddler. Knowing his love of art she had taken to sending him gifts of good watercolours and excellent quality paper as presents every year, and finally in his twelfth year had invited him to Paris to stay with her and visit the Paris Salon.
She had a well-brought up girl's knowledge of art as imparted by her tutors and drawing master, which is to say, no knowledge at all. But she was most impressed by the works by Gros that so thrilled Grantaire – great men performing great deeds and vast classical set pieces, so she had overlooked the Napoleonic connections to the famous artist and, when he had reached fifteen, had arranged for Guy's travel to Paris to study under the great master. It had taken some persuasion of his father, a dour sou pinching man whose narrow nature was quite at odds with his open-hearted son, but Marie-Therese had made the arrangement enticing by agreeing to pay the first year's tuition and provide Guy with accommodation for the first year until he could be safely settled in Paris.
He had started so well – a lanky boy with his hair hanging in his eyes, full of enthusiasm and high ideas for his art, speaking rapidly and with great imaginative leaps that left her gasping in his wake, but she had enjoyed his company. It had been a pleasure to meet with him several times a week at the table, even if he sometimes seemed to startle her guests with his unconventional ways. The words "a pupil of Gros" eased the way and his eccentricities were forgiven. He could be utterly charming when he wished it.
Where had it gone wrong? Where had the decay set in…when had his enthusiasm turned to frustration and anger, as he spoke of Gros' rejection of the new style of art, of his own desire to emulate Delacroix and his ilk that with his enduring love of the monumental forms of Classicism? He had moved out long before, but he still called on his aunt for Sunday meals…only now his talk was often bitter or flippant, and he brushed aside questions about his work. And he had begun asking her more often for money.
Towards the end, she only ever saw him when he was drunk and hammering at her door and ringing her bell, waking the whole household at odd hours. He had been supporting himself by doing little tourist daubs – Notre Dame by Night, Bridges of the Seine, View of the Pantheon and other works of that kind that he dashed off quickly, carelessly and provided to dealers. After his father's death, leaving him a bequest that was enough to live on (although he must have been going through it rapidly), his visits became even less frequent.
And now this. Word had reached her by a convoluted means – a student identifying one of his friends in the Morgue had thought he recognised Grantaire, and when a search revealed Grantaire having been missing since the émeute, someone thought to contact her.
"His rent is due," muttered the landlady who escorted them up to his fourth floor rooms near the Pantheon. "I expect to be recompensed for that before I release any of his effects."
Marie-Therese caught her breath as the landlady unlocked the door – really, with her ample frame, there was a reason why she had her own apartments on the first floor of her building. "You will be given what is your due, but my advocate will need to review all the papers and ascertain what is owed. I will need records of his household outgoings."
The woman gave an uncommitted grunt and opened the door for them.
The curtains were open, and the sun streamed in. It was surprisingly light – Guy must have needed it so for his work. Canvases were leaning against the wall and a cloth covered the floor, but there was a thick layer of dust over all. Only the smallest of the works looked nearly completed – the Paris scenes that he sold for a couple of francs. On one large canvas a charcoal outline of an assembly hall could be glimpsed, with men in classical garb and carefully arranged poses, one painted head and arm completed, standing out starkly in warm flesh tones against the white background.
And the sheer incompleteness of it hit her, the unfinished work, the voice cut off in mid-sentence. Her eyes lit on a jar on the window sill with brushes in it – it had contained some liquid that had dried down to a murky paste in the bottom, dark and muddy coloured streaks on the side of the glass. Alongside it were empty bottles of wine.
"Shall I make his bed, Madame?" said Mimi stiffly, looking with distaste at the dishevelled bedclothes.
"No..." she said, and then turned to the landlady. "Please have it stripped, and the sheets laundered."
Guy would never again sleep in this room.
She turned blindly to the desk, to the papers there, and felt a catch at her heart. There were sheaves of papers, notes, letters, all of the margins copiously illustrated with sketches of his friends and their adventures. On one she read the words "Bahorel at Borel's punchbowl", and there was a bearded man leaning insouciantly against a wall drinking out of a skull. On another page, a young man with curly hair and an exaggerated, dandified air talked to a long-haired Bohemian in outlandish get up.
And Marie-Therese remembered the letters Guy had written to her as a child, lively and ill-spelled and with ink-blots all over them, but illustrated with fanciful pictures, caricatures of his schoolmates, loving sketches of his mother.
"Mimi," she said softly, "I wonder if you might take up all these papers? We will need to see if any correspondence needs to be returned to his friends."
She would burn unread any of his letters that had not been mailed. It was not her place to pry.
"The canvases, Madame?" asked the Landlady eagerly. "I know of a dealer who would be able to sell them."
She was keen to make a sou out of this, but Marie-Therese didn't care. The sale of his entire effects would barely cover his funeral, but she would give him that at least.
"Let me see if any are worth saving," she said, stealing herself to be unsentimental and not keep any of these painful reminders of a squandered talent.
Among the dozen canvases, there was only one painting that was complete, or nearly so. Only one that was worth keeping.
But it took her breath away.
It was face to the wall, behind all the others. A tall, narrow, almost life-size oil. She wondered if perhaps it had been a very detailed study for an angel, but the figure it depicted was clothed in contemporary dress and not nude or draped. It was a young man – a boy, really – gracefully poised in Contrapposto, weight on one hip, face uplifted and lips parted slightly. One hand was raised, palm upward, the exquisitely observed fingers uncurled. She wondered if - were he really intended as the model for an Archangel - would that hand hold the sword of St-Michael or the divine fire of St-Uriel? The light seemed caught in his hair, suggesting a halo, and she had to look closer to assure herself that Guy hadn't painted one.
This…she might know nothing of art, but this piece, of all she had seen of Guy's work, seemed to her not merely the most technically skillful, but the most inspired. She felt as if she were in the presence of life itself. The clear blue gaze directed heavenwards, the faint flush in the pale cheeks, even a dewy touch of moisture to the lips…he had a speaking presence, emerging as he in strong chiaroscuro from the darkness of the background in which chairs, tables and figures could be faintly glimpsed. He vibrated with life, and though little more than a child, this youth seemed somehow grand and terrible.
Why this subject and these heavy religious overtones from Guy, who had abjured religion of all forms and who blasphemed with ease? Of course, it was not obligatory for an artist to share the conviction of his subject matter. Guy himself had told her of Delacroix's religious skepticism, and here he had turned to painting commissions for the Church. Perhaps that was what this was – a study for a work that would never be completed.
And yet it seemed complete in and of itself. There was something jarring about its execution, about the extraordinary realism and immediacy in contrast with the divine symbolism, the esoteric juxtaposed with the earthly. This cravat-wearing angel's feet touched the ground, and through the dim forms of the background she saw everyday life. Here, the sacred and the real touched.
More than a little awed, she leaned it up against the wall and stepped back.
"This…this I shall keep."
She looked over at Mimi, who was regarding it with all the pious expression she might have reserved for a religious icon. Perversely, that brought Marie-Louise back to herself and her composure, and the trembling tears that had threatened to prick at her eyes were safely at bay. All business, she turned her attention back to the Landlady.
"Have everything dusted before my men come to collect it. My lawyers shall send someone around to conduct an inventory – please have any paperwork on his outstanding debts ready."
And with that, she pulled the curtains closed, sparing one last glance at the angel in the painting and the incandescent expression not even the sudden gloom could vanquish.