Sacré Bleu

“I liked his ideas about color and use of the brush, but his emotions were always so high. Perhaps if he could have afforded to drink more.”

“I don’t think that would have helped him, Henri. But why, if he was doing good work, and Theo had his expenses covered—”

“A woman,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. “When a suitable time has passed, we should call on Theo at the gallery and look at Vincent’s last paintings. I’ll bet there is a woman. No man kills himself but it is for a broken heart; surely you know that.”

Lucien felt a pain in his chest for his own memories and in sympathy for what must have been Vincent’s suffering. Yes, he could understand. He sighed and, staring out the window, said, “You know, Renoir always used to say that they were all one woman, all the same. An ideal.”

“You are incapable of having a discussion without bringing up your childhood around the Impressionists, aren’t you?”

Lucien turned to his friend and grinned. “Like you are incapable of having one without mentioning that you were born a count and grew up in a castle.”

“We are all slaves to our histories. I am simply saying that if we scratch van Gogh’s history, you will find a woman was at the heart of his disease.”

Lucien shuddered, as if he could shake the memory and melancholy off the conversation the way a dog shakes off water. “Look, Henri, van Gogh was an ambitious painter, talented, but he was not a steady man. Did you ever paint with him? He ate the paint. I’m trying to get the color of a moulin right and I look over and he has half a tube of rose madder on his teeth.”

“Vincent did enjoy a fine red,” said Henri with a grin.

“Monsieur,” said Lucien. “You are a dreadful person.”

“I’m simply agreeing with you—”

Toulouse-Lautrec stopped and stood up, his gaze trained out the window, over Lucien’s shoulder.

“You remember when you warned me off of Carmen?” said Henri, putting his hand on Lucien’s shoulder. “No matter how I felt, letting her go, it was the best thing for me, you said.”

“What?” Lucien twisted in his chair to see what Henri was looking at and caught sight of a skirt—no, a woman, out on the street in a periwinkle dress, matching parasol and hat. A beautiful dark-haired woman with stunningly blue eyes.

“Let her go,” said Henri.

In an instant Lucien was out of his chair and running out the door.

“Juliette! Juliette!”

Toulouse-Lautrec watched as his friend ran to the woman, then paused in front of her, as if not knowing what to do. Her face lit up at the sight of him, then she dropped her parasol and threw her arms around his neck, nearly leaping into his arms as she kissed him.

The waiter, who had been drawn out of the kitchen when he heard the door, joined Henri by the window.

“Oh là là, your friend has captured himself a prize, monsieur.”

“And I fear it’s going to soon become very difficult being his friend.”

“Ah, perhaps he has some competition, eh?” The waiter pointed across the boulevard, where, straining to see around carriages and pedestrians, a small, twisted man in a brown suit and bowler hat was watching Lucien and the girl with a glint in his eye that looked to Henri like hunger.

Three

THE WRESTLING DOGS OF MONTMARTRE, PARIS

1873

“… A delicate thing in a white dress with puffy sleeves and great ultramarine bows all down its front and at the cuffs.” The Swing—Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876

LUCIEN LESSARD WAS TEN YEARS OLD WHEN HE WAS FIRST ENCHANTED BY the sacred blue. It was a minor enchantment, really, but even the storm that drowns an empire must begin with a single raindrop, and later, one might only remember a spot of moisture on the cheek and having the thought, Is that a bird?

“Is that a bird?” Lucien asked his father.

Père Lessard stood over the bread table in the back room of his bakery drawing patterns in the flour with a pastry brush, his forearms dusted white like great snowy hams.

“It’s a sailing ship,” said Père Lessard.