ARTISTS' WIVES
By Alphonse Daudet
Translated by Laura Ensor
Illustrated by De Bieler, Myrbach; And Rossi
Contents
PROLOGUE.
Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar inmouth, two friends—a poet and a painter—were talking together oneevening after dinner.
It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softlybeneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of theconversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of thevast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by aglass roof through which the sombre blue shades of the night penetratedunhindered. The portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward, as if tolisten, alone stood out a little from the shadow; young with intelligenteyes, a grave and sweet mouth and a spirituel smile which seemed todefend the husband's easel from fools and disparagers. A low chairpushed away from the fire, two little blue shoes lying on the carpet,indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from thenext room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared,came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; thepretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over theartistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poetbreathed in with delight:
"Decidedly, my dear fellow?" he said to his friend, "you were in theright. There are no two ways of being happy. Happiness lies in this andin nothing else. You must find me a wife!"