2. ’After’ Rainer Maria Rilke 1875-1926, another member of the Goran team experiences a Rilke poem line at the same Preview ’room’s’ facing mirrors "...spendthrift... giving yourself away to the empty ballroom..."

No money (food) for a week. Water in a tub is frozen. Mahoudeau ’eking out the last of his coal’ straightens up once he’s sure the stove is drawing properly. Claude visits. On a packing case table reinforced by struts is a heavy clay statue; the two friends examine/ discuss it ’lingering over every line and curve of its body’.

Zola’s THE MASTERPIECE - novel? story? is dated 1886. Cezanne’s ’The Stove in the Studio’ is from 1865-70. The ptg’s stove is not ’red hot’ as is the story’s. The ptg’s small not pot-bellied stove will, hopefully, heat a huge round cauldron above it. Dark expression - - freezing studio, canvas with its back to us and above a pan of ashes, vent half open, a small red glow.

...wondering if the Steinlen covr illustratr ("Les Gueules Noires") -- see pix -- is the same as the artist famed for the Steinlen cats.

" a bay, scarcely three years old, called Trompette."

L. Tancock adds in his 1954 GERMINAL translator's intro that Zola had put into novel L'OEUVRE character 'Claude's' depiction, "some traits of his childhood friend Cezanne".

NANA, the Rougon-Macquart novels, THERESE RAQUIN and esp. GERMINAL are exceedingly germane to this year of our times.

Few in the Rembrandt Club are acq with Leffel's work and fewer still know the School of Rembrandt, "... so long ago...far away..." but I thought you'd like to know his self-portrait is in the window of the store fronting the Club -- down a steep hill from LOVERS Midway (towards Bolsen Grove).