Jul 31, 2017
VIRAGO ART CHALLENGE: Day 31
Maxime, one day I will get around to your story, you little Enjolras/Combeferre hybrid, you. :)
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VIRAGO ART CHALLENGE: Day 31
Maxime, one day I will get around to your story, you little Enjolras/Combeferre hybrid, you. :)
Find Virago here!
Virago Art Challenge 2016, Day 31
“‘Well, Father,’ said the boy, ‘at any rate, I’ve come to say good-bye. But there was just one thing, one more thing I meant to ask you before I have to go.’
He held out the book, as if offering it to the grave. ‘You left it for me, long ago.’
It was an old volume bound in red Moroccan leather, terribly torn and only held together by string.
‘It’s your Rousseau,’ said the boy. ‘You left it for me, and when it was settled that I would leave for Paris, Aunt Constance convinced them to give it to me. I like it very much, Father, and I’m very grateful that you thought of me, but—’ He paused, chewing his lip. ‘I just don’t understand it, Father.’ As if in the thought that the gravestone might have misunderstood, he hurried to correct himself, saying quickly, ‘No, I—that is, I understand the Rousseau perfectly well. What I don’t understand is your inscription.’
He carefully unwrapped the string and laid aside the front cover. Written there, on the inside blank page, in a neat little script, were the simple words: LOVE IS THE FUTURE.
‘“Love is the future,”’ the boy read it again for what felt like the hundredth time. ‘I read it, but I don’t understand it, Father. What could you have meant? Why give this message to me? What did you want me to learn from it?’
It was the only concrete thing linking him to his father. He was frustrated to tears that these very plain words, which even a small child could read, formed a mystical last message whispered across time from his father directly to him, and yet still he could not see what they signified.
If love is the future, the boy thought to himself, perhaps only the future can tell me the meaning of his message.
And he resolved to investigate further in Paris.”
Maximilien Combeferre had a curious old book left to him from his late father’s estate...
A little snippet from the prologue of the very-much-unfinished (barely-begun) sequel to Virago, which would follow Maxime through the Revolution of 1848, and my first color drawing of him, in his smart little polytechnicien uniform. I thought it only fitting to end this month as Virago itself ended: with Maxime. :)
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VIRAGO ART CHALLENGE: DAY 17
Spoilers!
The natural result of yesterday’s drawing. For those who’ve made it to the 1832 epilogue of Virago, this is a much later portrait of that shadowy Maximilien who had kept Enjolras away from her work for the entire winter. He ended up with a bit of her Greek profile, I think...
Maxime Combeferre is a newly-enrolled polytechnicien when the February Revolution of 1848 breaks out...But that’s another story. ;)
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