CHAPTER FIVE
Divertemento
Within a warmly sunlit studio, Boniface was applying his arts to a modestly sized Madonna with Child. Sepia toned washes were still persistent among many blocked in bright colours that showed the subject seated so naturally next to a reflecting pool that already the composition set the viewer likewise at ease. Her infant son was swaddled enough to leave only a single cherubic hand rising up to caress the cheek of the mother with two blessing fingers. The artist strived with patience and precision, carefully considering each stroke before it was to be performed. The pale flesh of the Virgin was being painstakingly layered through gracefully thin glazes. Neither peering at his painting nor adjusting his view with canted, creaseless brow, the artist knew exactly the effect that he wished to achieve and he knew precisely when it had been reached. If squinting would improve his perception, then he had failed.
After a series of unanswered knockings, the Lady of the House passed through the unlocked portal that led from the world of the mundane to this chamber of inspiration and imagination. The craftsman did not yet look up from his labours to view the petite dame who ushered herself onward with her usual dignity.
"I often find myself wishing that I could create such rare beauty," said Madame de Grenville while approaching the young artist's work.
"Having seen the music of your eyes, Madame, I can attest that your dreams have always been in your palms. While you walk upon the world, Beauty weeps with joy."
The man's effusion had caught her quite unaware so that her blush was deep and sudden. "Oh my..." she replied quietly to herself but her chin remained high. The Lady's cap-less costume on this afternoon was a muted umber which, matching her coiffure colour precisely, only heightened the vitality of the crimson blush.
"May I call you Madeleine?" asked the unrelenting youth as he turned his critical eye upon his hostess. "That delightful name is a perfect compliment to you. You and I should become good friends."
She nodded then, but he could not see it, for she had turned her head that she might conceal her inconstant hue.
"Of course, Madame, I sought not to offend."
"Madeleine. Yes, call me Madeleine."
"I am earnestly honoured." he answered.
Madeleine corrected her composition with agreement, saying, "I too am honoured to have met you... all three of you. So very much is promised. You are each men of brilliance."
"In our own manner," he replied and resumed applying colour to canvas.
"The differences are quite stark. I cannot be certain where my husband saw similarities," she said.
A fine line of deep ultramarine blue marked the posterior arc of the Maiden's robes. By twisting the brush as the artist pulled it away, the mark was allowed to end with smooth refinement. Boniface answered as he continued to detail the dress of the Madonna. "I see the commonalities, because I see how we all three differ from the herd of other painters. We are not painters of pretty effects. We seek for more than mimicry of light and form. We do not pursue reality but instead are on the heels of beauty."
Madeleine tilted her head and appraised the painting, asking, "Is there competition among you three?"
"Certainement," he said and stuck his brush tip into a pool of pigment with delicacy. "We compete for the attention and approval of you... and your husband. How could we not?"
When Madeleine was briefly without response, Boniface arrested his work and looked at her with soft eyes to ask, "Do you like what is before you?"
After a moment's consideration, "It is very accomplished, and bright. The lines flow marvellously. It is remarkably well ordered."
He answered, "I fear that it will seem to be soulless...false."
The painter's lines did indeed flow beautifully from his brush, seeming to create a fresh world of hues and forms upon the sienna tinted canvas.
"Is it?" she asked, forfeiting her turn.
"There is no such thing as false beauty so if I can make it such that it seems beautiful, I will have achieved my ends."
She mused upon the phrase "...seems beautiful..." and so inquired, "Are some things beautiful that do not seem beautiful or do some things seem beautiful that are actually crass and disordered?"
Boniface paused in his painterly applications. He, too late, saw the corner that he had worked himself into. Emboldened, Madeleine pushed coquettishly, "Perhaps beauty is not truth. Beauty, like a splendidly embellished lie, simply always seems like truth. There is truth to be found in ugliness also, but ugliness does not look to wrap itself in deceits."
Boniface thought he had found his escape and pounced. "Perfume then is a lie? Tailored clothes? Coiffured hair? Bathing is a sham?"
She laughed aloud then and it did not seem to suit her. It was a common laugh.
"It may be that beauty and truth are not so conjoined as you thought. Are they now annulled?"
The paintbrush fluttered anxiously in the air before the garment of the Madonna. It seemed to need to know its own role in the discussion before it could proceed.
Madeleine continued, "If you infused your lady with my face, I am certain that you could make it magnificently beautiful but, alas, it would not endow me with the qualities of the virgin."
"I could never capture the whole of your beauty, Madeleine."
"Keep that up, Monsieur, and decidedly, you will be denied my diminutive."
"Appearances must be maintained," said Boniface, embellishing the moment with a sly grin. "Afterall, we must ensure a beautiful and ordered world."
"It must seem beautiful," the Lady corrected semantically, and they spoke in this way for near half the afternoon.
She touched her fingertips finally to the arm of the man, just once, and then stepped back to herald her impending departure. "Your work does seem beautiful to me, Boniface. Thank you for allowing my curious self to intrude upon your labours."
"Come anytime you like, Madeleine, to accompany me while I toil. Your company is very much desirable. As you lift my heart unto the clouds, my small and earthly skills are then raised up heavenward too."
There was no blush, but an endearing smile. "I will come, when the desire comes upon me. It is my home...and my husband's, afterall."
"Will you feel obliged to bring your husband?"
She selected her words prudently, and answered, "I would feel no obligation." She paused at the exit. There then began a moment of awkwardness before finally, Boniface abandoned his art to play the role of the gentleman. He saw the lady out with some parting pleasantries then. When once more the man stood before his Madonna, he found himself pondering changes to the brow and lips of the unfinished Virgin and in his imaginings, there was a newly certain face that would need to be captured therein.
The Mistress of the Household did not pause at all, once she had gained the hall, and lifted up her chin to march away to where her duties called. Her feet did not halt as she passed by the open conservatory. She left the girl there to do her work and kept right on going.
"That is quite good enough," said Adele to no one but herself. "… For him… and for him."
She was glad to have the opportunity to set herself upon the conservatory before it was too late. That filthy Hercules could have made no more mess of it if he had been bent upon the labour. The man's scribblings had been stacked and tied. His clothing (what little there was) was washed. None of it was tossed away, despite Adele's desires. She had restrained her instincts there. That idiot monster would be screaming and frothing quite enough as it was and she had no wish to invite a beating as well.
She could not believe her eyes when she discovered a stick of charcoal lying loose within a discarded stocking. One stocking! The man had but three and must have imagined himself refined to rotate one out from time to time. Already his bedclothes disgusted the maidservant to the point where those had to be sent out to be cleaned. It was an expense borne by her privy purse. It was so rudely soiled by dirt and sweat and dead flesh and all manner of animal discharges. He was a monster.
In the end she had pushed the bed into a corner and arranged a drop cloth over the whole lump of his possessions. It was a relieved sigh that preceded her assault on the cleaning of the room proper then.
When, that evening, all of the company had gathered in Montaigne's bedroom it was certainly a fine restoration that they enjoyed. Seven chairs had been imported to attend the performances. It was more than was required for the performers were to be from among the little group and no other guests had been invited to intrude upon this interlude.
The front three, of course, were reserved for the Ladies and Madame Ferland had seated herself decisively in their center. She and her family were well turned out, just as they continued to be at every dinner and gathering. None thought any less of them for having only a single set of finer clothes, yet when Boniface was obliged to every second evening revisit a previous costume, there was a distinct sense that a charade had been unmasked. His projected an aura of fashion and wealth, but his wardrobe had an impoverished breadth. Fortunately, none of the assembly had any motive to raise the point.
Montaigne never changed, merely throwing on a coat and pants when he was obliged to go out into company. Tonight he was fussing. The loss of his work and bed space for the day had left him near traumatized. He had no lair. In fact, his originally assigned bedroom was still vacant and prepared for him but it felt improper. He could find no comfort there. It was not marked.
Roland stepped up before the tiny crowd and his wife took her proper place beside and a bit behind him. He had tuxedoed himself and she was well enough bejewelled to attend the Opera in Milan. Men and women alike could hardly take their eyes from the beauty of the wife as her husband spoke to his five guests.
"Friends, Frenchmen, Guests! Tonight we will grant gifts for your ears. We have, these recently passed days, been immersed in the visual arts and for this I praise you. Tonight though we set our eyes aside and pay homage to musical muses. Oh! Indeed our performers are beautiful (I am only an accompanist) but as splendid as they appear, wait and see what charms they will have upon your ear."
Saucily, Boniface applauded, "Hear, Hear!"
The laugh that rang from Madeleine marked true delight, such that all the others joined in. Roland's chortle though was entirely and apparently an affectation. He stroked the air before him to urge quiet from his guests. Behind him, Madeleine put a gloved finger to her lips and Boniface, Ghislaine, and Montaigne, the offenders, fell to obedient silence.
"My friends, since you are so very enthusiastic, I will encourage warm applause for my darling wife who will sing a selection from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro."
Roland then took a place at the piano while Madeleine composed herself. The room collectively held its breath. When Roland commenced his musical introduction, the exhalations were ragged and unsettled. It was simple as simple could be, without decoration or adornment. The notes and weight were correct enough but less than uninspired, it was cold. Too, it required the whole of his concentration and if one watched closely they could see him grimacing and making all manner of unsettling facial expressions as he sweated through the accompaniment.
One could not watch him though for Madeleine began to sing Dove Sono.
Her voice lifted both tender and sad over the room and instantly the whole of the intimate audience was captivated. None had anticipated such quality. There was artistry and emotion for she seemed to perfectly capture the sentiment of the Countess Almaviva. They all knew the story even if they did not understand the Italian language. She appeared to all an actress too, for as she sang for lost happiness, they would swear that they saw a glistening in her eyes. Her tones, curling like waves to the deepest depths of her range to extol her sadness, would then rise to the height of sterling, shimmering stars in a night sky of memories.
Montaigne was transfixed. Here was a woman, one that he already knew to be refined and intelligent, now showing herself to be at once artistic and wounded. She was taking great and graceful steps toward perfection. And there was her keeper, twisting his ridiculous face at the piano that he could not master. The head of Ambrose bobbed to meter and his fingers, until his wife arrested them, quietly conducted.
If there was longing and despair in the heart of Madeleine it might have been for lost days of dreaming to be in the Opera. She knew that those times were long past but as she sang, as she hit a difficult passage exactly as well as she had hoped to, the woman wept a bit for potential unrealized.
When the aria ended and applause was being bestowed, Madeleine gave an elegant curtsey embellished with a bright smile. No trace of pain remained. On Montaigne though there yet lurked deep furrows, carved out by Despair. The man was shaken and could not so easily recover. It had been, for him, as transporting and daunting as that first locomotive. His agitation was evident.
Even Ghislaine, sitting in front of Charles, must have sensed the effect that the music had upon the big man. She turned her fair, swan-like neck and watched him with envious almond eyes. Madame Ferland grasped her daughter's wrist, reprimanding, and snapped her attention back to the fore.
Madeleine with Roland performed another, lighter piece and the mood was lifted. Following that, it was Ghislaine's turn at the piano. Her mother was there at her side, turning the pages and quietly humming the beats as a metronome.
Montaigne could sit back now and put on a smile that broke through his beard. The girl played quite well, but not brilliantly. It was exactly the sort of proficiency that one expects from a young lady. It was enough to demonstrate cultural sympathy. It would be enough that she could play it for a prospective suitor.
Indeed, it was while she was playing there, under the watchful eye of her mother, that the idea first entered the head of Montaigne that someone would already have been scheming the notion of Boniface Roy as a possible beau for Ambrose's eligible daughter. Why else had she been brought here? Why else was she performing tonight? Had this all been some contrivance? Montaigne lost his joy and threw a suspicious glance at the young blonde man beside him. Boniface had that trompe-l'oeil smile frescoed onto the wall of his face.
The musical portion of the evening wound down after a second less-practised piece by Ghislaine and then it settled into conversations and congratulations. Everyone took their turn complimenting the performers and commenting upon the weather. Adele hovered beside Boniface in faith that the man would notice her to take a drink from her tray. The serving girl though had to spin away each time the hostess was drawn into orbit about that handsome young painter, the frequency of which was entirely too common for the hope of Adele. Madeleine found opportunities to divert every discussion toward the brilliance of Boniface Roy. The room's topic eventually settled upon the work that the artists were doing, whereupon Roland seized the opportunity to lay out a proposal.
"We have not seen this early, much of a commonality or distinction among our esteemed painters yet but I have an idea that might turn that about…"
Roland paused here and ran his fingers to the end of his long, thin moustache in a dainty twisting motion. It was with rapt curiosity that his startled wife looked to him and the animus delighted.
"I ask you each to undertake a Leda."
Eyebrows were raised. Leda, the Spartan Queen, was the subject of a visitation and seduction by Zeus while the God was in the form of a great swan. Their child would be Helen. Artists had often portrayed the scene of the woman seduced by a swan and it had usually been respectable. Still, it was a subject that was ripe for scandal in the hands of someone seeking such things. It was a challenge. It was, on second consideration, a fairly obvious choice for Roland to make. There were swans that summered in his ponds. This was an opportunity and the choice, thought Ambrose, was inspired. Roland had good cause to preen.
Madeleine objected. "M Roy is presently in the midst of a Madonna."
"He ought to finish it, by all means," replied de Grenville, smiling toward Boniface. "It is an idea, in case any of you were without inspiration." Here, Roland pointedly kept his gaze upon Boniface. "When your Madonna is done, may we view it together?"
Boniface knew it to be a gauntlet thrown down. He took it up with courage. "It will be finished in two days time and then I invite you and your companions to critique it, just as though we were back in school."
Ambrose chuckled but Roland was rocked back onto his heels. "No. No! I did not mean to say… It might be useful…"
Boniface extended a hand to rest upon the critic's shoulder. "I would be honoured to hear the opinions of my esteemed companions on the quality of my humble attempt." His grin was cruel.
Wishing not to play any part in these vile games of society, Montaigne took a pace back, but he had taken but half a step before a light hand placed between his shoulder blades arrested him. He had almost trampled the slight Ghislaine. Her short laugh assured him. When he turned to give an apology, he was startled to see the slim girl rise up on tiptoe to whisper suddenly, "Let me be your Leda!"
Charles was stunned into silence.
Her voice was hushed to be shared between the pair. "Let me model for you. I wish it!"
The room spun for Charles. All possible repercussions from this suggestion assailed him at once. There were disasters and ecstasies intermingled in his flashing mind. Hope won out over dread and he said, "Yes," in as quiet a whisper as he could muster.
"Not tomorrow, but the next morning. Mother will be in the village," and then, like some master of subterfuge, she moved away without seeming to have had any conversation at all.
Montaigne turned about clumsily to watch the maiden walk away in her fine dress that brought the blue sky into the lamp lit room.
The exchange, if not overheard, was witnessed by Madeleine. When she slid her grey gaze onto the handsome young painter, it was evident that Boniface too had registered the interaction. As the edges of his lips made that wry curl, Madeleine acquiesced to conspiracy by imitation.
The society continued for a little longer but by then Montaigne had retreated to pressing his back up against an empty wall and staring at the floorboards and his soiled, holed shoes. That painter's fists were deep into the pockets of his coat and the conversations and witticisms floated by his sunken head without registering. Finally, the company left the conservatory. Madeleine and Montaigne were the last and before departing, the hostess made a circuit of the room, extinguishing every light but for one dim lamp near to Charles' covered bed space. Finally, she placed herself in front of the brooder. His eyes though did not lift past the woman's splendidly skirted calves.
"I do hope you had some enjoyment this evening, M. Montaigne."
"Mm."
"I want you do be comfortable here… in my house… among my friends. Is there any more that we can do for you?"
The brute shook his black mane and uttered his "No." There was a distinct pause before he added, "Thank you. I am. I enjoyed it." With his eyes seeing past her slippered toes he finished, "You were magnificent… your singing was magnificent."
Then Madeleine took the tip of her pretty slipper and tapped the end of Montaigne's shoe cheekily.
"Thank you. Good night, my friend."
Through the shadow light she waltzed away and left the man alone. It was a long moment before he pushed off from the wall and fair ran to rip the drop cloths from his bed. Drawings, easels, shoes, and bags all were sent clattering and colliding with the hardwood floor. He threw his own mass down onto the aggrieved mattress and then, with a lone lamp still fluttering its last yellow light, Charles packed himself into a tight black ball and fought to sleep. He would fail.
It would be warm well before the sun had neared its zenith. The countryside estate was still casting long bright shadows but the beasts of the nearby farms were past their milking. Eggs had been collected and some of those already served up at local breakfast tables.
While in the stern gloom of the library studio, Ambrose was bent over the desk carefully using a string-bound pen to mark out a near perfect arc. Opposite the angled bald brow, Roland's finely coifed head was bent to witness the work of the draughtsman. The paper page had been delineated by a drawn rectangle that was then crossed and fractured by a multitude of bisecting ink lines. Circles and demi-circles also intersected the space to create an elaborate weave of precise, dependent geometry. Each new mark built upon the previous and informed the future. Triangles formed their squares and squares their rectangles. Circles overlaid and conjoined the lot.
After perhaps thirty minutes of silently watching the patient painter make his steady markings, Roland raised a question, "You have decided to not do Leda and the Swan then?"
Ambrose glanced up as though it was the first moment that he was aware of the patron's presence.
"This is Leda," he said and then noted the narrowing eyes of the younger man. "I am mapping the composition. See, a right emphasized off-set pyramid for the Queen while the swan will be a graduated series of demi-circles that share similar proportions." He chuckled then as he mentioned, "I have no intention of squaring the circle. That is a problem for another day. It will be close to the area. I am juxtaposing the curves of the swan with the angled limbs of Leda and then I will bring both together toward a medium through the course of rendering. Each form, and the supporting foliage images, will have equal measure of curve and angle. It will be a melding of the two disparate yet harmonious aspects of any object."
Roland's nose wrinkled. "That doesn't make any sense. That would be cold and lifeless, little more than a formula. Every painting would be the same if you just built it from geometry and then tried to wrap themes about them."
The hand of the old man returned to making. He answered, "It makes absolute sense. You simply don't understand it. This will speak to the duality of Zeus, being immortal yet yearning to be mortal, all powerful God adopting the form of a mute and fumbling waterfowl. Leda being at once horrified and at the same time seduced, at once Queen and simple woman."
"I'm not new to art," protested Roland. "I know what beauty is."
"Yes. You do. But you don't understand why something is beautiful. When you do understand that, you can join us in crafting beauty."
"Teach me!"
Now the pen stopped even as the grasp upon the tool tightened. The aged gaze remained fixed upon the well-worked page.
"Teach yourself."
Roland sat back and gestured vaguely. "I want to learn but… where do I start?"
"God." Ambrose reversed his sheet and began to construct a fresh square with his compass and straight edge. The center of the circle was pinned in place by a gnarled thumb, the nail upon it being clipped to a straight edge.
"That doesn't seem particularly precise."
There was a wide grin on Ambrose's visage as he drew out the long line of a hypotenuse. "God is quite precise. He is terribly exacting and knows with perfect entirety what he wants from us."
Now Roland enjoyed a chuckle too and stood back from the desk. His eyes scanned his bookshelves as he arched his back to limber it up.
"God," Roland mused.
"God," Ambrose answered.
"Mysteries."
"Answers."
Shaking his head, Roland admitted defeat. "Alright. You will have your way. I will wander off and see if any of the others are set to work yet. I will be back though. I am very curious to see your Leda take shape. You must also be."
"Curious? Yes, I don't yet know where I will take it. You see, it is not all formulas and geometry. There is still... what would you say?"
"The Creative Spirit? The Immortal Muse? The stroke of genius?"
"As you like."
Roland's fair fingers trilled along the shelves, bouncing from spine to spine as he worked his way to the door. His exit was certainly not being rushed. Indeed, he stopped with his other hand poised upon the door latch. Glancing back over his shoulder he asked as though it were only an idle idea, "Ghislaine seems to be keeping herself active and interested in things."
"Hrm?" Now the old man set down his pen.
"I mean... No. I meant nothing. She is young and it is the summertime. It is pleasant to see such youthful zeal about the place."
Ambrose might have sensed where Roland was taking the conversation. He said, "Your wife is beautiful, Monsieur, and still has a good deal of youthful zeal about her. We too often lose sight of our own wealth when we appraise the glory of others."
A thin blonde brow arched upon the younger man's face. "Well... yes. You are certainly right. It is good having them both here." Roland was startled to find his position so sharply attacked, but would be satisfied by his own response. Any crisis was deftly averted.
"All three."
"Yes. Of course."
Upon leaving the room, Roland remained for a time in the hall, reflecting upon the conversation. He was worried for Ghislaine and Ambrose seemed not to have any concern whatsoever. He was either blind or, perhaps; he really did know his daughter very well and had no cause for alarm.
"She is young. He doesn't see it. There will be trouble."
There was to be no trouble that day. Between his inspections of the varied studio spaces, M. de Grenville would find several opportunities to turn his paternal gaze toward young Ghislaine. She had spent her morning gossiping and laughing with Adele while the pair peeled potatoes (one for wage and the other for reasons less apparent to the bourgeois host). In the afternoon, Roland had been rather tediously watching Montaigne stare at a bare canvas when the earthen thing moved his head and quickly stood. Ghislaine, prettily, obliviously, was on promenade across the front lawn. After an instant, Charles must have remembered the presence of the patron in the room for he commenced to find some pretense to his movement. His charcoal-hued hands fumbled with random papers and, to Roland's dismay, the conservatory curtains. Roland chose to neither say a word nor stay a moment longer but scurried down the hall and out the back door, from where he might seek to spy upon the girl as she came about.
Thus then was de Grenville's day whiled away with interspersed episodes of artistic voyeurism and innocent skulduggery until the afternoon hour that his wife would anticipate their rendezvous.
The garden of Madeleine de Grenville was wild and chaotic, an eclectic frenzy of uncultivated growth amidst detailed intentions. There were dying things hidden well beneath broad green leaves of new growth. There were grasping, hungry weeds, shaded by bright violet shrubs. All of this turmoil was precisely laid out on either side of well-paved intersecting walkways. Hedges, planned, planted, and trimmed by Samuel, contained the colourful plot.
The lady and her husband, in their cool summer whites, rested their inactive selves on the rear patio chairs and looked out upon the greenery that was their decorative garden. Between the pair was a pitcher of lemon juice, a favourite of Roland's. Some years before, he had tried to grow a small lemon tree to satisfy his whims but it failed due to other passing fancies until it finally withered and died one winter while they were away in Paris. Within an hour of the final appraisal, it was being cut down on orders from Madeleine. There had been more staff at the house then. There had been more wealth and happiness.
"Last eve went well enough," remarked Roland.
"Well enough," was her response. If it was wistful, it was also coloured to be cheerful.
The response had left Roland with nothing to answer. The pause was protracted before he tried again, saying, "I managed the Dove Sono without error."
"You were masterful, dear."
"… considering how I was unable to practise at all."
"You did fine," asserted Madeleine.
There was another moment of stillness.
"Ghislaine played marvellously," said Roland eventually. His wife, meanwhile, was watching the slow afternoon sojourn of a swan upon the pond beyond her garden.
Roland, undaunted, mused aloud further thoughts on the subject of Ambrose's young daughter.
"She is on the cusp of womanhood. I think she is also unaccustomed to the countryside. She seems to be a girl who is coming to life."
Madeleine's jaw tightened as her husband spoke.
"I envy her... I envy her her optimism. Do you remember when everything was new and exciting? Do you remember when we thought we could do anything?"
To this, his wife replied that, "This summer's ambition is new and exciting. There are still dreams in you."
"I suppose, yes." He smiled. For a moment he too sat back and simply enjoyed the verdant view. Blue ridges rose in the distance and they indeed seemed to speak to him of promised tomorrows. It was a good life and he was still a young man. These thoughts encouraged him to straighten his finely waxed moustache.
Roland returned to his essay, "She is a young girl and she will want to fall in love this summer."
Now this piqued Madeleine's attention. "Will she now? Because she is young?"
"Because she is a woman." Roland grinned, proud of his wit.
"Ah yes. We all dream of true love."
Roland continued his chuckling between sips of precious lemonade. There was a sly grin on Madeleine's fine lips but neither husband nor wife was watching their partner.
"I think she will fall in love with Boniface" said Roland then and the lips of his wife flickered between varied reactions. "It makes perfect sense. He is young, handsome, filled with life, and brilliant. He is exactly the sort of man that young girls dream of loving."
"Is he? I would not know. He seems certainly to have attracted you."
They both laughed, one more nervous than the other.
"Well," continued Roland, setting down his drink to clasp his hands languidly behind his neck. "He is certainly a man with a foot placed confidently on the path of life. He will not, I expect, be following the dark shadowed trail of Montaigne."
Madeleine held her tongue, not saying openly how she felt about Charles. She knew that she might confidently lavish praise upon Boniface because it was to be expected. With Montaigne though, it would be expected that she would have naught but disdain for his mannerisms. Something did have to be said though, for her husband's sake."
"Mmm."
And then, after another extended yet comfortable pause, Madeleine added a footnote, "I think you want them to have une affaire du coeur."
"No matchmaker, I. It is only speculation," he answered. "Now, I confess to finding some amusement in witnessing the unfolding events. There would be little scandal in such a development and when I interviewed her father on the matter, he seemed to think nothing of it. He trusts to her intelligence, I suppose."
Madeleine pensively placed a finger to her lips as she contemplated the words of her husband. Without noticing or at least noting his wife's gesture, Roland went on with his conjecturing.
"What might be a problem is if Boniface pursues his goal without properly approaching his object's father. If he seeks to employ guile and seduces the young girl, it could muddy the waters of our little experiment. He should be open about his intentions toward the girl."
"Do you expect him to be? Is he that sort of man?"
"Almost all men are 'that sort of man'. Yes, there are still gentlemen in this day and age but really, we should not look for them among the artists. That is exactly the sort of personality that I need when I gather the three painters together. If he were a gentleman, he could not be a lyric."
"Tell me about your lyric."
"The lyric is the artist that sees the world as lines and colour. He does not walk his path in life but runs it, leaping, springing and dancing down the road. Lyrics," he said, chuckling, "… do not spend their evenings watching the sun set behind mountains but nor do they strike off to climb the mountains. They are not romantics. They don't look for beauty in symbols and gestures and special moments. The lyric instead turns his back on the picturesque and sublime and simply marvels at the bend of a flower stem. It is the strength of the lyric that they will find the beautiful wherever it is. Mozart can make a young girl's laughter musical, even if she only finds amusement in the antics of a fool."
"If the lyric declares something to be beautiful then, it is not just words?" asked Madeleine. She closed her eyes to the approaching sunset.
"No. For the lyric, beauty is in the sublime and subtle" he said and did not see that his wife's eyes were closed. He did see her fingertip sliding slow around the circumference of her white-skirted knee in distracted, sensual circles.
"Lyrics express themselves through beauty and loving beauty. Now giants, they see power instead and masculinity. The giants are about drama. Montaigne is, as you can see, not at all concerned with beauty."
Now Madeleine turned to regard Roland. "Is this your opinion of Montaigne? That he has no eye for beauty?"
"Oh, he knows what beauty is all right, but he thinks himself above beauty. Beauty, for the Giant, is not enough. Giants exult in the power of the Cosmos, the Divine, and of man. Things must be large and expressive... expressive beyond beauty. Beauty, harmony, and balance are all weak. They have not gone far enough. Beethoven's Quartets show us this. They are, in a manner of speaking, beyond beauty. In his Ninth, we watch him begin beautiful and end triumphant. He sings how joy trumps the pretty."
"You favour the lyric."
"I understand the lyric. I sympathise with beauty."
Madeleine gave a pleasant laugh to her husband. Her neck rolled and her arms were outstretched. "I should see how Adele is doing with dinner."
"Very well."
"... you do, afterall, sympathise with food also."
Now Roland laughed and stretched out his limbs, rising from his chair. "I embrace all of the wonders of the world that I find in my path and take them to my breast. I will give all good things a good home."
"So charitable. So noble," she teased as she rose.
"It must be why you love me so."
"Certainly, that must be the reason."
Roland waited beside his patio chair until his wife completed her exit, and then returned to his repose and his lemonade. Various wise expressions loped through his mind, about castles, and homes, and country life and contentedness. What a wonderful world it was, he mused. Lordly white, giant waterfowl looked to him for protection, and he granted it. From his rustic throne, Roland could survey his realm in the purple glow of the sun that set upon his right hand. To his left expanded his manse, his lodge, his shelter for men of genius that the hurrying modern world of the cities could not see... appreciate... love! Sloping down from the villa and its master, the whole of God's world was laid before the mortal man's feet. The rarefied, well cultivated garden led to the large pond where swans paddled, idle, and beyond were lawns and fields that he, in grand munificence, allowed local men the right to sow and reap upon for an entirely reasonable fee. Past those golden lands untamed forests lumbered in prudent and spiritual moderation. He sought, Roland thought, no acclaim for his magnificence. Virtue is its own reward, he congratulated himself. The meek shall inherit the earth etcetera.
In a short time, Monsieur Roland de Grenville would be called in to dinner by his serving girl, and then, over good food and excellent wine, he would enjoy the glittering conversation of his brilliant guests.
The Lord saluted his life with the last of his lemonade in the last of the light.