Sacré Bleu

“But who? Who will you be to him?”

“That’s the beauty of it. He’s already taken with Jo.” She did a half curtsy as if presenting herself. “I don’t even have to change shoes.”

“Sounds dodgy,” said the Colorman. “Let’s use this one up.”

“No, Courbet is very talented. A great painter.”

“You always say that.”

“Perhaps it’s always true,” she said.

They went to France, they found Gustave Courbet working in Provence, where it was warm, which made the Colorman happy. Jo would be Courbet’s mistress and model on and off for ten years, after which the man who had once been called France’s greatest painter was exiled to Switzerland, and there, broke and alone, drank himself to death.

“See,” the Colorman would say. “That could have been that fucking Whistler. We could have fed him to a Saint Bernard.”

The Colorman had never really cared for Whistler.

Ten

RESCUE

COUNT HENRI-MARIE-RAYMOND DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC-MONFA BURST into the room, drew his weapon, and shouted, “Madame, I demand you unhand this man, in the name of France, Le Boulangerie du Montmartre, and Jeanne d’Arc!”

Juliette quickly covered herself with her robe; Lucien looked up from his canvas and held his brush at port arms.

“Really, Henri, ‘Jeanne d’Arc’?”

“Well, we don’t have a king anymore.”

Juliette said, “Why is he waving that cordial glass at me?”

“Oh balls,” said Toulouse-Lautrec. Instead of his sword cane he had grabbed his flask cane, which concealed a flask of cognac and a cordial glass (a gentleman does not drink directly from his walking stick) for visits to his mother, and he was, indeed, brandishing a crystal cordial glass at the naked girl.

“Because a snifter would not fit into my cane,” he said finally, as if that explained everything.

“I thought you were at your mother’s in Malromé.”

“I was. But I have returned to rescue you!”

“Well that’s very thoughtful of you.”

“You’ve grown a beard.”

Lucien rubbed his cheek. “Well, I’ve stopped shaving.”

“And you’ve stopped eating as well?” Lucien had been thin before, but now he looked as if he hadn’t eaten the entire month that Henri had been gone. Lucien’s sister had said so much in a letter she’d sent to Malromé:

Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec, he has stopped making the bread. He won’t listen to my mother or me. And he physically threatened my husband, Gilles, when he tried to intervene. He locks himself in the studio every morning with that woman, and he drags himself out in the evening and leaves through the alley, without so much as a bonjour for his family. He rants about his duty as an artist and won’t be reasoned with. Maybe he will listen to another artist. M. Renoir is in Aix, visiting Cézanne. M. Pissarro is in Auvers, and M. Monet never seems to leave Giverny. Please, help, I do not know the other artists of the butte, and Mother says they are all useless scalawags anyway and wouldn’t be able to help. I disagree, as I have found you to be a very kind and useful scalawag, and overall a very charming little man. I implore you to come help me save my brother from this horrible woman.

Regards,

Régine Robelard

“You remember Juliette, from before?” said Lucien.

“You mean before when she ruined your life and reduced you to a miserable wretch? Before that?”

“Before that,” said Lucien.