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as on other days, with God and with the world, these men had
slipped gently into death, to claim that part of eternal life to which
they had the right.
' For they had the right to everything: to life, to work, to riches,
to
command, to respect, and, in the end, to immortality.
I reflected for a moment and entered. A guard slept near a
window. The pale light which came from the windows spotted the
pictures. Nothing alive in that great rectangular room but a cat who
took fright at my entrance and fled. But I felt the gaze of a hundred
and fifty pairs of eyes upon me.
All who belonged to the elite of Bouville between 1875 and 1910
were there, men and women, scrupulously painted by Renaudas and
Bordurin.
The men built Sainte-Cecile-de-la-Mer. They founded, in 1882,
the Federation of Shipowners and Merchants of Bouville "to bring
together in one powerful group all men of good will, to cooperate
in the work of national reconstruction and to hold in check the parties
of disorder.... " They have made Bouville the French commercial
port best equipped for unloading coal and wood. The lengthening
and widening of the docks was their work. They enlarged the Mari–
time Station as much as was desirable and, by constant dredging,
brought the depth of the anchorage basin at low tide to thirty-five
feet. In twenty years the tonnage of fishing boats, which was 5,000
tons in 1869, was raised, thanks to them, to 18,000 tons. Stopping
at no sacrifice to aid the rise of the best representatives of the work–
ing class, they created, of their own initiative, various centers of tech–
nical and professional training, which have prospered under their
lofty protection. They broke the famous dock strike of 1898 and gave
their sons to the fatherland in 1914.
The women, worthy companions of these champions, founded
most of the Benevolent Societies, Day Nurseries, Women's Work–
houses. But they were, above all, wives and mothers. They brought
up fine children, taught them their duties and their rights, religion,
respect of the traditions which have made France.
The usual color of these portraits was a sombre brown. The
livelier colors had been banished for the sake of decency. However,
in the portraits by Renaudas, who preferred to paint old men, the
snow of the hair and whiskers cut across black backgrounds; he
excelled in painting hands. In the case of Bordurin, who had fewer
tricks, the hands were somewhat sacrificed but the collars shone like
white marble.
