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She was one of the two ladies asked to cooperate with the Government in their great enterprise to wage war on tuberculosis Le Comité Central d'Assistance aux Militaires Tuberculeux; and was to open ateliers to teach the men how to learn new trades by which they might sit at home in comfort and support themselves.
The lower part of the cheeks, which were deeply wrinkled, overhung a coat-collar of velvet the worse for wear. Among other adornments, the ex-dragoon wore enormous gold rings in his ears. "What a 'noceur'!" thought Joseph, using a popular expression, meaning a "loose fish," which had lately passed into the ateliers.
His work had been much admired in the ateliers, but his personal unpopularity with, the majority of the students had prevented their admiration changing to a friendship whose demands would have drained his small resources. "Ninety-nine per cent of the Quarter dislikes Stefan Byrd," an Englishman had said, "but one per cent adores him."
The ateliers were closed; the weavers had to seek other means of gaining their living. The busy Gobelins, a very Paradise of workers, an establishment which felt itself the pride of Paris and the pet of the king, full of merry apprentices and able masters, this happy solidarity fell under neglect. The courtyards were lonely; the Bièvre rippled by unused; the buildings were silent and deserted.
It is enough to make a man throw away canvas and brushes into the bottomless precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist of us all a pigmy. When I think of those ateliers of ours, the art jargon, the decadents with their flamboyant talk I long for a two-edged sword and a minute of Divinity.
Our first meeting was curiously disturbing. He appeared suddenly at a door of my ateliers on the flying ground at Mineola, very tall, very soigné, smiling in the way he had that showed all his strong, square teeth as he recognized me in conversation, with my faithful mechanician, Georges.
And now was a market assured for a man's work, a royal market, with the king as its chief, and his favourites following close. The ateliers scattered about Paris were allied in spirit, were all the result of the encouragement of preceding monarchs, but it remained for Le Grand Monarque to gather all together and form a state solidarity. Kings must have credit, even though others do the work.
The result was a driving haste. The director of the ateliers forced his weavers to quick production. This could mean but one thing, the lessening of care in every department. Gradually it came about that expedition in a tapissier, the ability to weave quickly, was as great a desideratum as fine work.
Westover, who was so newly from Paris, was able to console him with talk of the salons and ateliers, which he had not heard from so directly in ten years.
Pompiers, fumistes, makers of respectable pommade as the painter's potations increased, his English became less fluent, and he was driven back constantly to the dialect of the Paris ateliers, which was more familiar to him than his mother tongue. Ah! how he hated these people and their thread-paper morality, and their sordid conception of art a prettiness that would sell!
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