Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“ We only see a great opal that never looks the same this time as when we looked last time. “He never painted to-day quite the same as he had painted yesterday,” Elie Faure says of Renoir, and it seems to me natural and right that it should have been so. I have never seen the same world twice. That, indeed, is but to repeat the Heraclitean saying—an imperfect saying, for it is only the half of the larger, more modern synthesis I have already quoted—that no man bathes twice in the same stream. ”

“ Renoir thus affirmed what every artist knows, that art is the creation and not the imitation of form. In his eyes the most valuable part of an artist's education is the intelligent study of what other artists have done. For his own part he studied Courbet and then Delacroix, and, assuredly, from these picked up useful hints for converting sensibility into significant form. Sensibility he never lacked. Renoir's painting gift may, without unpardonable silliness, be compared with the singing gift of Mozart. His conspicuous characteristics are loveliness and ease. ”

“ There, within twenty feet of him, making her dainty way through the shrubbery from the direction of the church, sunshine and shadow alternately flitting across her lovely face and form, Alice Renwick stepped forth into the pathway, and, shading her eyes with her hand, gazed along the leafy lane towards the road, as though expectant of another's coming. Then, attracted by the beauty of the golden-rod, she bent and busied herself with gathering in the yellow sprays. Armitage, with one foot in the stirrup, stood stock-still, half in surprise, half stunned by a sudden and painful thought. ”

“ Well, so be it!”
“Oh, save him, save him,” cried Emma, who had only grasped that one word. “Save him! I swear to you, Frédéric, I swear never to see him again.”
“Enough, enough,” said Lerne. “On the contrary you must love him with all your strength. I no longer wish to grieve you. Why struggle against destiny?”
[233] He summoned his assistants, and gave them some brief orders. Karl and Wilhelm seized the Minotaur, who was moaning.
Johann had set off to make preparations, as hard as he could.
“Schnell, schnell!” said the Professor, and he added, “Quick, Nicolas, follow us!” ”

“ Only by sitting at a master’s feet can one acquire the knowledge that informs one which influences should be utilised and which cast aside. One cannot learn from experience the total lessons of many men, each one of whom has given a lifetime to the study of a different side of a subject. If these men are to be surpassed their life work must be used as a starting point. Renoir began thus. He had fallen under the sway of Courbet, Manet, Delacroix and Monet ”

“ One has to avoid the kind of criticism which consists in reproaching one movement with not having had the qualities of the others whilst maintaining its own, and we have abandoned the idea of Beauty divided into a certain number of clauses and programmes, towards the sum total of which the efforts of the eclectic candidates are directed. M. Renoir is probably the most representative figure of a movement where he seems to have united all the qualities of his friends. To criticise him means to criticise Impressionism itself. ”

“ To all of which, being the fluttering of the caught fly, Renard would answer that his highness was more like an angel than a man; his youth was in his favour, for he might live to see his child of age, and England had had too much experience of minorities. Life, he added remarkably, was shorter than it used to be; sixty was now a great age for a king; and as the world was, men were as mature at thirty as in the days of his grandfather they were considered at forty. ”

“ At last, Renaud felt that his wits were leaving him. To remain faithful to Livette, whom he could not betray with the very woman upon whom he had promised to avenge her, he must not dismount from his horse, for as soon as he put his foot to the ground he would have become the stronger of the two! To remain faithful he must have courage to remain vanquished in this struggle of beauty against strength. And he waited.
She surprised the drover glancing for an instant toward the moor.
“Aha! you are afraid some one will see you, coward! but never fear! ”

“ Renaud at that moment was dreaming that he had seen the naked gipsy again and triumphed over her, and was asking himself, at the memory of that robust, youthful form, if she were not a virgin, even though a child of the high-road; recalling confusedly a strange, overpowering, absolute passion, the triumphal possession of a new being, a heifer hitherto wild and vicious, even to the bulls; of a mare that had never known bit or saddle, and had maintained a rebellious attitude in presence of the stallion.
Renaud was dreaming all that, but Renaud no longer existed for Zinzara. ”

“ Gabriel softly asked La Renaudie.
"I am afraid that they don't want anything," was the baron's reply.
At that moment the advocate Des Avenelles asked a hearing.
"This is their man, I fancy," La Renaudie remarked. "Des Avenelles is my host when I am in Paris,—an honest and sagacious fellow, but too cautious, almost to timidity even. His word will be law with them."
Des Avenelles from the beginning justified La Renaudie's prediction.
Said he: "We have listened to many bold and even audacious words; but has the moment really arrived to utter them? Are we not going a little too fast? ”

“ I will take care of the Rennepont business—the hinge on which will turn our temporal operations. We must begin from the foundation—substitute the play of interests, and the springs of passion, for the stupid club law of Father d'Aigrigny. He nearly compromised everything—and yet he has good parts, knows the world, has powers of seduction, quick insight—but plays ever in a single key, and is not great enough to make himself little. In his stead, I shall know how to make use of him. There is good stuff in the man. ”

“ To Renoux’s disgust his own loot consisted of sealed envelopes full of clippings from German newspapers published in Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York.
“That animal, Lehr,” he said with a wry face, “has certainly played us a filthy turn. These clippings amount to nothing——” His eyes fell on the packet of papers which Barres was now opening, and he leaned over his shoulder to look.
“Thank God!” he said, “here they are! Where on earth did you find these papers, Barres? They’re the documents we were after! They ought to have been in Lehr’s pockets!” ”

“ Then as briefly as possible Don Renard told the stirring tale of the rescue on the Thames, hiding for the moment his own connection with it. He told it well, bringing out vividly all the strong points.
The King was a cold-blooded man, yet he was something of a soldier, and a deed of arms like this moved him.
"And the man they rescued, who was he, you have not told me his name?" said he.
"It was my stepson, Don Diego, sire," was the reply.
"Ah! I see, I see," said the King. ”

“ This is how Renard described the drama:
"Good heavens, it is a misfortune of which I am the first and last victim, and with which my will has nothing to do. The facts are their own commentary, Monsieur le President. I am an honest man, a hard-working man, an upholsterer in the same street for the last sixteen years, known, liked, respected, and esteemed by all, as my neighbors have testified, even the porter, who is not folatre every day. I am fond of work, I am fond of saving, I like honest men, and respectable pleasures. ”

“ Such are the faults he has to declare that the holy man does not dare absolve him, but advises him to go to Rome and ask the absolution of the Pope. Reynard accordingly “takes his scrip and burdon [that is, his wallet and staff, as did all pilgrims] , and begins to move on, and takes his way; he looks quite like a pilgrim, his scrip fits his neck beautifully.” But travelling alone is not pleasant; he meets Belin the Sheep, and persuades him to come with him, and a little farther “Bernart the arch-priest,” a donkey, who was eating thistles in a ditch; he also secures this new companion. ”

“ Yet, strive as he would—and no man could strive more resolutely—he could not succeed in banishing the image of Isaura. It was with him always; and with it a sense of irreparable loss, of a terrible void, of a pining anguish.
And the success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, while sufficient to detain him in the place, was so slight, and advanced by such slow degrees, that it furnished no continued occupation to his restless mind. M. Renard was acute and painstaking. But it was no easy matter to obtain any trace of a Parisian visitor to so popular a Spa so many years ago. ”

“ I found again yesterday, my first lover Alcide, the man I fought with Léonie about. He is the handsome fellow who won the wrestling-match yesterday. I am going off with him. I could not give up that kind of life, except for the sort of money which Lerne promised me. I should have made you unhappy, and should have been unfaithful to you. All the rest amounts to nothing. I want a real man. It is not your fault, and so I hope this will not cause you any pain. Adieu for life.
“Emma Bourdichet.” ”

“ HISTOIRE DE LA NATURE DES OISEAUX. By Pierre Belon. Folio, Paris, G. Corrozet, 1555.
In this book we find, in addition to the portrait of Belon, seven cuts of birds, signed with the Lorraine cross. They are: the osprey, folio 96; the sea-gull, 169; the bustard, 238; the pullet, 252; the loriot, 295; the woodpecker, 304; the sparrow-hawk, 376. Some of the other engravings in the volume are signed with a white cross on a black ground. ”

“ I felt as if I were enveloped in smoke wherein riddling sphinxes kept turning their vague faces towards me.
My braces were just going to be flung off—and were not flung off.
In the garden Lerne was making his way towards the gray buildings accompanied by his three assistants.
“They are going to work in there,” said I to myself. “That’s clear. I am not being watched; they have not had time to take many precautions; uncle is persuaded I am asleep. Nicolas, this is the time for action, now or never. But what to start with? Emma, or the secret? Hum ... ”

“ Of what avail against that breeze, which the heifers inhale with delight, is the “I will not” of a young man who feels his youth? The good Lord forgives it in others. “I have been worrying a great deal over a very small matter of late,” thought Renaud. And he sagely concluded that he would return at once to Saintes-Maries, to set Livette’s mind at rest, as it was his duty to do first of all, without avoiding or seeking out the other. ”

“ Then after a silence: “Is it not better to be dead than mad? After all it is the best thing for him. Come, [250] Nicolas, you are not going to put on a face like that! Come!”
And she seized my hand, and dragged me to the château.
Lerne went away in the other direction.
I was prostrated. “Let me alone,” I said, “let me alone. Donovan, the poor wretch. Let me alone. You cannot know! Let me alone, I say.”
A maddening fear came over me. Leaving Emma I ran after my uncle and joined him at the laboratory. He was talking to Johann, and showing him the telegram. ”

“ There was no reason why Thomas, an old and trusted servant, should not have had a key to that particular door, although the servants' entry was in the west wing. But I had not known of this key, and it opened up a new field of conjecture. Just now, however, there were many things to be attended to, and, leaving Warner with the body, we all went back to the house. Mr. Jamieson walked with me, while Halsey and Gertrude followed.
"I suppose I shall have to notify the Armstrongs," I said. "They will know if Thomas had any people and how to reach them. ”

“ It does buck me up wonderfully. I must learn how to drive the beast. I shall be the mahout of this fierce mammoth. Eh! Eh! Ah! Ha!”
At the moment of this outburst of hilarity, I was just finishing my reasoning, and it was the outburst which caused me to make my attack—and to commit my imprudence.
“How amusing you are, uncle! Your gayety cheers me up. I recognize you again. Why aren’t you always like this, and why do you distrust me—me, who, on the contrary—deserve all your confidence?”
“But,” said Lerne, “you know quite well I will give it to you when the time has come. ”

“ The whole of this philosophy can be summed up in the following phrase of Renan's: "Human affairs are always an approximation lacking gravity and precision"; and as a matter of fact, for an intellectualist, what lacks precision must also lack gravity. But in Renan the conscientious historian was never entirely asleep, and he at once adds as a corrective: "To have realised this truth is a great result obtained by philosophy; but it is an abdication of any active role. The future lies in the hands of those who are not disillusioned." ”

“ RENNELL, THOMAS (1787–1824) , divine, only son of Thomas Rennell (1754–1840) [q. v.] , dean of Winchester, was born at Winchester in 1787. Like his father, he was educated at Eton, where he had a brilliant reputation as a scholar. He won one of Dr. Claudius Buchanan's prizes for a Greek Sapphic ode on the propagation of the gospel in India, and a prize for Latin verses on ‘Pallentes Morbi.’ He also conducted, in conjunction with three of his contemporaries, a periodical called the ‘Miniature,’ a successor of the ‘Microcosm.’ In 1806 he was elected from Eton to King's College, Cambridge. ”

“ Renaud watched the ploughman with a feeling of delight at the thought of his native country being enriched by honest toil; and with a confused feeling of regret, too, for he preferred that the moor should remain uncultivated and wild and free. The idea of a flat plain, tilled from end to end, where no room was left for the straying feet of horses as God made them—that idea saddened him.
He would always say to himself as he rode through more civilized regions: “Now there, you know, a man can neither live nor die.” ”