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“But my medium will do it. The written word will cause the revolution. Every literate miner in Belgium and France has read my book. There is not a café, not a miserable shack in the whole region, that hasn’t a well-thumbed copy of ‘Germinal’. Those who can’t read have it read to them over and over again. Four strikes already. And dozens more coming. The whole country is rising. ‘Germinal’ will create a new society, where your religion couldn’t. And what do I get as my reward?”

“What?”

“Francs. Thousands upon thousands of them. Will you join me in a drink?”

The discussion around the Lautrec table became animated. Everyone turned his attention that way.

“How is ‘ma methode,’ Seurat?” asked Lautrec, cracking his knuckles one by one.

Seurat ignored the gibe. His exquisitely perfect features and calm, mask-like expression suggested, not the face of one man, but the essence of masculine beauty.

“There is a new book on colour refraction by an American, Ogden Rood. I think it is an advance on Helmholtz and Chevral, though not quite so stimulating as de Superville’s work. You could all read it with profit.”

“I don’t read books about painting,” said Lautrec. “I leave that to the layman.”

Seurat unbuttoned the black and white checked coat and straightened out the large blue tie sprinkled with polka dots.

“You yourself are a layman,” he said, “so long as you guess at the colours you use.”

“I don’t guess. I know by instinct.”

“Science is a method, Georges,” put in Gauguin. “We have become scientific in our application of colour by years of hard work and experimentation.”

“That’s not enough, my friend. The trend of our age is toward objective production. The days of inspiration, of trial and error, are gone forever.”

“I can’t read those books,” said Rousseau. “They give me a headache. Then I have to go paint all day to get rid of it.”

Everyone laughed. Anquetin turned to Zola and said, “Did you see the attack on ‘Germinal’ in this evening’s paper?”

“No. What did it say?”

“The critic called you the most immoral writer of the nineteenth century.”

“Their old cry. Can’t they find anything else to say against me?”

“They’re right, Zola,” said Lautrec. “I find your books carnal and obscene.”

“You certainly ought to recognize obscenity when you see it!”

“Had you that time, Lautrec!”

“Garçon,” called Zola. “A round of drinks.”

“We’re in for it now,” murmured Cezanne to Anquetin. “When Emile buys the drinks, it means you have to listen to an hour’s lecture.”

The waiter served the drinks. The painters lit their pipes and gathered into a close, intimate circle. The gas lamps illuminated the room in spirals of light. The hum of conversation from the other tables was low and chordal.

“They call my books immoral,” said Zola, “for the same reason that they attribute immorality to your paintings, Henri. The public cannot understand that there is no room for moral judgements in art. Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones. A whore by Toulouse-Lautrec is moral because he brings out the beauty that lies beneath her external appearance; a pure country girl by Bouguereau is immoral because she is sentimentalized and so cloyingly sweet that just to look at her is enough to make you vomit!”

“Yes, that’s so,” nodded Theo.

Vincent saw that the painters respected Zola, not because he was successful—they despised the ordinary connotations of success—but because he worked in a medium which seemed mysterious and difficult to them. They listened closely to his words.

“The ordinary human brain thinks in terms of duality; light and shade, sweet and sour, good and evil. That duality does not exist in nature. There is neither good nor evil in the world, but only being and doing. When we describe an action, we describe life; when we call that action names—like depravity or obscenity—we go into the realm of subjective prejudice.”

“But, Emile,” said Theo. “What would the mass of people do without its standard of morality?”

“Morality is like religion,” continued Toulouse-Lautrec; “a soporific to close people’s eyes to the tawdriness of their life.”

“Your amorality is nothing but anarchism, Zola,” said Seurat, “and nihilistic anarchism, at that. It’s been tried before, and it doesn’t work.”

“Of course we have to have certain codes,” agreed Zola. “The public weal demands sacrifices from the individual. I don’t object to morality, but only to the pudency that spits upon Olympia, and wants Maupassant suppressed. I tell you, morality in France today is entirely confined to the erogenous zone. Let people sleep with whom they like; I know a higher morality than that.”