Free The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. by Carole DeSanti

day for that. Pierre’s friends didn’t discuss “art for art’s sake,” or even argue its merits. Art was all for the judges now, because someone would be pushed forward and his work sold for a fortune, enough for flats and studios in the new Paris.
    Rents were high and rising. Deal making was brisk.
“And women are expensive,”
muttered one of Chasseloup’s painter-friends under his breath, to general laughter, although Pierre, stiffly standing on his principles, pretended not to understand.
    â€œAh, it was better when there was no money in it!” pleaded the grizzled elders. Awkward silences fell; dinner companions excused themselves and ducked out to go back to the studio. Salon competition was commerce and winning was the work; deadlines and schedules and the lineup and the choice. Artists were hated for their medals now—envied, and then copied.
    Sometimes amid the swirl of conversation I thought about my mother: her naiveté, her shocking disadvantage. But it was the usual thing, one way of living slipping and slithering into the next; edges blurred and before you knew it, you were in another picture, another kind of story . . . I cared for him a little, Chasseloup, in all my besieged innocence. If I did not let thoughts stray too far; and did not think where we were heading—hurtling at a sober but gasping gallop, all of us together, and Paris too.
    His moods set the pace of our days. I contoured myself to them, becoming the hands, the leg or the arm, the body studied or curled next to his on the divan. Went out for sausages and packets of coffee, accomplished tea or soup as the hour required; kept soaps and trouser buttons, paintbrushes and bed linens, what few there were. I listened; but did not ask how the work was going. Laid the fire, boiled water for coffee, and waited for the sound of boots clomping down the stairs from the studio; each movement an act of staunch belief in my role on our tiny stage. Sometimes he brought a newspaper or a long-necked green bottle, with some sketch or scrap of canvas flapping around him like a sail. My arms went up around his neck, stretching the length of his long body, all the way to his lips. When he napped, I fished for change in his pockets for a soup bone, a bunch of carrots, a few pieces of coal. Clattered as quietly as possible around our tiny plot of living.
    We ate bites of things for meals. Sipped at the cup of
la fée verte,
or usually (since absinthe was a luxury beverage for a household unable to fill its coal bin) Chasseloup drank for inspiration and I soaked in his licorice-and-linseed-scented wake. Overall, the arrangement seemed an improvement for us both. As the girl who had not yet understood the breath of the future at her neck—one who, until she woke up with frost on her nose and a basin full of ice, never dreamed of winter’s cold, much less how today’s steps were the footpath to tomorrow’s road—I was content.
    He began again to paint at night. This was lucky, for I was often sick in the early mornings and had time alone in the hall privy.
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    One afternoon we climbed aboard an omnibus and rode to the Bois de Boulogne, returning from half-frozen lakes and curving landscapes, pathways along which we threw breadcrumbs to the birds. The lakes and cascades had been carved from the earth by giants and filled like titanic bathing tubs, and as the sun lowered, the traffic procession thickened even though it was the middle of winter. Big barouches, light fiacres, medallion-crusted tilburies, all flagged with color, mottoes, crests, and flowers, arrived for the hour of wealth on parade. Chasseloup picked up a handful of pebbles, tossed them into the water. A clutch of birds scattered, scudding off in all directions.
    â€œGod, this city is suffocation. It’s a stinking cesspool. ‘
Qui paye y va.’
He who pays has his way. Oh, and why not.”
    Chasseloup fell silent; I