The Witch of Painted Sorrows

Chapter 24

The morning newspapers were full of the story from the night before. There had been a fire at the opera house, but it was extinguished without incident and little damage except to some curtains and stage props. No one had perished. No one was even hurt.

I was relieved that Charlotte had survived, I thought as I walked to school. The evening had been terrifying and confusing. My mind was swimming with unanswered questions. Painting class with Monsieur Moreau would be a welcome diversion.

Inside, I greeted my fellow students and set up my easel. The model took her position. Monsieur Moreau walked around, tilting his head, asking her to move a little this way and a little that way until he was happy with her pose.

I looked from her to the empty canvas. Taking up my brush, I daubed it into the cobalt swirl, the most magical color on my palette. I changed the white robe slipping down the model’s back to a lovely deep-azure shawl. For a moment I closed my eyes and, as if in a dream, saw the depths of the sky in the folds of the fabric, saw the moon and stars shining through its very blueness.

“Yes,” Monsieur Moreau said as he looked over my shoulder at my canvas. “You are right to think through color, use it with imagination. If you don’t have imagination, your color will never be beautiful. Color must be dreamed.”

It was not the first time my teacher had spoken to me as if he could look inside my mind and hear what I was thinking.

“I would like you to stay for a short time after the session. Would that be all right, Mademoiselle?” Moreau asked me.

We were at his atelier at 14 rue de la Rochefoucauld, where he also lived. It was perhaps my favorite place in all of Paris. On the second floor, in the grand parlor, was a nautilus iron staircase. At the top was the painter’s rich universe. His stunning paintings, drawings, and watercolors crowded every wall, crammed tightly together, giving the eye no respite. His love of colors was displayed in the gem-like canvases, each sparkling with ruby, vermilion, royal purple, emerald, and gold. His visionary illustrations of tales from the Bible and mythology were inundated with fantastical winged creatures from angels to dragons. Imagery rife with magic and crowded with symbolism.

Once everyone had left, we ventured downstairs for tea. Sitting in a formal and old-fashioned dusty room, we were served by a middle-aged maid who didn’t linger or say very much.

“Is it possible you are holding back, Mademoiselle?”

I was surprised by his question. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’ve watched how quickly you pick up on my suggestions and, at the same time, noticed a hesitancy that implies you know exactly what to do but are reluctant to do it. Does this make any sense to you?”

What to tell him? What to admit? Of course I was doing exactly that, afraid that if he saw how fast I was capable of progressing he would become suspicious. It even frightened me. I was making leaps overnight that would take anyone else weeks or months. Perhaps years.

Wouldn’t he think I was mad if I told him? I was already considered strange enough for my costume and commitment, but he was interested in the esoteric. Hadn’t Gaston told me he’d belonged to a society that summoned angels to help artists? Maybe he was the one person who would understand, who could help me.

“What is it, Mademoiselle Verlaine?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Some artists are concerned with expressing the words of the soul. That’s all fine, but I’m more interested in rendering visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition. Those have something divine in their apparent insignificance. And transposed by the marvelous effects of pure visual art, they reveal truly magical, I would say even sublime, horizons.”

He waited for a moment. I remained silent. Then he stood.

“Wait there. I should like to show you something.”

Moreau left the room, and while he was gone, I studied the paintings on the walls. Each of a series of small paintings had a brass plaque on its lower arm naming its subject: Andromeda, Diana, Leda, Cleopatra, Salome, and Bathsheba. Each woman shone like a piece of jewelry encrusted with lapis, emeralds, gold, turquoise, sapphires, and rubies. Each solemn and soulful woman looked secretive, contemplating the murder or sacrilege or sacrifice or torture she had inflicted or endured. The extravagant plant life in each painting was as alive as the women; thin tendrils wove around strong verdant leaves; fanning palms shadowed flowers that suggested religious vessels.

I thought of a passage in À Rebours, a decade-old book that all of Moreau’s students had read and quoted by heart, which was considered the bible of decadents. The main character spoke of Moreau’s art as “despairing erudite works, which emanate a singular spell, a fascination that is deeply, intimately disturbing.” These paintings were prime examples of those spells.

Moreau returned several moments later, holding a maroon leather sketchbook.

“People say I am a peintre d’histoire because of my subject matter. But I believe neither in that which I touch nor in that which I see. I believe only in that which I do not see. I believe uniquely in that which I sense, Mademoiselle.”

He opened the book to a fantastical drawing of a whole bevy of angels with elaborate wings of different shapes and sizes. Was the story true? Did he call on angels to help him?

Turning the page, he showed me a Salome dancing before the head of John the Baptist. And the next page, another version of the same tale.

“This is where I record my dreams of kings and queens, witches, unicorns, and strange jewels with unearthly powers. My dreams, you see, are mythical gates that allow me to meet with gods and goddesses and creatures of other realms. The critics write I have poetic hallucinations…” He paused. “It is a good description of what comes over me. I hesitate to discuss it even with my closest companions, even more so with a student, but something compelled me to share this with you. And I never deny such strong impulse. Have you ever experienced anything like my poetic hallucinations, Mademoiselle?”

I nodded, afraid to speak, to admit to him what I hadn’t even told Julien.

“You see visions? Hear voices?”

“I have once heard a voice, yes.”

“Don’t be afraid, Mademoiselle. You are gifted, and such talent comes with manifestations we don’t always understand. They say demons are not real, but we know differently, don’t we?”

“Aren’t demons evil?”

“In our sphere, the way we are taught, they could be classified as evil, but is our way of seeing things always correct? We are viewing it from inside our circle. What if we stepped into the spirit’s sphere and looked at us from that same distance. Perhaps we would be evil and they would be goodness. Don’t judge, Mademoiselle. Live to paint. Paint to live. It may be the only path open to you.”

I took in his words, not sure I even understood them.

“And please don’t pretend anymore with me in class, at the Louvre or here. Even if we cannot explain how or why your talent is exploding, you must not dam it up. Mallarmé, the poet, wrote, ‘Let the window be the art, the mystical experience.’ I want you to show me what you see through the window, Mademoiselle. You must be brave and you must be dark, or you will never be great.”

I left Moreau’s atelier in a fever. I’d been shown what few had seen and been taken into his confidence. If Moreau believed in the realm beyond this one, then there must be some others I could trust who might also. Would I find them that night at the séance that Monsieur Dujols had arranged for me?