Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what he had before his eyes, he used colour arbitrarily to express himself with greater force. He realized that what Pissarro had told him in Paris was true. “You must boldly exaggerate the effects, either in harmony or discord, which colours produce.” In Maupassant’s preface to “Pierre et Jean” he found a similar sentiment. “The artist has the liberty to exaggerate, to create in his novel a world more beautiful, more simple, more consoling than ours.”
He did a day’s hard, close work among the cornfields in full sun. The result was a ploughed field, a big field with clods of violet earth, climbing toward the horizon; a sower in blue and white; on the horizon a field of short, ripe corn; over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.
Vincent knew that the Parisian critics would think he worked too fast. He did not agree. Was it not emotion, the sincerity of his feeling for nature, that impelled him? And if the emotions were sometimes so strong that he worked without knowing he worked, if sometimes the strokes came with a sequence and coherence like words in a speech, then too the time would come when there would again be heavy days, empty of inspiration. He had to strike while the iron was hot, put the forged bars on one side.
He strapped his easel to his back and took the road home which led past Montmajour. He walked so rapidly that he soon overtook a man and a boy who were dallying ahead of him. He recognized the man as old Roulin the Arlesian
“Good day, monsieur Roulin,” he said.
“Ah, it is you, the painter,” said Roulin. “Good day. I have been taking my boy for a Sunday afternoon stroll.”
“It has been a glorious day, hasn’t it?”
“Ah, yes, it is lovely when that devil mistral does not blow. You have painted a picture today, Monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“I am an ignorant man, Monsieur, and know nothing about art. But I would be honoured if you would let me look.”
“With pleasure.”
The boy ran ahead, playing. Vincent and Roulin walked side by side. While Roulin looked at the canvas, Vincent studied him. Roulin was wearing his blue postman’s cap. He had soft, inquiring eyes and a long, square, wavy beard which completely covered his neck and collar and came to rest on the dark blue postman’s coat. Vincent felt the same soft, wistful quality about Roulin that had attracted him to Pére Tanguy. He was homely in a pathetic sort of way, and his plain, peasant’s face seemed out of place in the luxuriant Greek beard.
“I am an ignorant man, Monsieur,” repeated Roulin, “and you will forgive me for speaking. But your cornfields are so very alive, as alive as the field we passed back there, for instance, where I saw you at work.”
“Then you like it?”
“As for that, I cannot say. I only know that it makes me feel something, in here.”
He ran his hand upward over his chest.
They paused for a moment at the base of Montmajour. The sun was setting red over the ancient abbey, its rays falling on the trunks and foliage of pines growing among a tumble of rocks, colouring the trunks and foliage with orange fire, while the other pines in the distance stood out in Prussian blue against a sky of tender, blue-green cerulean. The white sand and the layers of white rocks under the trees took on tints of blue.
“That is alive, too, is it not, Monsieur?” asked Roulin.
“It will still be alive when we are gone, Roulin.”
They walked along, chatting in a quiet, friendly manner. There was nothing of the abrasive quality in Roulin’s words. His mind was simple, his thoughts at once simple and profound. He supported himself, his wife, and four children on a hundred and thirty-five francs a month. He had been a postman twenty-five years without a promotion, and with only infinitesimal advances in salary.
“When I was young, Monsieur,” he said, “I used to think a lot about God. But He seems to have grown thinner with the years. He is still in that cornfield you painted, and in the sunset by Montmajour, but when I think about men . . . and the world they have made . . .”
“I know, Roulin, but I feel more and more that we must not judge God by this world. It’s just a study that didn’t come off. What can you do in a study that has gone wrong, if you are fond of the artist? You do not find much to criticize; you hold your tongue. But you have a right to ask for something better.”
“Yes, that’s it,” exclaimed Roulin, “something just a tiny bit better.”
“We should have to see some other work by the same hand before we judge him. This world was evidently botched up in a hurry on one of his bad days, when the artist did not have his wits about him.”
Dusk had fallen over the winding country road. The first chips of stars poked through the heavy cobalt blanket of night. Roulin’s sweet innocent eyes searched Vincent’s face. “Then you think there are other worlds besides this, Monsieur?”
