Free The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne by M. L. Longworth

knew he had been rude when he had asked Claude how he managed to stay awake and not fall over from boredom when setting up his easel before the same building, day after day. He now sighed loudly, remembering with shame their argument, and Claude’s gentle words in the face of his own loud and heavily accented ones.
    He picked up his step, knowing that the sooner he made it to the druggist in the Hôtel du Poët, the longer he’d have to paint. He had that in common with Claude, and Auguste, and Camille, and even the intense Dutchman he had briefly met: the need to paint was relentless. If one was thinking of a scene, or planning out a composition in one’s head, it was almost impossible to think of anything else. That’s why he had offered to fetch his father’s medicine—the usual boy who ran errands was off with his own family as his sister was ill—and at least while walking he could think over his next composition, with that bridge in Gardanne the focus. His father—now near death—had finally accepted his son’s determination to be a painter. But he hadn’t accepted Paul’s relationship with Hortense; even after the birth of their son, Paul Jr., Hortense and Paul Jr.—now thirteen—were living in Marseille, in an apartment he rented for them, while he stayed at his father’s house. He would paint Paul again, soon, but didn’t want to see Hortense as yet. Every time they were together they argued. She missed her native Jura and its mountains, and her family, and although she would sit to be painted, she asked no questions of his work.
    The sight of the Rotonde’s new fountain did not make the painter happy. He thought it ostentatious. What was happening to his little town? Would the same thing happen one day to Gardanne? He couldn’t imagine not seeing old Bauvé leading his sheep across Gardanne’s Place Gambetta. Or the fields of beets, or olive trees. And the stacks of hay, so wonderful to paint.
    He walked around a team of street sweepers who were taking a break, leaning on their brooms, and then a knife sharpener, yelling up his prices to a maid who was leaning out of an upper-story window. A woman’s “bonjour” took Cézanne out of his reverie. He attempted a smile and returned her “bonjour” with a wave of the hand. He recognized her, as he did most Aixois; she was a judge’s wife, who evidently did not think him mad for walking up the Cours with his collapsible easel and box of paints strapped to his back. Other women laughed, and children pointed. But he was used to that.
    He walked by the Café Oriental, then the Deux Garçons. Both cafés made him miss Zola, who would be soon publishing yet another book, its subject a secret. He passed number 55, where he had lived as a young boy, the family crammed into an apartment above his father’s hat shop. Before his father had reinvented his life as a banker. Before they were rich.
    Finally he reached the top of the Cours where the druggist, a man who not only was aware of modern medicine and science but also knew much about Provençal herbal remedies, kept a shop in the Hôtel du Poët. The Cézanne family had been coming to M. Alphéron for decades. The bells chimed as he opened the door and walked in.
    â€œ
Mon cher Paul
,” M. Alphéron said as he walked around the carved walnut counter and embraced the painter. His newassistant, a shy boy who had just finished his
license
in chemistry, turned slightly away. M. Alphéron was sixty-three, and here he was embracing a man who looked to be in his forties, or even older, who carried his paints on his back. This man, Paul, did not dress as one would have thought of a Cézanne, the owners of a bank and a beautiful house on the outskirts of town called the Jas de Bouffan.
    â€œHow is your father?” M. Alphéron asked, keeping his hand on Paul’s back.
    â€œHe