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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1230 ***
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+Dedication
+
+To The Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas, As a Testimony of the
+Affectionate Esteem of the Author,
+
+De Balzac
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+
+Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of works
+of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the revolution
+of 1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness, weariness,
+sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded galleries? Since
+1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has again been taken
+by assault,--this time by a populace of artists who have maintained
+themselves in it.
+
+In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of art,
+it conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited. Among
+the two hundred selected paintings, the public could still choose: a
+crown was awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager, impassioned
+discussions arose about some picture. The abuse showered on Delacroix,
+on Ingres, contributed no less to their fame than the praises and
+fanaticism of their adherents. To-day, neither the crowd nor the
+criticism grows impassioned about the products of that bazaar. Forced to
+make the selection for itself, which in former days the examining
+jury made for it, the attention of the public is soon wearied and the
+exhibition closes. Before the year 1817 the pictures admitted never went
+beyond the first two columns of the long gallery of the old masters; but
+in that year, to the great astonishment of the public, they filled the
+whole space. Historical, high-art, genre paintings, easel pictures,
+landscapes, flowers, animals, and water-colors,--these eight specialties
+could surely not offer more than twenty pictures in one year worthy of
+the eyes of the public, which, indeed, cannot give its attention to a
+greater number of such works. The more the number of artists increases,
+the more careful and exacting the jury of admission ought to be.
+
+The true character of the Salon was lost as soon as it spread along
+the galleries. The Salon should have remained within fixed limits of
+inflexible proportions, where each distinct specialty could show its
+masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence
+of the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a mob;
+instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar; instead of
+a choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the result? A great
+artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children at a Fountain,"
+"Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far more to his credit
+if the four pictures had been exhibited in the great Salon with the
+hundred good pictures of that year, than his twenty pictures could,
+among three thousand others, jumbled together in six galleries.
+
+By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every
+one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When,
+twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the
+"Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism
+of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused
+of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism,
+that young and vigorous palettes existed, no such complaint was made.
+Now, when the veriest dauber of canvas can send in his work, the whole
+talk is of genius neglected! Where judgment no longer exists, there is
+no longer anything judged. But whatever artists may be doing now, they
+will come back in time to the examination and selection which presents
+their works to the admiration of the crowd for whom they work. Without
+selection by the Academy there will be no Salon, and without the Salon
+art may perish.
+
+Ever since the catalogue has grown into a book, many names have appeared
+in it which still remain in their native obscurity, in spite of the ten
+or a dozen pictures attached to them. Among these names perhaps the most
+unknown to fame is that of an artist named Pierre Grassou, coming from
+Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his brother-artists, who,
+at the present moment holds a place, as the saying is, "in the sun," and
+who suggested the rather bitter reflections by which this sketch of
+his life is introduced,--reflections that are applicable to many other
+individuals of the tribe of artists.
+
+In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of
+one of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor,
+and possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings,
+three windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a courtyard,
+or, to speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above the three or
+four rooms occupied by Grassou of Fougeres was his studio, looking over
+to Montmartre. This studio was painted in brick-color, for a background;
+the floor was tinted brown and well frotted; each chair was furnished
+with a bit of carpet bound round the edges; the sofa, simple enough, was
+clean as that in the bedroom of some worthy bourgeoise. All these things
+denoted the tidy ways of a small mind and the thrift of a poor man. A
+bureau was there, in which to put away the studio implements, a table
+for breakfast, a sideboard, a secretary; in short, all the articles
+necessary to a painter, neatly arranged and very clean. The stove
+participated in this Dutch cleanliness, which was all the more visible
+because the pure and little changing light from the north flooded with
+its cold clear beams the vast apartment. Fougeres, being merely a genre
+painter, does not need the immense machinery and outfit which ruin
+historical painters; he has never recognized within himself sufficient
+faculty to attempt high-art, and he therefore clings to easel painting.
+
+At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at
+which the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque idea
+of perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in themselves,
+Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette, and lighted
+his stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting till the frost
+on his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full light in. The
+weather was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who ate his bread
+with that patient, resigned air that tells so much, heard and recognized
+the step of a man who had upon his life the influence such men have
+on the lives of nearly all artists,--the step of Elie Magus, a
+picture-dealer, a usurer in canvas. The next moment Elie Magus entered
+and found the painter in the act of beginning his work in the tidy
+studio.
+
+"How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
+
+Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought his
+pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave himself the
+airs of a fine artist.
+
+"Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such
+pretensions! You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six
+sous' worth of color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll
+say that. You are steady; and I've come to put a good bit of business in
+your way."
+
+"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do you know Latin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, it means that the Greeks never proposed a good bit of business
+to the Trojans without getting their fair share of it. In the olden time
+they used to say, 'Take my horse.' Now we say, 'Take my bear.' Well,
+what do you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"
+
+These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which
+Fougeres employed what painters call studio fun.
+
+"Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for nothing."
+
+"Oh! oh!"
+
+"I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest
+man."
+
+"Come, out with it!"
+
+"Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
+
+"All for me?"
+
+"Yes--they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois--they are crazy
+about art--have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a 'dot' of a
+hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,--perhaps they'll turn
+out family portraits."
+
+And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was
+called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which
+frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles talking
+marriage.
+
+"Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you can
+very well afford to paint me three pictures."
+
+"True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
+
+"And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."
+
+"Marry! I?" cried Pierre Grassou,--"I, who have a habit of sleeping
+alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged--"
+
+"One hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a quiet girl, full of
+golden tones, as you call 'em, like a Titian."
+
+"What class of people are they?"
+
+"Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at
+Ville d'Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year."
+
+"What business did they do?"
+
+"Bottles."
+
+"Now don't say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth
+on edge."
+
+"Am I to bring them?"
+
+"Three portraits--I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for
+portrait-painting. Well, yes!"
+
+Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle family.
+To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the painter, and
+what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and Dame Vervelle,
+adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast an eye on the
+anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.
+
+When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was
+thought a great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to
+Schinner's, to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color
+which distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all discreet;
+at any rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From there he went
+to Sommervieux' atelier, to acquire that portion of the art of painting
+which is called composition, but composition was shy and distant to him.
+Then he tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet the mystery of their
+interior effects. The two masters were not robbed. Finally Fougeres
+ended his education with Duval-Lecamus. During these studied and
+these different transformations Fougeres' habits and ways of life were
+tranquil and moral to a degree that furnished matter of jesting to the
+various ateliers where he sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his
+comrades by his modesty and by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike
+nature. The masters, however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters
+prefer bright fellows, eccentric spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy
+and deeply reflective, which argue future talent. Everything about
+Pierre Grassou smacked of mediocrity. His nickname "Fougeres" (that
+of the painter in the play of "The Eglantine") was the source of much
+teasing; but, by force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the
+town in which he had first seen light.
+
+Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he
+had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather
+wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a
+certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full
+of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous
+bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk
+with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a distant connection of
+the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by the fact of an obstinacy
+which constitutes the Breton character. What he suffered, the manner in
+which he lived during those years of study, God only knows. He suffered
+as much as great men suffer when they are hounded by poverty and hunted
+like wild beasts by the pack of commonplace minds and by troops of
+vanities athirst for vengeance.
+
+As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres
+took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
+to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
+picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
+represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
+picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
+he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
+strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in challenges
+sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or even by threats
+of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas, wrapped it in
+a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart that he would
+still make himself a great painter. He placed his picture on the easel,
+and went to one of his former masters, a man of immense talent,--to
+Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph at that year's Salon
+was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and criticise the rejected
+work. The great painter left everything and went at once. When poor
+Fougeres had placed the work before him Schinner, after a glance,
+pressed Fougeres' hand.
+
+"You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must
+not deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made in
+the studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your brush,
+my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and not take
+the canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton night-cap, and
+be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to some government
+office, ask for a place, and give up art."
+
+"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it is
+not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
+
+"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
+your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
+who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
+
+While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
+face so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to dinner
+and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock Fougeres was
+at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed the colors; he
+made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched up his figures.
+Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the picture to Elie
+Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian, had three reasons
+for being what he became,--rich and avaricious. Coming last from
+Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old pictures and living
+on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who relied on his palette
+to go to the baker's, bravely ate bread and nuts, or bread and milk, or
+bread and cherries, or bread and cheese, according to the seasons. Elie
+Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first picture, eyed it for some time
+and then gave him fifteen francs.
+
+"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
+expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
+
+Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might
+have had that picture for five francs.
+
+For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and
+stationed himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's
+shop, whence his eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain
+any notice from the eyes of the passers along the street. At the end of
+a week the picture disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and approached
+the dealer's shop in a lounging manner. The Jew was at his door.
+
+"Well, I see you have sold my picture."
+
+"No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one
+who fancies he knows about painting."
+
+Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
+another picture, and spent two months upon it,--eating mouse's meals and
+working like a galley-slave.
+
+One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully to
+the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
+
+"I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.
+
+"For how much?"
+
+"I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
+interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll buy
+them of you," said Elie.
+
+Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him as
+a father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter Schinner
+was mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there were some
+hearts that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was understood and
+appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the innocence of a lad
+of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful, surly artists, would
+have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face and seen the twitching
+of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his moustache, and the movement
+of his shoulders which betrayed the satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew
+in swindling a Christian.
+
+Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to his
+honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy protecting
+a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one of those
+eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had,
+to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to
+the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he
+was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle
+of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented
+thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself a man of genius. The
+next day he bought colors, and canvases of various dimensions; he piled
+up bread and cheese on his table, he filled a water-pot with water,
+he laid in a provision of wood for his stove; then, to use a studio
+expression, he dug at his pictures. He hired several models and Magus
+lent him stuffs.
+
+After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures. Again
+he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the invitation.
+The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile imitation
+of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a copy of
+Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
+
+"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
+original."
+
+"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.
+
+"What?" asked Fougeres.
+
+"Fling yourself into literature."
+
+Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked and
+obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before taking
+them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that
+price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to
+his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what
+became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination.
+His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were
+covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out,
+and Pierre could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fancied
+something was wrong with his eyes.
+
+The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After seven
+years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute quite
+passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
+Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
+laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
+hundred.
+
+At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
+three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the
+art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the poverty
+of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the grand salon
+of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture, powerful in
+interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and from Dubufe's
+first manner as to execution, represented a young man in prison, whose
+hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one side was
+a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in tears. A
+sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched table was a
+meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a window near
+the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois shudder, and
+the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been inspired by the
+masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of the "Dropsical
+Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full front. The
+condemned man was substituted for the dying woman--same pallor, same
+glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor, he had painted
+the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk attired in black; but
+he had added an old woman to the young one of Gerard Douw. The cruelly
+simple and good-humored face of the executioner completed and dominated
+the group. This plagiarism, very cleverly disguised, was not discovered.
+The catalogue contained the following:--
+
+     510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
+     Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
+
+Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
+recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd collected
+every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X. paused to
+look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the poor Breton,
+became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of
+the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was
+suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a most satisfying
+religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on
+the stone-floor,--a huge blunder, by the way, for Fougeres had painted
+greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the base of the walls.
+"Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the
+Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the cross of the Legion
+of honor to this son of a peasant who had fought for the royal cause
+in 1799. (Joseph Bridau, the great painter, was not yet decorated.) The
+minister of the Interior ordered two church pictures of Fougeres.
+
+This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame,
+future, and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy,
+imitate, and you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou
+de Fougeres obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which society
+owes the wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these days the
+election of leaders in all social classes; who proceed, naturally, to
+elect themselves and who wage a bitter war against all true talent. The
+principle of election applied indiscriminately is false, and France will
+some day abandon it.
+
+Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good
+and gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides,
+he had on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who
+expected to succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of a
+man whom nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said:--
+
+"Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen his
+successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"
+
+That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support
+and the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up
+mediocrities as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers.
+The newspapers, it is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier
+Fougeres digested them as he had digested the counsel of his friends,
+with angelic patience.
+
+Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned,
+he furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and painted
+the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two church
+pictures, and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a punctuality
+that was very discomforting to the exchequer of the ministry, accustomed
+to a different course of action. But--admire the good fortune of men who
+are methodical--if Grassou, belated with his work, had been caught by
+the revolution of July he would not have got his money.
+
+By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie Magus
+some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the help of
+which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of execution
+before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the bourgeoisie
+worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of ideas, for
+steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great loyalty; though
+they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man who held it.
+
+"What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said
+his comrades.
+
+But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
+feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a
+book is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary
+critics and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt
+them, he acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit
+of justice that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After
+the revolution of July, Fougeres sent about ten pictures a year to the
+Salon, of which the jury admitted four or five. He lived with the most
+rigid economy, his household being managed solely by an old charwoman.
+For all amusement he visited his friends, he went to see works of art,
+he allowed himself a few little trips about France, and he planned to go
+to Switzerland in search of inspiration. This detestable artist was an
+excellent citizen; he mounted guard duly, went to reviews, and paid his
+rent and provision-bills with bourgeois punctuality.
+
+Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the time
+to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to complicate
+his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of increasing his
+little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his notary, Cardot,
+his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary had received
+about three thousand francs he invested them in some first mortgage, the
+interest of which he drew himself and added to the quarterly payments
+made to him by Fougeres. The painter was awaiting the fortunate moment
+when his property thus laid by would give him the imposing income of two
+thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum dignitate of the
+artist and paint pictures; but oh! what pictures! true pictures! each a
+finished picture! chouette, Koxnoff, chocnosoff! His future, his dreams
+of happiness, the superlative of his hopes--do you know what it was?
+To enter the Institute and obtain the grade of officer of the Legion
+of honor; to side down beside Schinner and Leon de Lora, to reach the
+Academy before Bridau, to wear a rosette in his buttonhole! What a
+dream! It is only commonplace men who think of everything.
+
+Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed up
+his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was not a
+little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face vulgarly
+called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted a pumpkin,
+clothed in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of tintinnabulating baubles.
+The melon puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin advanced on turnips,
+improperly called legs. A true painter would have turned the little
+bottle-vendor off at once, assuring him that he didn't paint vegetables.
+This painter looked at his client without a smile, for Monsieur Vervelle
+wore a three-thousand-franc diamond in the bosom of his shirt.
+
+Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
+term then much in vogue in the studios.
+
+Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois drew
+after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of his wife
+and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her face, and
+in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head and tied in
+around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap-rooted,
+and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly exhibited
+unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of a
+first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned
+her shoulders, as round behind as they were before; consequently, the
+spherical form of the cocoa-nut was perfect. Her feet, of a kind that
+painters call abatis, rose above the varnished leather of the shoes in a
+swelling that was some inches high. How the feet were ever got into the
+shoes, no one knows.
+
+Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented
+a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that a
+Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish spots
+upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any brows, a
+leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two honest bows
+of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of her mother. The
+faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round the studio, an
+air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable enthusiasm for Art.
+
+"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said the
+father, assuming a jaunty air.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
+
+"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while
+the painter's back was turned.
+
+"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who
+wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
+
+Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
+accompanied him to the landing.
+
+"There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
+
+"One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
+
+"Yes, but what a family!"
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
+Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
+
+"Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
+teeth on edge."
+
+"Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
+departed.
+
+That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst
+into his garret that morning.
+
+While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the
+bottle-dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full
+of violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel,
+marvelling at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a
+demigod. This visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw
+upon the family its fantastic reflections.
+
+"You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you
+get it," said the mother.
+
+"No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the
+means to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I have;
+as soon as I have taken him the money I never think of it again."
+
+"I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were baskets
+with holes in them."
+
+"Who is your notary--if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame
+Vervelle.
+
+"A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
+
+"Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our
+notary too."
+
+"Take care! don't move," said the painter.
+
+"Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about you'll
+make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then you'd
+understand."
+
+"Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle Vervelle
+to her parents.
+
+"Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn certain
+things. When you are married--well, till then, keep quiet."
+
+During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate
+with the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As they
+went away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite of
+this separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally
+awakened her curiosity.
+
+"Decorated--thirty-seven years old--an artist who gets orders--puts his
+money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de Fougeres!
+not a bad name--doesn't look like a bad man either! One might prefer a
+merchant; but before a merchant retires from business one can never know
+what one's daughter may come to; whereas an economical artist--and then
+you know we love Art--Well, we'll see!"
+
+While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou
+discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible to
+stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard, and
+looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a series of
+the oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of metals; a
+tawny yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of red-haired women,
+and he turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage what man would
+ever care about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty fades,--but
+ugliness remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That night when he
+went to bed the painter had come to think Virginie Vervelle charming.
+
+When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the
+artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on clean
+linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and chosen
+a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with pointed
+toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of the
+artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes, and
+turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou thought
+these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace; happily she
+didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did she look like?
+
+During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family
+and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty. This
+flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of the
+artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the mother.
+
+"What! for nothing?" they said.
+
+Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
+
+"You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money,"
+said old Vervelle.
+
+At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of pictures
+which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens, Gerard Douw,
+Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
+
+"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
+ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
+pictures."
+
+"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
+
+When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was nearly
+finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The notary
+had spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou was, he
+said, one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by thirty-six
+thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now saved about ten
+thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest; in short, he was
+incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark had enormous
+weight in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of nothing but the
+celebrated painter Fougeres.
+
+The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie,
+he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three Vervelles
+bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed to consider
+as one of their residences; there was to them an inexplicable attraction
+in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic abode. Abyssus abyssum, the
+commonplace attracts the commonplace. Toward the end of the sitting the
+stairway shook, the door was violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he
+came like a whirlwind, his hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face
+as he looked about him, casting everywhere the lightning of his glance;
+then he walked round the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou,
+pulling his coat together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but
+in vain, to button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule
+of cloth.
+
+"Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do you
+paint such things as that?"
+
+"Hold your tongue!"
+
+"Ah! to be sure, yes."
+
+The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary apparition,
+passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades deeper.
+
+"Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if
+the fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit of
+me left. What a crew!"
+
+"I'll write you a line for my notary."
+
+"Have you got a notary?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a
+perfumer's sign."
+
+Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.
+
+"Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with his
+lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All things
+are magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your palette, and
+warm up those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots; come, butter it
+well in. Do you pretend to have more sense than Nature?"
+
+"Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that
+note."
+
+Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear:--
+
+"Won't that country lout spoilt it?"
+
+"If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be worth
+a thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.
+
+Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who
+was stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very uneasy
+at his co-operation in her daughter's portrait.
+
+"Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette,
+and taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to d'Arthez'
+chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora the tops of
+the doors--masterpieces! Come and see us."
+
+And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at
+Virginie.
+
+"Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
+
+"A great artist," answered Grassou.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
+portrait? He frightened me."
+
+"He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
+
+"Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you," said
+Madame Vervelle.
+
+The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
+
+The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
+just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man of
+genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out to
+his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how little
+attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
+
+"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty
+talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of
+pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with
+mere merchants."
+
+This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was
+charming to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such
+compliments. The honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart
+of gold, that loyal soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow,
+decorated by royalty itself with the Legion of honor, put himself under
+arms to go out to Ville d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of the
+year. The painter went modestly by public conveyance, and he could not
+but admire the beautiful villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a park
+of five acres at the summit of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble view
+of the landscape. Marry Virginie, and have that beautiful villa some day
+for his own!
+
+He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a
+kindliness, a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was
+indeed a day of triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about
+the grounds on the nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be
+for the steps of so great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed and
+combed, and the lawns had just been mown. The pure country air wafted
+to the nostrils a most enticing smell of cooking. All things about the
+mansion seemed to say:
+
+"We have a great artist among us."
+
+Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the
+daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified step.
+These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou
+for seven hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its
+magnificence, Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their
+grand theatrical effect,--the opening of the picture gallery illuminated
+by lamps, the reflections of which were managed with the utmost care.
+Three neighbours, also retired merchants, an old uncle (from whom were
+expectations), an elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a number of other
+guests invited to be present at this ovation to a great artist followed
+Grassou into the picture gallery, all curious to hear his opinion of the
+famous collection of pere Vervelle, who was fond of oppressing them with
+the fabulous value of his paintings. The bottle-merchant seemed to have
+the idea of competing with King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of
+Versailles.
+
+The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read
+in black letters on a gold ground:
+
+               Rubens
+     Dance of fauns and nymphs
+
+                         Rembrandt
+     Interior of a dissecting room. The physician van Tromp
+             instructing his pupils.
+
+In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and dusted.
+Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not undrawn in
+presence of young ladies.
+
+Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon
+his lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art.
+He was Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard
+Douw! He was twenty great masters all by himself.
+
+"What is the matter? You've turned pale!"
+
+"Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The painter
+took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a corner on
+pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then the rage.
+
+"You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"
+
+"Yes, all originals."
+
+"Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall point
+out to you."
+
+Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
+gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
+examine each picture.
+
+"Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached the
+last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
+
+"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is
+nothing at all!"
+
+"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
+francs' worth of pictures?"
+
+"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear, "and
+I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand francs
+the whole lot."
+
+"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
+'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard Douw!"
+
+"And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw
+the meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in
+Elie's shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had
+required of him.
+
+Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur
+de Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou)
+advanced so much that when the portraits were finished he presented them
+gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his wife.
+
+At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
+Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He earns
+some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs' worth
+of canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and he
+lives with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who agree
+delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on earth.
+Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in which he
+is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not a family
+portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue du Temple
+that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs less than
+five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois families have
+for employing him is this:--
+
+"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year with
+his notary."
+
+As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May
+12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major
+in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to
+order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked
+about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying to
+them:--
+
+"The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
+
+Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two
+children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to
+eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh at
+his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and that
+the feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still works on;
+he aims for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter. And--oh!
+vengeance which dilates his heart!--he buys the pictures of celebrated
+artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these true works
+of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the collection at
+Ville d'Avray.
+
+There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than
+that of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and
+truly obliging.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Cardot (Parisian notary)
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Man of Business
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grassou, Pierre
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Lora, Leon de
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Honorine
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+
+     Magus, Elie
+       The Vendetta
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Schinner, Hippolyte
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Albert Savarus
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1230 ***
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+      Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
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+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1230 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      PIERRE GRASSOU
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Dedication <br /><br /> To The Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas,<br />
+      As a Testimony of the Affectionate Esteem of the Author,<br /> <br /><br />
+      De Balzac<br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> PIERRE GRASSOU </a><br /><br /> <a
+      href="#link2H_4_0002"> ADDENDUM </a><br /><br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      PIERRE GRASSOU
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of works
+      of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the revolution of
+      1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness, weariness,
+      sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded galleries? Since
+      1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has again been taken by
+      assault,&mdash;this time by a populace of artists who have maintained
+      themselves in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of art, it
+      conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited. Among the
+      two hundred selected paintings, the public could still choose: a crown was
+      awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager, impassioned discussions
+      arose about some picture. The abuse showered on Delacroix, on Ingres,
+      contributed no less to their fame than the praises and fanaticism of their
+      adherents. To-day, neither the crowd nor the criticism grows impassioned
+      about the products of that bazaar. Forced to make the selection for
+      itself, which in former days the examining jury made for it, the attention
+      of the public is soon wearied and the exhibition closes. Before the year
+      1817 the pictures admitted never went beyond the first two columns of the
+      long gallery of the old masters; but in that year, to the great
+      astonishment of the public, they filled the whole space. Historical,
+      high-art, genre paintings, easel pictures, landscapes, flowers, animals,
+      and water-colors,&mdash;these eight specialties could surely not offer
+      more than twenty pictures in one year worthy of the eyes of the public,
+      which, indeed, cannot give its attention to a greater number of such
+      works. The more the number of artists increases, the more careful and
+      exacting the jury of admission ought to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The true character of the Salon was lost as soon as it spread along the
+      galleries. The Salon should have remained within fixed limits of
+      inflexible proportions, where each distinct specialty could show its
+      masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence of
+      the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a mob;
+      instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar; instead of a
+      choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the result? A great
+      artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children at a Fountain,"
+      "Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far more to his credit
+      if the four pictures had been exhibited in the great Salon with the
+      hundred good pictures of that year, than his twenty pictures could, among
+      three thousand others, jumbled together in six galleries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every one
+      there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve
+      years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of
+      Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism of Henri IV."
+      by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused of jealousy,
+      showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism, that young and
+      vigorous palettes existed, no such complaint was made. Now, when the
+      veriest dauber of canvas can send in his work, the whole talk is of genius
+      neglected! Where judgment no longer exists, there is no longer anything
+      judged. But whatever artists may be doing now, they will come back in time
+      to the examination and selection which presents their works to the
+      admiration of the crowd for whom they work. Without selection by the
+      Academy there will be no Salon, and without the Salon art may perish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since the catalogue has grown into a book, many names have appeared
+      in it which still remain in their native obscurity, in spite of the ten or
+      a dozen pictures attached to them. Among these names perhaps the most
+      unknown to fame is that of an artist named Pierre Grassou, coming from
+      Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his brother-artists, who, at
+      the present moment holds a place, as the saying is, "in the sun," and who
+      suggested the rather bitter reflections by which this sketch of his life
+      is introduced,&mdash;reflections that are applicable to many other
+      individuals of the tribe of artists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of one
+      of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor, and
+      possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings, three
+      windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a courtyard, or, to
+      speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above the three or four rooms
+      occupied by Grassou of Fougeres was his studio, looking over to
+      Montmartre. This studio was painted in brick-color, for a background; the
+      floor was tinted brown and well frotted; each chair was furnished with a
+      bit of carpet bound round the edges; the sofa, simple enough, was clean as
+      that in the bedroom of some worthy bourgeoise. All these things denoted
+      the tidy ways of a small mind and the thrift of a poor man. A bureau was
+      there, in which to put away the studio implements, a table for breakfast,
+      a sideboard, a secretary; in short, all the articles necessary to a
+      painter, neatly arranged and very clean. The stove participated in this
+      Dutch cleanliness, which was all the more visible because the pure and
+      little changing light from the north flooded with its cold clear beams the
+      vast apartment. Fougeres, being merely a genre painter, does not need the
+      immense machinery and outfit which ruin historical painters; he has never
+      recognized within himself sufficient faculty to attempt high-art, and he
+      therefore clings to easel painting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at which
+      the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque idea of
+      perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in themselves,
+      Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette, and lighted his
+      stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting till the frost on
+      his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full light in. The weather
+      was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who ate his bread with that
+      patient, resigned air that tells so much, heard and recognized the step of
+      a man who had upon his life the influence such men have on the lives of
+      nearly all artists,&mdash;the step of Elie Magus, a picture-dealer, a
+      usurer in canvas. The next moment Elie Magus entered and found the painter
+      in the act of beginning his work in the tidy studio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought his
+      pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave himself the
+      airs of a fine artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such pretensions!
+      You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six sous' worth of
+      color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll say that. You are
+      steady; and I've come to put a good bit of business in your way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do you know Latin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it means that the Greeks never proposed a good bit of business to
+      the Trojans without getting their fair share of it. In the olden time they
+      used to say, 'Take my horse.' Now we say, 'Take my bear.' Well, what do
+      you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which Fougeres
+      employed what painters call studio fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! oh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest
+      man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, out with it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All for me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes&mdash;they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois&mdash;they are
+      crazy about art&mdash;have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a
+      'dot' of a hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,&mdash;perhaps
+      they'll turn out family portraits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was
+      called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which
+      frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles talking
+      marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you can
+      very well afford to paint me three pictures."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marry! I?" cried Pierre Grassou,&mdash;"I, who have a habit of sleeping
+      alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a quiet girl, full of
+      golden tones, as you call 'em, like a Titian."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What class of people are they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at
+      Ville d'Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What business did they do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bottles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now don't say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth on
+      edge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I to bring them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three portraits&mdash;I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for
+      portrait-painting. Well, yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle family.
+      To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the painter, and
+      what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and Dame Vervelle,
+      adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast an eye on the
+      anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was thought a
+      great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to Schinner's,
+      to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color which
+      distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all discreet; at any
+      rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From there he went to
+      Sommervieux' atelier, to acquire that portion of the art of painting which
+      is called composition, but composition was shy and distant to him. Then he
+      tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet the mystery of their interior
+      effects. The two masters were not robbed. Finally Fougeres ended his
+      education with Duval-Lecamus. During these studied and these different
+      transformations Fougeres' habits and ways of life were tranquil and moral
+      to a degree that furnished matter of jesting to the various ateliers where
+      he sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his comrades by his modesty and
+      by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters, however,
+      had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright fellows, eccentric
+      spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy and deeply reflective, which argue
+      future talent. Everything about Pierre Grassou smacked of mediocrity. His
+      nickname "Fougeres" (that of the painter in the play of "The Eglantine")
+      was the source of much teasing; but, by force of circumstances, he
+      accepted the name of the town in which he had first seen light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he had
+      a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide
+      mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain
+      relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health,
+      but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois,
+      having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk with a
+      color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a distant connection of the
+      Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by the fact of an obstinacy which
+      constitutes the Breton character. What he suffered, the manner in which he
+      lived during those years of study, God only knows. He suffered as much as
+      great men suffer when they are hounded by poverty and hunted like wild
+      beasts by the pack of commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst
+      for vengeance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres took
+      a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began to delve
+      his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first picture he
+      presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre represented a
+      village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's picture. It was
+      rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision, he did not fall into
+      one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which strong natures give
+      themselves up, and which sometimes end in challenges sent to the director
+      or the secretary of the Museum, or even by threats of assassination.
+      Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and
+      brought it home, vowing in his heart that he would still make himself a
+      great painter. He placed his picture on the easel, and went to one of his
+      former masters, a man of immense talent,&mdash;to Schinner, a kind and
+      patient artist, whose triumph at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres
+      asked him to come and criticise the rejected work. The great painter left
+      everything and went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before
+      him Schinner, after a glance, pressed Fougeres' hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must not
+      deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made in the
+      studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your brush, my
+      good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and not take the
+      canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton night-cap, and be in
+      bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to some government office,
+      ask for a place, and give up art."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it is
+      not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well&mdash;you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
+      your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze, who
+      only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres' face
+      so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to dinner and
+      tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock Fougeres was at
+      his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed the colors; he made
+      the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched up his figures. Then,
+      disgusted with such patching, he carried the picture to Elie Magus. Elie
+      Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian, had three reasons for being what
+      he became,&mdash;rich and avaricious. Coming last from Bordeaux, he was
+      just starting in Paris, selling old pictures and living on the boulevard
+      Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who relied on his palette to go to the baker's,
+      bravely ate bread and nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or
+      bread and cheese, according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre
+      offered his first picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen
+      francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
+      expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might have
+      had that picture for five francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and stationed
+      himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's shop, whence his
+      eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain any notice from the
+      eyes of the passers along the street. At the end of a week the picture
+      disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and approached the dealer's shop in
+      a lounging manner. The Jew was at his door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I see you have sold my picture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one who
+      fancies he knows about painting."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
+      another picture, and spent two months upon it,&mdash;eating mouse's meals
+      and working like a galley-slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully to
+      the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For how much?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
+      interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll buy
+      them of you," said Elie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him as a
+      father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter Schinner was
+      mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there were some hearts
+      that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was understood and
+      appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the innocence of a lad of
+      sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful, surly artists, would have
+      noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face and seen the twitching of the
+      hairs of his beard, the irony of his moustache, and the movement of his
+      shoulders which betrayed the satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew in
+      swindling a Christian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to his
+      honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy protecting a
+      woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one of those
+      eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had, to
+      use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to the
+      Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he was
+      imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle of the
+      evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented thirty
+      pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself a man of genius. The next day
+      he bought colors, and canvases of various dimensions; he piled up bread
+      and cheese on his table, he filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a
+      provision of wood for his stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug
+      at his pictures. He hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures. Again
+      he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the invitation.
+      The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile imitation of
+      Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a copy of
+      Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
+      original."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" asked Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fling yourself into literature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked and
+      obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before taking
+      them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that price
+      of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to his
+      sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what became
+      of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination. His
+      neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were covered
+      with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre
+      could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fancied something was
+      wrong with his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After seven
+      years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute quite
+      passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class. Elie
+      bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
+      laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
+      hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
+      three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the art
+      movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the poverty of
+      their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the grand salon of
+      the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture, powerful in interest
+      but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and from Dubufe's first manner
+      as to execution, represented a young man in prison, whose hair was being
+      cut around the nape of the neck. On one side was a priest, on the other
+      two women, one old, one young, in tears. A sheriff's clerk was reading
+      aloud a document. On a wretched table was a meal, untouched. The light
+      came in through the bars of a window near the ceiling. It was a picture
+      fit to make the bourgeois shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres
+      had simply been inspired by the masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned
+      the group of the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of
+      presenting it full front. The condemned man was substituted for the dying
+      woman&mdash;same pallor, same glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the
+      Dutch doctor, he had painted the cold, official figure of the sheriff's
+      clerk attired in black; but he had added an old woman to the young one of
+      Gerard Douw. The cruelly simple and good-humored face of the executioner
+      completed and dominated the group. This plagiarism, very cleverly
+      disguised, was not discovered. The catalogue contained the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
+     Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
+      recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd collected
+      every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X. paused to
+      look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the poor Breton,
+      became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of the
+      picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was
+      suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a most satisfying
+      religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on the
+      stone-floor,&mdash;a huge blunder, by the way, for Fougeres had painted
+      greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the base of the walls. "Madame"
+      finally bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the Dauphin ordered
+      another like it. Charles X. gave the cross of the Legion of honor to this
+      son of a peasant who had fought for the royal cause in 1799. (Joseph
+      Bridau, the great painter, was not yet decorated.) The minister of the
+      Interior ordered two church pictures of Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame, future,
+      and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy, imitate, and
+      you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou de Fougeres
+      obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which society owes the
+      wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these days the election of
+      leaders in all social classes; who proceed, naturally, to elect themselves
+      and who wage a bitter war against all true talent. The principle of
+      election applied indiscriminately is false, and France will some day
+      abandon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good and
+      gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides, he had
+      on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who expected to
+      succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of a man whom
+      nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen his
+      successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support and
+      the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up mediocrities
+      as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers. The newspapers, it
+      is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier Fougeres digested them
+      as he had digested the counsel of his friends, with angelic patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned, he
+      furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and painted the
+      picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two church pictures,
+      and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a punctuality that was very
+      discomforting to the exchequer of the ministry, accustomed to a different
+      course of action. But&mdash;admire the good fortune of men who are
+      methodical&mdash;if Grassou, belated with his work, had been caught by the
+      revolution of July he would not have got his money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie Magus
+      some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the help of
+      which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of execution
+      before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the bourgeoisie
+      worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of ideas, for
+      steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great loyalty; though
+      they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man who held it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said his
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
+      feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a book
+      is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary critics
+      and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt them, he
+      acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit of justice
+      that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After the revolution of
+      July, Fougeres sent about ten pictures a year to the Salon, of which the
+      jury admitted four or five. He lived with the most rigid economy, his
+      household being managed solely by an old charwoman. For all amusement he
+      visited his friends, he went to see works of art, he allowed himself a few
+      little trips about France, and he planned to go to Switzerland in search
+      of inspiration. This detestable artist was an excellent citizen; he
+      mounted guard duly, went to reviews, and paid his rent and provision-bills
+      with bourgeois punctuality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the time
+      to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to complicate
+      his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of increasing his little
+      fortune, he carried, every three months, to his notary, Cardot, his
+      quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary had received about three
+      thousand francs he invested them in some first mortgage, the interest of
+      which he drew himself and added to the quarterly payments made to him by
+      Fougeres. The painter was awaiting the fortunate moment when his property
+      thus laid by would give him the imposing income of two thousand francs, to
+      allow himself the otium cum dignitate of the artist and paint pictures;
+      but oh! what pictures! true pictures! each a finished picture! chouette,
+      Koxnoff, chocnosoff! His future, his dreams of happiness, the superlative
+      of his hopes&mdash;do you know what it was? To enter the Institute and
+      obtain the grade of officer of the Legion of honor; to side down beside
+      Schinner and Leon de Lora, to reach the Academy before Bridau, to wear a
+      rosette in his buttonhole! What a dream! It is only commonplace men who
+      think of everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed up
+      his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was not a
+      little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face vulgarly
+      called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted a pumpkin, clothed
+      in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of tintinnabulating baubles. The melon
+      puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin advanced on turnips, improperly called
+      legs. A true painter would have turned the little bottle-vendor off at
+      once, assuring him that he didn't paint vegetables. This painter looked at
+      his client without a smile, for Monsieur Vervelle wore a
+      three-thousand-franc diamond in the bosom of his shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
+      term then much in vogue in the studios.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois drew
+      after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of his wife
+      and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her face, and in
+      figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head and tied in around
+      the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap-rooted, and her gown
+      was yellow with black stripes. She proudly exhibited unutterable mittens
+      on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of a first-class funeral floated on
+      an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned her shoulders, as round behind as
+      they were before; consequently, the spherical form of the cocoa-nut was
+      perfect. Her feet, of a kind that painters call abatis, rose above the
+      varnished leather of the shoes in a swelling that was some inches high.
+      How the feet were ever got into the shoes, no one knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented a
+      tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that a
+      Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish spots
+      upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any brows, a
+      leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two honest bows of
+      the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of her mother. The
+      faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round the studio, an air
+      of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable enthusiasm for Art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said the
+      father, assuming a jaunty air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while the
+      painter's back was turned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who wasn't
+      decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
+      accompanied him to the landing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but what a family!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
+      Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
+      teeth on edge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
+      departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst
+      into his garret that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the
+      bottle-dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full of
+      violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel, marvelling
+      at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a demigod. This
+      visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw upon the family
+      its fantastic reflections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you get
+      it," said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the means
+      to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I have; as soon
+      as I have taken him the money I never think of it again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were baskets
+      with holes in them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is your notary&mdash;if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame
+      Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our
+      notary too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take care! don't move," said the painter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about you'll
+      make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then you'd
+      understand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle Vervelle
+      to her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn certain
+      things. When you are married&mdash;well, till then, keep quiet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate with
+      the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As they went
+      away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite of this
+      separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally awakened
+      her curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Decorated&mdash;thirty-seven years old&mdash;an artist who gets orders&mdash;puts
+      his money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de Fougeres!
+      not a bad name&mdash;doesn't look like a bad man either! One might prefer
+      a merchant; but before a merchant retires from business one can never know
+      what one's daughter may come to; whereas an economical artist&mdash;and
+      then you know we love Art&mdash;Well, we'll see!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou
+      discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible to
+      stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard, and
+      looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a series of the
+      oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of metals; a tawny
+      yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of red-haired women, and he
+      turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage what man would ever care
+      about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty fades,&mdash;but ugliness
+      remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That night when he went to
+      bed the painter had come to think Virginie Vervelle charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the
+      artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on clean
+      linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and chosen a
+      very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with pointed toes.
+      The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of the artist.
+      Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes, and turned aside
+      her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou thought these little
+      affectations charming, Virginie had such grace; happily she didn't look
+      like her father or her mother; but whom did she look like?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family and
+      the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty. This
+      flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of the
+      artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! for nothing?" they said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money," said
+      old Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of pictures
+      which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray&mdash;Rubens, Gerard
+      Douw, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
+      ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
+      pictures."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was nearly
+      finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The notary had
+      spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou was, he said,
+      one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by thirty-six
+      thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now saved about ten
+      thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest; in short, he was
+      incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark had enormous weight
+      in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of nothing but the celebrated
+      painter Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie, he
+      was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three Vervelles
+      bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed to consider as
+      one of their residences; there was to them an inexplicable attraction in
+      this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic abode. Abyssus abyssum, the
+      commonplace attracts the commonplace. Toward the end of the sitting the
+      stairway shook, the door was violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he
+      came like a whirlwind, his hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face
+      as he looked about him, casting everywhere the lightning of his glance;
+      then he walked round the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou,
+      pulling his coat together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but
+      in vain, to button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule of
+      cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do you
+      paint such things as that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold your tongue!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! to be sure, yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary apparition,
+      passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades deeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much do you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if the
+      fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit of me
+      left. What a crew!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll write you a line for my notary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you got a notary?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a
+      perfumer's sign."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with his
+      lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All things are
+      magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your palette, and warm up
+      those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots; come, butter it well in.
+      Do you pretend to have more sense than Nature?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that
+      note."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't that country lout spoilt it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be worth a
+      thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who was
+      stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very uneasy at his
+      co-operation in her daughter's portrait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette, and
+      taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to d'Arthez'
+      chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora the tops of the
+      doors&mdash;masterpieces! Come and see us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at
+      Virginie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A great artist," answered Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
+      portrait? He frightened me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you," said
+      Madame Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was just
+      beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man of genius,
+      Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out to his
+      country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how little
+      attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty talk;
+      but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of pictures to
+      compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with mere merchants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was charming
+      to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such compliments. The
+      honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart of gold, that loyal
+      soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow, decorated by royalty
+      itself with the Legion of honor, put himself under arms to go out to Ville
+      d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of the year. The painter went
+      modestly by public conveyance, and he could not but admire the beautiful
+      villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a park of five acres at the summit
+      of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble view of the landscape. Marry
+      Virginie, and have that beautiful villa some day for his own!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a kindliness,
+      a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was indeed a day of
+      triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about the grounds on the
+      nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be for the steps of so
+      great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed and combed, and the lawns
+      had just been mown. The pure country air wafted to the nostrils a most
+      enticing smell of cooking. All things about the mansion seemed to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have a great artist among us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the
+      daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified step.
+      These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou for seven
+      hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its magnificence,
+      Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their grand theatrical
+      effect,&mdash;the opening of the picture gallery illuminated by lamps, the
+      reflections of which were managed with the utmost care. Three neighbours,
+      also retired merchants, an old uncle (from whom were expectations), an
+      elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a number of other guests invited to be
+      present at this ovation to a great artist followed Grassou into the
+      picture gallery, all curious to hear his opinion of the famous collection
+      of pere Vervelle, who was fond of oppressing them with the fabulous value
+      of his paintings. The bottle-merchant seemed to have the idea of competing
+      with King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of Versailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read in
+      black letters on a gold ground:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Rubens
+     Dance of fauns and nymphs
+
+                         Rembrandt
+     Interior of a dissecting room. The physician van Tromp
+             instructing his pupils.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and dusted.
+      Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not undrawn in
+      presence of young ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon his
+      lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art. He was
+      Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard Douw! He was
+      twenty great masters all by himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the matter? You've turned pale!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The painter
+      took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a corner on
+      pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then the rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, all originals."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall point
+      out to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
+      gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
+      examine each picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached the
+      last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is nothing
+      at all!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
+      francs' worth of pictures?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear, "and I
+      sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand francs the
+      whole lot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
+      'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard Douw!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw the
+      meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in Elie's
+      shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had required of
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur de
+      Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou) advanced
+      so much that when the portraits were finished he presented them
+      gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
+      Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He earns
+      some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs' worth of
+      canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and he lives
+      with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who agree
+      delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on earth.
+      Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in which he is
+      considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not a family
+      portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue du Temple
+      that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs less than five
+      hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois families have for
+      employing him is this:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year with
+      his notary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May 12th
+      he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major in the
+      National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to order a
+      battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked about Paris
+      to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying to them:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two
+      children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to
+      eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh at
+      his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and that the
+      feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still works on; he aims
+      for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter. And&mdash;oh!
+      vengeance which dilates his heart!&mdash;he buys the pictures of
+      celebrated artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these
+      true works of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the
+      collection at Ville d'Avray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than that
+      of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and truly
+      obliging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Cardot (Parisian notary)
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Man of Business
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grassou, Pierre
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Lora, Leon de
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Honorine
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+
+     Magus, Elie
+       The Vendetta
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Schinner, Hippolyte
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Albert Savarus
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1230 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1230 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1230)
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+
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+      Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pierre Grassou
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2010 [EBook #1230]
+Last Updated: April 3, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE GRASSOU ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      PIERRE GRASSOU
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Dedication <br /><br /> To The Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas,<br />
+      As a Testimony of the Affectionate Esteem of the Author,<br /> <br /><br />
+      De Balzac<br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> PIERRE GRASSOU </a><br /><br /> <a
+      href="#link2H_4_0002"> ADDENDUM </a><br /><br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      PIERRE GRASSOU
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of works
+      of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the revolution of
+      1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness, weariness,
+      sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded galleries? Since
+      1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has again been taken by
+      assault,&mdash;this time by a populace of artists who have maintained
+      themselves in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of art, it
+      conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited. Among the
+      two hundred selected paintings, the public could still choose: a crown was
+      awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager, impassioned discussions
+      arose about some picture. The abuse showered on Delacroix, on Ingres,
+      contributed no less to their fame than the praises and fanaticism of their
+      adherents. To-day, neither the crowd nor the criticism grows impassioned
+      about the products of that bazaar. Forced to make the selection for
+      itself, which in former days the examining jury made for it, the attention
+      of the public is soon wearied and the exhibition closes. Before the year
+      1817 the pictures admitted never went beyond the first two columns of the
+      long gallery of the old masters; but in that year, to the great
+      astonishment of the public, they filled the whole space. Historical,
+      high-art, genre paintings, easel pictures, landscapes, flowers, animals,
+      and water-colors,&mdash;these eight specialties could surely not offer
+      more than twenty pictures in one year worthy of the eyes of the public,
+      which, indeed, cannot give its attention to a greater number of such
+      works. The more the number of artists increases, the more careful and
+      exacting the jury of admission ought to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The true character of the Salon was lost as soon as it spread along the
+      galleries. The Salon should have remained within fixed limits of
+      inflexible proportions, where each distinct specialty could show its
+      masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence of
+      the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a mob;
+      instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar; instead of a
+      choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the result? A great
+      artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children at a Fountain,"
+      "Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far more to his credit
+      if the four pictures had been exhibited in the great Salon with the
+      hundred good pictures of that year, than his twenty pictures could, among
+      three thousand others, jumbled together in six galleries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every one
+      there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When, twelve
+      years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the "Medusa" of
+      Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism of Henri IV."
+      by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused of jealousy,
+      showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism, that young and
+      vigorous palettes existed, no such complaint was made. Now, when the
+      veriest dauber of canvas can send in his work, the whole talk is of genius
+      neglected! Where judgment no longer exists, there is no longer anything
+      judged. But whatever artists may be doing now, they will come back in time
+      to the examination and selection which presents their works to the
+      admiration of the crowd for whom they work. Without selection by the
+      Academy there will be no Salon, and without the Salon art may perish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since the catalogue has grown into a book, many names have appeared
+      in it which still remain in their native obscurity, in spite of the ten or
+      a dozen pictures attached to them. Among these names perhaps the most
+      unknown to fame is that of an artist named Pierre Grassou, coming from
+      Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his brother-artists, who, at
+      the present moment holds a place, as the saying is, "in the sun," and who
+      suggested the rather bitter reflections by which this sketch of his life
+      is introduced,&mdash;reflections that are applicable to many other
+      individuals of the tribe of artists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of one
+      of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor, and
+      possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings, three
+      windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a courtyard, or, to
+      speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above the three or four rooms
+      occupied by Grassou of Fougeres was his studio, looking over to
+      Montmartre. This studio was painted in brick-color, for a background; the
+      floor was tinted brown and well frotted; each chair was furnished with a
+      bit of carpet bound round the edges; the sofa, simple enough, was clean as
+      that in the bedroom of some worthy bourgeoise. All these things denoted
+      the tidy ways of a small mind and the thrift of a poor man. A bureau was
+      there, in which to put away the studio implements, a table for breakfast,
+      a sideboard, a secretary; in short, all the articles necessary to a
+      painter, neatly arranged and very clean. The stove participated in this
+      Dutch cleanliness, which was all the more visible because the pure and
+      little changing light from the north flooded with its cold clear beams the
+      vast apartment. Fougeres, being merely a genre painter, does not need the
+      immense machinery and outfit which ruin historical painters; he has never
+      recognized within himself sufficient faculty to attempt high-art, and he
+      therefore clings to easel painting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at which
+      the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque idea of
+      perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in themselves,
+      Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette, and lighted his
+      stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting till the frost on
+      his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full light in. The weather
+      was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who ate his bread with that
+      patient, resigned air that tells so much, heard and recognized the step of
+      a man who had upon his life the influence such men have on the lives of
+      nearly all artists,&mdash;the step of Elie Magus, a picture-dealer, a
+      usurer in canvas. The next moment Elie Magus entered and found the painter
+      in the act of beginning his work in the tidy studio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought his
+      pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave himself the
+      airs of a fine artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such pretensions!
+      You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six sous' worth of
+      color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll say that. You are
+      steady; and I've come to put a good bit of business in your way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do you know Latin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it means that the Greeks never proposed a good bit of business to
+      the Trojans without getting their fair share of it. In the olden time they
+      used to say, 'Take my horse.' Now we say, 'Take my bear.' Well, what do
+      you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which Fougeres
+      employed what painters call studio fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! oh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest
+      man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, out with it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All for me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes&mdash;they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois&mdash;they are
+      crazy about art&mdash;have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a
+      'dot' of a hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,&mdash;perhaps
+      they'll turn out family portraits."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was
+      called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which
+      frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles talking
+      marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you can
+      very well afford to paint me three pictures."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marry! I?" cried Pierre Grassou,&mdash;"I, who have a habit of sleeping
+      alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged&mdash;"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a quiet girl, full of
+      golden tones, as you call 'em, like a Titian."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What class of people are they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at
+      Ville d'Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What business did they do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bottles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now don't say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth on
+      edge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I to bring them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three portraits&mdash;I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for
+      portrait-painting. Well, yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle family.
+      To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the painter, and
+      what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and Dame Vervelle,
+      adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast an eye on the
+      anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was thought a
+      great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to Schinner's,
+      to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color which
+      distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all discreet; at any
+      rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From there he went to
+      Sommervieux' atelier, to acquire that portion of the art of painting which
+      is called composition, but composition was shy and distant to him. Then he
+      tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet the mystery of their interior
+      effects. The two masters were not robbed. Finally Fougeres ended his
+      education with Duval-Lecamus. During these studied and these different
+      transformations Fougeres' habits and ways of life were tranquil and moral
+      to a degree that furnished matter of jesting to the various ateliers where
+      he sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his comrades by his modesty and
+      by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters, however,
+      had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright fellows, eccentric
+      spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy and deeply reflective, which argue
+      future talent. Everything about Pierre Grassou smacked of mediocrity. His
+      nickname "Fougeres" (that of the painter in the play of "The Eglantine")
+      was the source of much teasing; but, by force of circumstances, he
+      accepted the name of the town in which he had first seen light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he had
+      a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide
+      mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain
+      relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health,
+      but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois,
+      having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk with a
+      color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a distant connection of the
+      Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by the fact of an obstinacy which
+      constitutes the Breton character. What he suffered, the manner in which he
+      lived during those years of study, God only knows. He suffered as much as
+      great men suffer when they are hounded by poverty and hunted like wild
+      beasts by the pack of commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst
+      for vengeance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres took
+      a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began to delve
+      his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first picture he
+      presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre represented a
+      village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's picture. It was
+      rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision, he did not fall into
+      one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which strong natures give
+      themselves up, and which sometimes end in challenges sent to the director
+      or the secretary of the Museum, or even by threats of assassination.
+      Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and
+      brought it home, vowing in his heart that he would still make himself a
+      great painter. He placed his picture on the easel, and went to one of his
+      former masters, a man of immense talent,&mdash;to Schinner, a kind and
+      patient artist, whose triumph at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres
+      asked him to come and criticise the rejected work. The great painter left
+      everything and went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before
+      him Schinner, after a glance, pressed Fougeres' hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must not
+      deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made in the
+      studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your brush, my
+      good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and not take the
+      canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton night-cap, and be in
+      bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to some government office,
+      ask for a place, and give up art."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it is
+      not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well&mdash;you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
+      your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze, who
+      only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres' face
+      so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to dinner and
+      tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock Fougeres was at
+      his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed the colors; he made
+      the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched up his figures. Then,
+      disgusted with such patching, he carried the picture to Elie Magus. Elie
+      Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian, had three reasons for being what
+      he became,&mdash;rich and avaricious. Coming last from Bordeaux, he was
+      just starting in Paris, selling old pictures and living on the boulevard
+      Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who relied on his palette to go to the baker's,
+      bravely ate bread and nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or
+      bread and cheese, according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre
+      offered his first picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen
+      francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
+      expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might have
+      had that picture for five francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and stationed
+      himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's shop, whence his
+      eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain any notice from the
+      eyes of the passers along the street. At the end of a week the picture
+      disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and approached the dealer's shop in
+      a lounging manner. The Jew was at his door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I see you have sold my picture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one who
+      fancies he knows about painting."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
+      another picture, and spent two months upon it,&mdash;eating mouse's meals
+      and working like a galley-slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully to
+      the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For how much?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
+      interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll buy
+      them of you," said Elie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him as a
+      father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter Schinner was
+      mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there were some hearts
+      that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was understood and
+      appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the innocence of a lad of
+      sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful, surly artists, would have
+      noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face and seen the twitching of the
+      hairs of his beard, the irony of his moustache, and the movement of his
+      shoulders which betrayed the satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew in
+      swindling a Christian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to his
+      honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy protecting a
+      woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one of those
+      eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had, to
+      use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to the
+      Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he was
+      imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle of the
+      evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented thirty
+      pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself a man of genius. The next day
+      he bought colors, and canvases of various dimensions; he piled up bread
+      and cheese on his table, he filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a
+      provision of wood for his stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug
+      at his pictures. He hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures. Again
+      he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the invitation.
+      The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile imitation of
+      Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a copy of
+      Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
+      original."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" asked Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fling yourself into literature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked and
+      obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before taking
+      them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that price
+      of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to his
+      sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what became
+      of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination. His
+      neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were covered
+      with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre
+      could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fancied something was
+      wrong with his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After seven
+      years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute quite
+      passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class. Elie
+      bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
+      laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
+      hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
+      three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the art
+      movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the poverty of
+      their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the grand salon of
+      the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture, powerful in interest
+      but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and from Dubufe's first manner
+      as to execution, represented a young man in prison, whose hair was being
+      cut around the nape of the neck. On one side was a priest, on the other
+      two women, one old, one young, in tears. A sheriff's clerk was reading
+      aloud a document. On a wretched table was a meal, untouched. The light
+      came in through the bars of a window near the ceiling. It was a picture
+      fit to make the bourgeois shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres
+      had simply been inspired by the masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned
+      the group of the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of
+      presenting it full front. The condemned man was substituted for the dying
+      woman&mdash;same pallor, same glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the
+      Dutch doctor, he had painted the cold, official figure of the sheriff's
+      clerk attired in black; but he had added an old woman to the young one of
+      Gerard Douw. The cruelly simple and good-humored face of the executioner
+      completed and dominated the group. This plagiarism, very cleverly
+      disguised, was not discovered. The catalogue contained the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
+     Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
+      recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd collected
+      every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X. paused to
+      look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the poor Breton,
+      became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of the
+      picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was
+      suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a most satisfying
+      religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on the
+      stone-floor,&mdash;a huge blunder, by the way, for Fougeres had painted
+      greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the base of the walls. "Madame"
+      finally bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the Dauphin ordered
+      another like it. Charles X. gave the cross of the Legion of honor to this
+      son of a peasant who had fought for the royal cause in 1799. (Joseph
+      Bridau, the great painter, was not yet decorated.) The minister of the
+      Interior ordered two church pictures of Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame, future,
+      and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy, imitate, and
+      you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou de Fougeres
+      obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which society owes the
+      wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these days the election of
+      leaders in all social classes; who proceed, naturally, to elect themselves
+      and who wage a bitter war against all true talent. The principle of
+      election applied indiscriminately is false, and France will some day
+      abandon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good and
+      gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides, he had
+      on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who expected to
+      succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of a man whom
+      nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen his
+      successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support and
+      the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up mediocrities
+      as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers. The newspapers, it
+      is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier Fougeres digested them
+      as he had digested the counsel of his friends, with angelic patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned, he
+      furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and painted the
+      picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two church pictures,
+      and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a punctuality that was very
+      discomforting to the exchequer of the ministry, accustomed to a different
+      course of action. But&mdash;admire the good fortune of men who are
+      methodical&mdash;if Grassou, belated with his work, had been caught by the
+      revolution of July he would not have got his money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie Magus
+      some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the help of
+      which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of execution
+      before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the bourgeoisie
+      worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of ideas, for
+      steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great loyalty; though
+      they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man who held it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said his
+      comrades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
+      feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a book
+      is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary critics
+      and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt them, he
+      acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit of justice
+      that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After the revolution of
+      July, Fougeres sent about ten pictures a year to the Salon, of which the
+      jury admitted four or five. He lived with the most rigid economy, his
+      household being managed solely by an old charwoman. For all amusement he
+      visited his friends, he went to see works of art, he allowed himself a few
+      little trips about France, and he planned to go to Switzerland in search
+      of inspiration. This detestable artist was an excellent citizen; he
+      mounted guard duly, went to reviews, and paid his rent and provision-bills
+      with bourgeois punctuality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the time
+      to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to complicate
+      his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of increasing his little
+      fortune, he carried, every three months, to his notary, Cardot, his
+      quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary had received about three
+      thousand francs he invested them in some first mortgage, the interest of
+      which he drew himself and added to the quarterly payments made to him by
+      Fougeres. The painter was awaiting the fortunate moment when his property
+      thus laid by would give him the imposing income of two thousand francs, to
+      allow himself the otium cum dignitate of the artist and paint pictures;
+      but oh! what pictures! true pictures! each a finished picture! chouette,
+      Koxnoff, chocnosoff! His future, his dreams of happiness, the superlative
+      of his hopes&mdash;do you know what it was? To enter the Institute and
+      obtain the grade of officer of the Legion of honor; to side down beside
+      Schinner and Leon de Lora, to reach the Academy before Bridau, to wear a
+      rosette in his buttonhole! What a dream! It is only commonplace men who
+      think of everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed up
+      his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was not a
+      little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face vulgarly
+      called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted a pumpkin, clothed
+      in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of tintinnabulating baubles. The melon
+      puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin advanced on turnips, improperly called
+      legs. A true painter would have turned the little bottle-vendor off at
+      once, assuring him that he didn't paint vegetables. This painter looked at
+      his client without a smile, for Monsieur Vervelle wore a
+      three-thousand-franc diamond in the bosom of his shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
+      term then much in vogue in the studios.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois drew
+      after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of his wife
+      and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her face, and in
+      figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head and tied in around
+      the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap-rooted, and her gown
+      was yellow with black stripes. She proudly exhibited unutterable mittens
+      on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of a first-class funeral floated on
+      an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned her shoulders, as round behind as
+      they were before; consequently, the spherical form of the cocoa-nut was
+      perfect. Her feet, of a kind that painters call abatis, rose above the
+      varnished leather of the shoes in a swelling that was some inches high.
+      How the feet were ever got into the shoes, no one knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented a
+      tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that a
+      Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish spots
+      upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any brows, a
+      leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two honest bows of
+      the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of her mother. The
+      faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round the studio, an air
+      of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable enthusiasm for Art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said the
+      father, assuming a jaunty air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while the
+      painter's back was turned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who wasn't
+      decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
+      accompanied him to the landing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but what a family!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
+      Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
+      teeth on edge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
+      departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst
+      into his garret that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the
+      bottle-dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full of
+      violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel, marvelling
+      at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a demigod. This
+      visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw upon the family
+      its fantastic reflections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you get
+      it," said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the means
+      to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I have; as soon
+      as I have taken him the money I never think of it again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were baskets
+      with holes in them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is your notary&mdash;if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame
+      Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our
+      notary too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take care! don't move," said the painter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about you'll
+      make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then you'd
+      understand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle Vervelle
+      to her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn certain
+      things. When you are married&mdash;well, till then, keep quiet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate with
+      the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As they went
+      away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite of this
+      separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally awakened
+      her curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Decorated&mdash;thirty-seven years old&mdash;an artist who gets orders&mdash;puts
+      his money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de Fougeres!
+      not a bad name&mdash;doesn't look like a bad man either! One might prefer
+      a merchant; but before a merchant retires from business one can never know
+      what one's daughter may come to; whereas an economical artist&mdash;and
+      then you know we love Art&mdash;Well, we'll see!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou
+      discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible to
+      stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard, and
+      looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a series of the
+      oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of metals; a tawny
+      yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of red-haired women, and he
+      turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage what man would ever care
+      about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty fades,&mdash;but ugliness
+      remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That night when he went to
+      bed the painter had come to think Virginie Vervelle charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the
+      artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on clean
+      linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and chosen a
+      very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with pointed toes.
+      The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of the artist.
+      Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes, and turned aside
+      her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou thought these little
+      affectations charming, Virginie had such grace; happily she didn't look
+      like her father or her mother; but whom did she look like?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family and
+      the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty. This
+      flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of the
+      artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What! for nothing?" they said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money," said
+      old Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of pictures
+      which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray&mdash;Rubens, Gerard
+      Douw, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
+      ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
+      pictures."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was nearly
+      finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The notary had
+      spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou was, he said,
+      one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by thirty-six
+      thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now saved about ten
+      thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest; in short, he was
+      incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark had enormous weight
+      in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of nothing but the celebrated
+      painter Fougeres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie, he
+      was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three Vervelles
+      bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed to consider as
+      one of their residences; there was to them an inexplicable attraction in
+      this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic abode. Abyssus abyssum, the
+      commonplace attracts the commonplace. Toward the end of the sitting the
+      stairway shook, the door was violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he
+      came like a whirlwind, his hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face
+      as he looked about him, casting everywhere the lightning of his glance;
+      then he walked round the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou,
+      pulling his coat together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but
+      in vain, to button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule of
+      cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do you
+      paint such things as that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold your tongue!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah! to be sure, yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary apparition,
+      passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades deeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much do you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if the
+      fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit of me
+      left. What a crew!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll write you a line for my notary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you got a notary?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a
+      perfumer's sign."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with his
+      lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All things are
+      magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your palette, and warm up
+      those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots; come, butter it well in.
+      Do you pretend to have more sense than Nature?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that
+      note."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't that country lout spoilt it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be worth a
+      thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who was
+      stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very uneasy at his
+      co-operation in her daughter's portrait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette, and
+      taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to d'Arthez'
+      chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora the tops of the
+      doors&mdash;masterpieces! Come and see us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at
+      Virginie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A great artist," answered Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
+      portrait? He frightened me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you," said
+      Madame Vervelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was just
+      beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man of genius,
+      Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out to his
+      country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how little
+      attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty talk;
+      but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of pictures to
+      compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with mere merchants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was charming
+      to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such compliments. The
+      honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart of gold, that loyal
+      soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow, decorated by royalty
+      itself with the Legion of honor, put himself under arms to go out to Ville
+      d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of the year. The painter went
+      modestly by public conveyance, and he could not but admire the beautiful
+      villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a park of five acres at the summit
+      of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble view of the landscape. Marry
+      Virginie, and have that beautiful villa some day for his own!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a kindliness,
+      a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was indeed a day of
+      triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about the grounds on the
+      nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be for the steps of so
+      great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed and combed, and the lawns
+      had just been mown. The pure country air wafted to the nostrils a most
+      enticing smell of cooking. All things about the mansion seemed to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have a great artist among us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the
+      daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified step.
+      These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou for seven
+      hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its magnificence,
+      Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their grand theatrical
+      effect,&mdash;the opening of the picture gallery illuminated by lamps, the
+      reflections of which were managed with the utmost care. Three neighbours,
+      also retired merchants, an old uncle (from whom were expectations), an
+      elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a number of other guests invited to be
+      present at this ovation to a great artist followed Grassou into the
+      picture gallery, all curious to hear his opinion of the famous collection
+      of pere Vervelle, who was fond of oppressing them with the fabulous value
+      of his paintings. The bottle-merchant seemed to have the idea of competing
+      with King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of Versailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read in
+      black letters on a gold ground:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               Rubens
+     Dance of fauns and nymphs
+
+                         Rembrandt
+     Interior of a dissecting room. The physician van Tromp
+             instructing his pupils.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and dusted.
+      Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not undrawn in
+      presence of young ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon his
+      lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art. He was
+      Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard Douw! He was
+      twenty great masters all by himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the matter? You've turned pale!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The painter
+      took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a corner on
+      pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then the rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, all originals."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall point
+      out to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
+      gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
+      examine each picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached the
+      last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is nothing
+      at all!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
+      francs' worth of pictures?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear, "and I
+      sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand francs the
+      whole lot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
+      'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard Douw!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw the
+      meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in Elie's
+      shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had required of
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur de
+      Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou) advanced
+      so much that when the portraits were finished he presented them
+      gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
+      Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He earns
+      some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs' worth of
+      canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and he lives
+      with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who agree
+      delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on earth.
+      Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in which he is
+      considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not a family
+      portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue du Temple
+      that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs less than five
+      hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois families have for
+      employing him is this:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year with
+      his notary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May 12th
+      he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major in the
+      National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to order a
+      battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked about Paris
+      to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying to them:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two
+      children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to
+      eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh at
+      his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and that the
+      feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still works on; he aims
+      for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter. And&mdash;oh!
+      vengeance which dilates his heart!&mdash;he buys the pictures of
+      celebrated artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these
+      true works of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the
+      collection at Ville d'Avray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than that
+      of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and truly
+      obliging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Cardot (Parisian notary)
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Man of Business
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grassou, Pierre
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Lora, Leon de
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Honorine
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+
+     Magus, Elie
+       The Vendetta
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Schinner, Hippolyte
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Albert Savarus
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1230.txt b/old/1230.txt
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+++ b/old/1230.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pierre Grassou
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: March, 1998  [Etext #1230]
+Posting Date: February 21, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE GRASSOU ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+Dedication
+
+To The Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas, As a Testimony of the
+Affectionate Esteem of the Author,
+
+De Balzac
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+
+Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of works
+of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the revolution
+of 1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness, weariness,
+sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded galleries? Since
+1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has again been taken
+by assault,--this time by a populace of artists who have maintained
+themselves in it.
+
+In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of art,
+it conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited. Among
+the two hundred selected paintings, the public could still choose: a
+crown was awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager, impassioned
+discussions arose about some picture. The abuse showered on Delacroix,
+on Ingres, contributed no less to their fame than the praises and
+fanaticism of their adherents. To-day, neither the crowd nor the
+criticism grows impassioned about the products of that bazaar. Forced to
+make the selection for itself, which in former days the examining
+jury made for it, the attention of the public is soon wearied and the
+exhibition closes. Before the year 1817 the pictures admitted never went
+beyond the first two columns of the long gallery of the old masters; but
+in that year, to the great astonishment of the public, they filled the
+whole space. Historical, high-art, genre paintings, easel pictures,
+landscapes, flowers, animals, and water-colors,--these eight specialties
+could surely not offer more than twenty pictures in one year worthy of
+the eyes of the public, which, indeed, cannot give its attention to a
+greater number of such works. The more the number of artists increases,
+the more careful and exacting the jury of admission ought to be.
+
+The true character of the Salon was lost as soon as it spread along
+the galleries. The Salon should have remained within fixed limits of
+inflexible proportions, where each distinct specialty could show its
+masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence
+of the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a mob;
+instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar; instead of
+a choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the result? A great
+artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children at a Fountain,"
+"Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far more to his credit
+if the four pictures had been exhibited in the great Salon with the
+hundred good pictures of that year, than his twenty pictures could,
+among three thousand others, jumbled together in six galleries.
+
+By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every
+one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When,
+twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the
+"Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the "Baptism
+of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated artists accused
+of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials of criticism,
+that young and vigorous palettes existed, no such complaint was made.
+Now, when the veriest dauber of canvas can send in his work, the whole
+talk is of genius neglected! Where judgment no longer exists, there is
+no longer anything judged. But whatever artists may be doing now, they
+will come back in time to the examination and selection which presents
+their works to the admiration of the crowd for whom they work. Without
+selection by the Academy there will be no Salon, and without the Salon
+art may perish.
+
+Ever since the catalogue has grown into a book, many names have appeared
+in it which still remain in their native obscurity, in spite of the ten
+or a dozen pictures attached to them. Among these names perhaps the most
+unknown to fame is that of an artist named Pierre Grassou, coming from
+Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his brother-artists, who,
+at the present moment holds a place, as the saying is, "in the sun," and
+who suggested the rather bitter reflections by which this sketch of
+his life is introduced,--reflections that are applicable to many other
+individuals of the tribe of artists.
+
+In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of
+one of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor,
+and possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings,
+three windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a courtyard,
+or, to speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above the three or
+four rooms occupied by Grassou of Fougeres was his studio, looking over
+to Montmartre. This studio was painted in brick-color, for a background;
+the floor was tinted brown and well frotted; each chair was furnished
+with a bit of carpet bound round the edges; the sofa, simple enough, was
+clean as that in the bedroom of some worthy bourgeoise. All these things
+denoted the tidy ways of a small mind and the thrift of a poor man. A
+bureau was there, in which to put away the studio implements, a table
+for breakfast, a sideboard, a secretary; in short, all the articles
+necessary to a painter, neatly arranged and very clean. The stove
+participated in this Dutch cleanliness, which was all the more visible
+because the pure and little changing light from the north flooded with
+its cold clear beams the vast apartment. Fougeres, being merely a genre
+painter, does not need the immense machinery and outfit which ruin
+historical painters; he has never recognized within himself sufficient
+faculty to attempt high-art, and he therefore clings to easel painting.
+
+At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at
+which the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque idea
+of perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in themselves,
+Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette, and lighted
+his stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting till the frost
+on his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full light in. The
+weather was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who ate his bread
+with that patient, resigned air that tells so much, heard and recognized
+the step of a man who had upon his life the influence such men have
+on the lives of nearly all artists,--the step of Elie Magus, a
+picture-dealer, a usurer in canvas. The next moment Elie Magus entered
+and found the painter in the act of beginning his work in the tidy
+studio.
+
+"How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
+
+Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought his
+pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave himself the
+airs of a fine artist.
+
+"Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such
+pretensions! You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six
+sous' worth of color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll
+say that. You are steady; and I've come to put a good bit of business in
+your way."
+
+"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do you know Latin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, it means that the Greeks never proposed a good bit of business
+to the Trojans without getting their fair share of it. In the olden time
+they used to say, 'Take my horse.' Now we say, 'Take my bear.' Well,
+what do you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"
+
+These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which
+Fougeres employed what painters call studio fun.
+
+"Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for nothing."
+
+"Oh! oh!"
+
+"I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest
+man."
+
+"Come, out with it!"
+
+"Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
+
+"All for me?"
+
+"Yes--they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois--they are crazy
+about art--have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a 'dot' of a
+hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,--perhaps they'll turn
+out family portraits."
+
+And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was
+called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which
+frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles talking
+marriage.
+
+"Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you can
+very well afford to paint me three pictures."
+
+"True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
+
+"And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."
+
+"Marry! I?" cried Pierre Grassou,--"I, who have a habit of sleeping
+alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged--"
+
+"One hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a quiet girl, full of
+golden tones, as you call 'em, like a Titian."
+
+"What class of people are they?"
+
+"Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at
+Ville d'Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year."
+
+"What business did they do?"
+
+"Bottles."
+
+"Now don't say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth
+on edge."
+
+"Am I to bring them?"
+
+"Three portraits--I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for
+portrait-painting. Well, yes!"
+
+Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle family.
+To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the painter, and
+what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and Dame Vervelle,
+adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast an eye on the
+anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.
+
+When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was
+thought a great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to
+Schinner's, to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color
+which distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all discreet;
+at any rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From there he went
+to Sommervieux' atelier, to acquire that portion of the art of painting
+which is called composition, but composition was shy and distant to him.
+Then he tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet the mystery of their
+interior effects. The two masters were not robbed. Finally Fougeres
+ended his education with Duval-Lecamus. During these studied and
+these different transformations Fougeres' habits and ways of life were
+tranquil and moral to a degree that furnished matter of jesting to the
+various ateliers where he sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his
+comrades by his modesty and by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike
+nature. The masters, however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters
+prefer bright fellows, eccentric spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy
+and deeply reflective, which argue future talent. Everything about
+Pierre Grassou smacked of mediocrity. His nickname "Fougeres" (that
+of the painter in the play of "The Eglantine") was the source of much
+teasing; but, by force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the
+town in which he had first seen light.
+
+Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he
+had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather
+wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a
+certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full
+of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous
+bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk
+with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a distant connection of
+the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by the fact of an obstinacy
+which constitutes the Breton character. What he suffered, the manner in
+which he lived during those years of study, God only knows. He suffered
+as much as great men suffer when they are hounded by poverty and hunted
+like wild beasts by the pack of commonplace minds and by troops of
+vanities athirst for vengeance.
+
+As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres
+took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
+to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
+picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
+represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
+picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
+he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
+strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in challenges
+sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or even by threats
+of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas, wrapped it in
+a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart that he would
+still make himself a great painter. He placed his picture on the easel,
+and went to one of his former masters, a man of immense talent,--to
+Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph at that year's Salon
+was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and criticise the rejected
+work. The great painter left everything and went at once. When poor
+Fougeres had placed the work before him Schinner, after a glance,
+pressed Fougeres' hand.
+
+"You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must
+not deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made in
+the studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your brush,
+my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and not take
+the canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton night-cap, and
+be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to some government
+office, ask for a place, and give up art."
+
+"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it is
+not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
+
+"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
+your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
+who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
+
+While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
+face so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to dinner
+and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock Fougeres was
+at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed the colors; he
+made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched up his figures.
+Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the picture to Elie
+Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian, had three reasons
+for being what he became,--rich and avaricious. Coming last from
+Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old pictures and living
+on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who relied on his palette
+to go to the baker's, bravely ate bread and nuts, or bread and milk, or
+bread and cherries, or bread and cheese, according to the seasons. Elie
+Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first picture, eyed it for some time
+and then gave him fifteen francs.
+
+"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
+expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
+
+Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might
+have had that picture for five francs.
+
+For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and
+stationed himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's
+shop, whence his eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain
+any notice from the eyes of the passers along the street. At the end of
+a week the picture disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and approached
+the dealer's shop in a lounging manner. The Jew was at his door.
+
+"Well, I see you have sold my picture."
+
+"No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one
+who fancies he knows about painting."
+
+Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
+another picture, and spent two months upon it,--eating mouse's meals and
+working like a galley-slave.
+
+One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully to
+the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
+
+"I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.
+
+"For how much?"
+
+"I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
+interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll buy
+them of you," said Elie.
+
+Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him as
+a father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter Schinner
+was mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there were some
+hearts that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was understood and
+appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the innocence of a lad
+of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful, surly artists, would
+have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face and seen the twitching
+of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his moustache, and the movement
+of his shoulders which betrayed the satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew
+in swindling a Christian.
+
+Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to his
+honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy protecting
+a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one of those
+eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph Bridau, who had,
+to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket, took Fougeres to
+the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't hear the music; he
+was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left Joseph in the middle
+of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamp-light. He invented
+thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt himself a man of genius. The
+next day he bought colors, and canvases of various dimensions; he piled
+up bread and cheese on his table, he filled a water-pot with water,
+he laid in a provision of wood for his stove; then, to use a studio
+expression, he dug at his pictures. He hired several models and Magus
+lent him stuffs.
+
+After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures. Again
+he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the invitation.
+The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile imitation
+of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a copy of
+Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
+
+"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
+original."
+
+"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.
+
+"What?" asked Fougeres.
+
+"Fling yourself into literature."
+
+Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked and
+obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before taking
+them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At that
+price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose, thanks to
+his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard to see what
+became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular hallucination.
+His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as porcelain, were
+covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old daubs. Magus was out,
+and Pierre could obtain no information on this phenomenon. He fancied
+something was wrong with his eyes.
+
+The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After seven
+years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute quite
+passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
+Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
+laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
+hundred.
+
+At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
+three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the
+art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the poverty
+of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the grand salon
+of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture, powerful in
+interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and from Dubufe's
+first manner as to execution, represented a young man in prison, whose
+hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one side was
+a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in tears. A
+sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched table was a
+meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a window near
+the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois shudder, and
+the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been inspired by the
+masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of the "Dropsical
+Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full front. The
+condemned man was substituted for the dying woman--same pallor, same
+glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor, he had painted
+the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk attired in black; but
+he had added an old woman to the young one of Gerard Douw. The cruelly
+simple and good-humored face of the executioner completed and dominated
+the group. This plagiarism, very cleverly disguised, was not discovered.
+The catalogue contained the following:--
+
+     510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
+     Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
+
+Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
+recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd collected
+every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X. paused to
+look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the poor Breton,
+became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of
+the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was
+suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a most satisfying
+religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on
+the stone-floor,--a huge blunder, by the way, for Fougeres had painted
+greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the base of the walls.
+"Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the
+Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the cross of the Legion
+of honor to this son of a peasant who had fought for the royal cause
+in 1799. (Joseph Bridau, the great painter, was not yet decorated.) The
+minister of the Interior ordered two church pictures of Fougeres.
+
+This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame,
+future, and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy,
+imitate, and you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou
+de Fougeres obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which society
+owes the wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these days the
+election of leaders in all social classes; who proceed, naturally, to
+elect themselves and who wage a bitter war against all true talent. The
+principle of election applied indiscriminately is false, and France will
+some day abandon it.
+
+Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good
+and gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides,
+he had on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who
+expected to succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of a
+man whom nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said:--
+
+"Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen his
+successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"
+
+That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support
+and the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up
+mediocrities as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers.
+The newspapers, it is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier
+Fougeres digested them as he had digested the counsel of his friends,
+with angelic patience.
+
+Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned,
+he furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and painted
+the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two church
+pictures, and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a punctuality
+that was very discomforting to the exchequer of the ministry, accustomed
+to a different course of action. But--admire the good fortune of men who
+are methodical--if Grassou, belated with his work, had been caught by
+the revolution of July he would not have got his money.
+
+By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie Magus
+some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the help of
+which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of execution
+before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the bourgeoisie
+worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of ideas, for
+steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great loyalty; though
+they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man who held it.
+
+"What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said
+his comrades.
+
+But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
+feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a
+book is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary
+critics and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt
+them, he acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit
+of justice that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After
+the revolution of July, Fougeres sent about ten pictures a year to the
+Salon, of which the jury admitted four or five. He lived with the most
+rigid economy, his household being managed solely by an old charwoman.
+For all amusement he visited his friends, he went to see works of art,
+he allowed himself a few little trips about France, and he planned to go
+to Switzerland in search of inspiration. This detestable artist was an
+excellent citizen; he mounted guard duly, went to reviews, and paid his
+rent and provision-bills with bourgeois punctuality.
+
+Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the time
+to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to complicate
+his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of increasing his
+little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his notary, Cardot,
+his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary had received
+about three thousand francs he invested them in some first mortgage, the
+interest of which he drew himself and added to the quarterly payments
+made to him by Fougeres. The painter was awaiting the fortunate moment
+when his property thus laid by would give him the imposing income of two
+thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum dignitate of the
+artist and paint pictures; but oh! what pictures! true pictures! each a
+finished picture! chouette, Koxnoff, chocnosoff! His future, his dreams
+of happiness, the superlative of his hopes--do you know what it was?
+To enter the Institute and obtain the grade of officer of the Legion
+of honor; to side down beside Schinner and Leon de Lora, to reach the
+Academy before Bridau, to wear a rosette in his buttonhole! What a
+dream! It is only commonplace men who think of everything.
+
+Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed up
+his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was not a
+little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face vulgarly
+called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted a pumpkin,
+clothed in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of tintinnabulating baubles.
+The melon puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin advanced on turnips,
+improperly called legs. A true painter would have turned the little
+bottle-vendor off at once, assuring him that he didn't paint vegetables.
+This painter looked at his client without a smile, for Monsieur Vervelle
+wore a three-thousand-franc diamond in the bosom of his shirt.
+
+Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
+term then much in vogue in the studios.
+
+Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois drew
+after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of his wife
+and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her face, and
+in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head and tied in
+around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap-rooted,
+and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly exhibited
+unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of a
+first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned
+her shoulders, as round behind as they were before; consequently, the
+spherical form of the cocoa-nut was perfect. Her feet, of a kind that
+painters call abatis, rose above the varnished leather of the shoes in a
+swelling that was some inches high. How the feet were ever got into the
+shoes, no one knows.
+
+Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented
+a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that a
+Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish spots
+upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any brows, a
+leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two honest bows
+of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of her mother. The
+faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round the studio, an
+air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable enthusiasm for Art.
+
+"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said the
+father, assuming a jaunty air.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
+
+"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while
+the painter's back was turned.
+
+"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who
+wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
+
+Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
+accompanied him to the landing.
+
+"There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
+
+"One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
+
+"Yes, but what a family!"
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
+Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
+
+"Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
+teeth on edge."
+
+"Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
+departed.
+
+That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst
+into his garret that morning.
+
+While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the
+bottle-dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full
+of violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel,
+marvelling at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a
+demigod. This visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw
+upon the family its fantastic reflections.
+
+"You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you
+get it," said the mother.
+
+"No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the
+means to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I have;
+as soon as I have taken him the money I never think of it again."
+
+"I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were baskets
+with holes in them."
+
+"Who is your notary--if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame
+Vervelle.
+
+"A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
+
+"Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our
+notary too."
+
+"Take care! don't move," said the painter.
+
+"Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about you'll
+make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then you'd
+understand."
+
+"Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle Vervelle
+to her parents.
+
+"Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn certain
+things. When you are married--well, till then, keep quiet."
+
+During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate
+with the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As they
+went away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite of
+this separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally
+awakened her curiosity.
+
+"Decorated--thirty-seven years old--an artist who gets orders--puts his
+money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de Fougeres!
+not a bad name--doesn't look like a bad man either! One might prefer a
+merchant; but before a merchant retires from business one can never know
+what one's daughter may come to; whereas an economical artist--and then
+you know we love Art--Well, we'll see!"
+
+While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou
+discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible to
+stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard, and
+looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a series of
+the oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of metals; a
+tawny yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of red-haired women,
+and he turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage what man would
+ever care about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty fades,--but
+ugliness remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That night when he
+went to bed the painter had come to think Virginie Vervelle charming.
+
+When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the
+artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on clean
+linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and chosen
+a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with pointed
+toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of the
+artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes, and
+turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou thought
+these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace; happily she
+didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did she look like?
+
+During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family
+and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty. This
+flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of the
+artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the mother.
+
+"What! for nothing?" they said.
+
+Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
+
+"You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money,"
+said old Vervelle.
+
+At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of pictures
+which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens, Gerard Douw,
+Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
+
+"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
+ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
+pictures."
+
+"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
+
+When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was nearly
+finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The notary
+had spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou was, he
+said, one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by thirty-six
+thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now saved about ten
+thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest; in short, he was
+incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark had enormous
+weight in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of nothing but the
+celebrated painter Fougeres.
+
+The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie,
+he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three Vervelles
+bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed to consider
+as one of their residences; there was to them an inexplicable attraction
+in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic abode. Abyssus abyssum, the
+commonplace attracts the commonplace. Toward the end of the sitting the
+stairway shook, the door was violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he
+came like a whirlwind, his hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face
+as he looked about him, casting everywhere the lightning of his glance;
+then he walked round the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou,
+pulling his coat together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but
+in vain, to button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule
+of cloth.
+
+"Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do you
+paint such things as that?"
+
+"Hold your tongue!"
+
+"Ah! to be sure, yes."
+
+The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary apparition,
+passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades deeper.
+
+"Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if
+the fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit of
+me left. What a crew!"
+
+"I'll write you a line for my notary."
+
+"Have you got a notary?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a
+perfumer's sign."
+
+Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.
+
+"Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with his
+lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All things
+are magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your palette, and
+warm up those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots; come, butter it
+well in. Do you pretend to have more sense than Nature?"
+
+"Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that
+note."
+
+Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear:--
+
+"Won't that country lout spoilt it?"
+
+"If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be worth
+a thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.
+
+Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who
+was stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very uneasy
+at his co-operation in her daughter's portrait.
+
+"Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette,
+and taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to d'Arthez'
+chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora the tops of
+the doors--masterpieces! Come and see us."
+
+And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at
+Virginie.
+
+"Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
+
+"A great artist," answered Grassou.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
+portrait? He frightened me."
+
+"He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
+
+"Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you," said
+Madame Vervelle.
+
+The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
+
+The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
+just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man of
+genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out to
+his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how little
+attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
+
+"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty
+talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of
+pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with
+mere merchants."
+
+This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was
+charming to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such
+compliments. The honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart
+of gold, that loyal soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow,
+decorated by royalty itself with the Legion of honor, put himself under
+arms to go out to Ville d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of the
+year. The painter went modestly by public conveyance, and he could not
+but admire the beautiful villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a park
+of five acres at the summit of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble view
+of the landscape. Marry Virginie, and have that beautiful villa some day
+for his own!
+
+He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a
+kindliness, a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was
+indeed a day of triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about
+the grounds on the nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be
+for the steps of so great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed and
+combed, and the lawns had just been mown. The pure country air wafted
+to the nostrils a most enticing smell of cooking. All things about the
+mansion seemed to say:
+
+"We have a great artist among us."
+
+Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the
+daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified step.
+These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou
+for seven hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its
+magnificence, Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their
+grand theatrical effect,--the opening of the picture gallery illuminated
+by lamps, the reflections of which were managed with the utmost care.
+Three neighbours, also retired merchants, an old uncle (from whom were
+expectations), an elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a number of other
+guests invited to be present at this ovation to a great artist followed
+Grassou into the picture gallery, all curious to hear his opinion of the
+famous collection of pere Vervelle, who was fond of oppressing them with
+the fabulous value of his paintings. The bottle-merchant seemed to have
+the idea of competing with King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of
+Versailles.
+
+The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read
+in black letters on a gold ground:
+
+               Rubens
+     Dance of fauns and nymphs
+
+                         Rembrandt
+     Interior of a dissecting room. The physician van Tromp
+             instructing his pupils.
+
+In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and dusted.
+Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not undrawn in
+presence of young ladies.
+
+Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon
+his lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art.
+He was Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard
+Douw! He was twenty great masters all by himself.
+
+"What is the matter? You've turned pale!"
+
+"Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The painter
+took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a corner on
+pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then the rage.
+
+"You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"
+
+"Yes, all originals."
+
+"Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall point
+out to you."
+
+Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
+gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
+examine each picture.
+
+"Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached the
+last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
+
+"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is
+nothing at all!"
+
+"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
+francs' worth of pictures?"
+
+"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear, "and
+I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand francs
+the whole lot."
+
+"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
+'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard Douw!"
+
+"And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw
+the meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in
+Elie's shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had
+required of him.
+
+Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur
+de Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou)
+advanced so much that when the portraits were finished he presented them
+gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his wife.
+
+At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
+Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He earns
+some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs' worth
+of canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and he
+lives with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who agree
+delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on earth.
+Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in which he
+is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not a family
+portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue du Temple
+that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs less than
+five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois families have
+for employing him is this:--
+
+"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year with
+his notary."
+
+As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May
+12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major
+in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to
+order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked
+about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying to
+them:--
+
+"The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
+
+Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two
+children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to
+eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh at
+his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and that
+the feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still works on;
+he aims for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter. And--oh!
+vengeance which dilates his heart!--he buys the pictures of celebrated
+artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these true works
+of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the collection at
+Ville d'Avray.
+
+There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than
+that of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and
+truly obliging.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Bridau, Joseph
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Start in Life
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Another Study of Woman
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Cardot (Parisian notary)
+       The Muse of the Department
+       A Man of Business
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Grassou, Pierre
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Middle Classes
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Lora, Leon de
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Honorine
+       Cousin Betty
+       Beatrix
+
+     Magus, Elie
+       The Vendetta
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Schinner, Hippolyte
+       The Purse
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       A Start in Life
+       Albert Savarus
+       The Government Clerks
+       Modeste Mignon
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Pierre Grassou
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: June 27, 2005 [EBook #1230]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE GRASSOU ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+                           PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                    Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+         To the Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas,
+      As a Testimony of the Affectionate Esteem of the Author,
+
+                                                     De Balzac
+
+
+
+
+                           PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+
+
+Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of
+works of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the
+revolution of 1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness,
+weariness, sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded
+galleries? Since 1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has
+again been taken by assault,--this time by a populace of artists who
+have maintained themselves in it.
+
+In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of
+art, it conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited.
+Among the two hundred selected paintings, the public could still
+choose: a crown was awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager,
+impassioned discussions arose about some picture. The abuse showered
+on Delacroix, on Ingres, contributed no less to their fame than the
+praises and fanaticism of their adherents. To-day, neither the crowd
+nor the criticism grows impassioned about the products of that bazaar.
+Forced to make the selection for itself, which in former days the
+examining jury made for it, the attention of the public is soon
+wearied and the exhibition closes. Before the year 1817 the pictures
+admitted never went beyond the first two columns of the long gallery
+of the old masters; but in that year, to the great astonishment of the
+public, they filled the whole space. Historical, high-art, genre
+paintings, easel pictures, landscapes, flowers, animals, and
+water-colors,--these eight specialties could surely not offer more
+than twenty pictures in one year worthy of the eyes of the public,
+which, indeed, cannot give its attention to a greater number of such
+works. The more the number of artists increases, the more careful and
+exacting the jury of admission ought to be.
+
+The true character of the Salon was lost as soon as it spread along
+the galleries. The Salon should have remained within fixed limits of
+inflexible proportions, where each distinct specialty could show its
+masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence
+of the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a
+mob; instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar;
+instead of a choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the
+result? A great artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children
+at a Fountain," "Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far
+more to his credit if the four pictures had been exhibited in the
+great Salon with the hundred good pictures of that year, than his
+twenty pictures could, among three thousand others, jumbled together
+in six galleries.
+
+By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every
+one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When,
+twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the
+"Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the
+"Baptism of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated
+artists accused of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials
+of criticism, that young and vigorous palettes existed, no such
+complaint was made. Now, when the veriest dauber of canvas can send in
+his work, the whole talk is of genius neglected! Where judgment no
+longer exists, there is no longer anything judged. But whatever
+artists may be doing now, they will come back in time to the
+examination and selection which presents their works to the admiration
+of the crowd for whom they work. Without selection by the Academy
+there will be no Salon, and without the Salon art may perish.
+
+Ever since the catalogue has grown into a book, many names have
+appeared in it which still remain in their native obscurity, in spite
+of the ten or a dozen pictures attached to them. Among these names
+perhaps the most unknown to fame is that of an artist named Pierre
+Grassou, coming from Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his
+brother-artists, who, at the present moment holds a place, as the
+saying is, "in the sun," and who suggested the rather bitter
+reflections by which this sketch of his life is introduced,
+--reflections that are applicable to many other individuals of the
+tribe of artists.
+
+In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of
+one of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor,
+and possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings,
+three windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a
+courtyard, or, to speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above
+the three or four rooms occupied by Grassou of Fougeres was his
+studio, looking over to Montmartre. This studio was painted in
+brick-color, for a background; the floor was tinted brown and well
+frotted; each chair was furnished with a bit of carpet bound round the
+edges; the sofa, simple enough, was clean as that in the bedroom of
+some worthy bourgeoise. All these things denoted the tidy ways of a
+small mind and the thrift of a poor man. A bureau was there, in which
+to put away the studio implements, a table for breakfast, a sideboard,
+a secretary; in short, all the articles necessary to a painter, neatly
+arranged and very clean. The stove participated in this Dutch
+cleanliness, which was all the more visible because the pure and
+little changing light from the north flooded with its cold clear beams
+the vast apartment. Fougeres, being merely a genre painter, does not
+need the immense machinery and outfit which ruin historical painters;
+he has never recognized within himself sufficient faculty to attempt
+high-art, and he therefore clings to easel painting.
+
+At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at
+which the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque
+idea of perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in
+themselves, Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette,
+and lighted his stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting
+till the frost on his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full
+light in. The weather was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who
+ate his bread with that patient, resigned air that tells so much,
+heard and recognized the step of a man who had upon his life the
+influence such men have on the lives of nearly all artists,--the step
+of Elie Magus, a picture-dealer, a usurer in canvas. The next moment
+Elie Magus entered and found the painter in the act of beginning his
+work in the tidy studio.
+
+"How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
+
+Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought
+his pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave
+himself the airs of a fine artist.
+
+"Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such
+pretensions! You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six
+sous' worth of color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll
+say that. You are steady; and I've come to put a good bit of business
+in your way."
+
+"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do you know Latin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, it means that the Greeks never proposed a good bit of business
+to the Trojans without getting their fair share of it. In the olden
+time they used to say, 'Take my horse.' Now we say, 'Take my bear.'
+Well, what do you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"
+
+These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which
+Fougeres employed what painters call studio fun.
+
+"Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for
+nothing."
+
+"Oh! oh!"
+
+"I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest
+man."
+
+"Come, out with it!"
+
+"Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
+
+"All for me?"
+
+"Yes--they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois--they are crazy
+about art--have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a 'dot' of
+a hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,--perhaps they'll
+turn out family portraits."
+
+And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who
+was called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh
+which frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles
+talking marriage.
+
+"Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you
+can very well afford to paint me three pictures."
+
+"True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
+
+"And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."
+
+"Marry! I?" cried Pierre Grassou,--"I, who have a habit of sleeping
+alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged--"
+
+"One hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a quiet girl, full of
+golden tones, as you call 'em, like a Titian."
+
+"What class of people are they?"
+
+"Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at
+Ville d'Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year."
+
+"What business did they do?"
+
+"Bottles."
+
+"Now don't say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth
+on edge."
+
+"Am I to bring them?"
+
+"Three portraits--I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for
+portrait-painting. Well, yes!"
+
+Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle
+family. To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the
+painter, and what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and
+Dame Vervelle, adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast
+an eye on the anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.
+
+When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was
+thought a great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to
+Schinner's, to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color
+which distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all
+discreet; at any rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From
+there he went to Sommervieux' atelier, to acquire that portion of the
+art of painting which is called composition, but composition was shy
+and distant to him. Then he tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet
+the mystery of their interior effects. The two masters were not
+robbed. Finally Fougeres ended his education with Duval-Lecamus.
+During these studied and these different transformations Fougeres'
+habits and ways of life were tranquil and moral to a degree that
+furnished matter of jesting to the various ateliers where he
+sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his comrades by his modesty and
+by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters,
+however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright
+fellows, eccentric spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy and deeply
+reflective, which argue future talent. Everything about Pierre Grassou
+smacked of mediocrity. His nickname "Fougeres" (that of the painter in
+the play of "The Eglantine") was the source of much teasing; but, by
+force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the town in which he
+had first seen light.
+
+Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he
+had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose,
+rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned
+air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy
+that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born
+to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to
+Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a
+distant connection of the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by
+the fact of an obstinacy which constitutes the Breton character. What
+he suffered, the manner in which he lived during those years of study,
+God only knows. He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are
+hounded by poverty and hunted like wild beasts by the pack of
+commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst for vengeance.
+
+As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres
+took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
+to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
+picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
+represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
+picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
+he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
+strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in
+challenges sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or
+even by threats of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas,
+wrapped it in a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart
+that he would still make himself a great painter. He placed his
+picture on the easel, and went to one of his former masters, a man of
+immense talent,--to Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph
+at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and
+criticise the rejected work. The great painter left everything and
+went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before him
+Schinner, after a glance, pressed Fougeres' hand.
+
+"You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must
+not deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made
+in the studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your
+brush, my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and
+not take the canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton
+night-cap, and be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to
+some government office, ask for a place, and give up art."
+
+"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it
+is not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
+
+"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
+your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
+who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
+
+While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
+face so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to
+dinner and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock
+Fougeres was at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed
+the colors; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched
+up his figures. Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the
+picture to Elie Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian,
+had three reasons for being what he became,--rich and avaricious.
+Coming last from Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old
+pictures and living on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who
+relied on his palette to go to the baker's, bravely ate bread and
+nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and cheese,
+according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first
+picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen francs.
+
+"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
+expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
+
+Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might
+have had that picture for five francs.
+
+For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and
+stationed himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's
+shop, whence his eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain
+any notice from the eyes of the passers along the street. At the end
+of a week the picture disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and
+approached the dealer's shop in a lounging manner. The Jew was at his
+door.
+
+"Well, I see you have sold my picture."
+
+"No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one
+who fancies he knows about painting."
+
+Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
+another picture, and spent two months upon it,--eating mouse's meals
+and working like a galley-slave.
+
+One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully
+to the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
+
+"I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.
+
+"For how much?"
+
+"I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
+interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll
+buy them of you," said Elie.
+
+Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him
+as a father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter
+Schinner was mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there
+were some hearts that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was
+understood and appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the
+innocence of a lad of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful,
+surly artists, would have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face
+and seen the twitching of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his
+moustache, and the movement of his shoulders which betrayed the
+satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew in swindling a Christian.
+
+Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to
+his honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy
+protecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one
+of those eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph
+Bridau, who had, to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket,
+took Fougeres to the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't
+hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left
+Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by
+lamp-light. He invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt
+himself a man of genius. The next day he bought colors, and canvases
+of various dimensions; he piled up bread and cheese on his table, he
+filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a provision of wood for his
+stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug at his pictures. He
+hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.
+
+After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures.
+Again he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the
+invitation. The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile
+imitation of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a
+copy of Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
+
+"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
+original."
+
+"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.
+
+"What?" asked Fougeres.
+
+"Fling yourself into literature."
+
+Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked
+and obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before
+taking them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At
+that price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose,
+thanks to his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard
+to see what became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular
+hallucination. His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as
+porcelain, were covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old
+daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre could obtain no information on this
+phenomenon. He fancied something was wrong with his eyes.
+
+The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After
+seven years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute
+quite passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
+Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
+laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
+hundred.
+
+At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
+three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the
+art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the
+poverty of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the
+grand salon of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture,
+powerful in interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and
+from Dubufe's first manner as to execution, represented a young man in
+prison, whose hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one
+side was a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in
+tears. A sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched
+table was a meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a
+window near the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois
+shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been
+inspired by the masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of
+the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full
+front. The condemned man was substituted for the dying woman--same
+pallor, same glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor,
+he had painted the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk
+attired in black; but he had added an old woman to the young one of
+Gerard Douw. The cruelly simple and good-humored face of the
+executioner completed and dominated the group. This plagiarism, very
+cleverly disguised, was not discovered. The catalogue contained the
+following:--
+
+     510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
+     Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
+
+Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
+recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd
+collected every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X.
+paused to look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the
+poor Breton, became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the
+price of the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the
+subject was suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a
+most satisfying religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin
+admired the dust on the stone-floor,--a huge blunder, by the way, for
+Fougeres had painted greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the
+base of the walls. "Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand
+francs, and the Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the
+cross of the Legion of honor to this son of a peasant who had fought
+for the royal cause in 1799. (Joseph Bridau, the great painter, was
+not yet decorated.) The minister of the Interior ordered two church
+pictures of Fougeres.
+
+This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame,
+future, and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy,
+imitate, and you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou
+de Fougeres obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which
+society owes the wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these
+days the election of leaders in all social classes; who proceed,
+naturally, to elect themselves and who wage a bitter war against all
+true talent. The principle of election applied indiscriminately is
+false, and France will some day abandon it.
+
+Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good
+and gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides,
+he had on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who
+expected to succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of
+a man whom nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said:--
+
+"Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen
+his successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"
+
+That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support
+and the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up
+mediocrities as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers.
+The newspapers, it is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier
+Fougeres digested them as he had digested the counsel of his friends,
+with angelic patience.
+
+Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned,
+he furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and
+painted the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two
+church pictures, and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a
+punctuality that was very discomforting to the exchequer of the
+ministry, accustomed to a different course of action. But--admire the
+good fortune of men who are methodical--if Grassou, belated with his
+work, had been caught by the revolution of July he would not have got
+his money.
+
+By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie
+Magus some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the
+help of which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of
+execution before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the
+bourgeoisie worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of
+ideas, for steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great
+loyalty; though they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man
+who held it.
+
+"What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said
+his comrades.
+
+But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
+feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a
+book is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary
+critics and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt
+them, he acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit
+of justice that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After the
+revolution of July, Fougeres sent about ten pictures a year to the
+Salon, of which the jury admitted four or five. He lived with the most
+rigid economy, his household being managed solely by an old charwoman.
+For all amusement he visited his friends, he went to see works of art,
+he allowed himself a few little trips about France, and he planned to
+go to Switzerland in search of inspiration. This detestable artist was
+an excellent citizen; he mounted guard duly, went to reviews, and paid
+his rent and provision-bills with bourgeois punctuality.
+
+Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the
+time to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to
+complicate his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of
+increasing his little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his
+notary, Cardot, his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary
+had received about three thousand francs he invested them in some
+first mortgage, the interest of which he drew himself and added to the
+quarterly payments made to him by Fougeres. The painter was awaiting
+the fortunate moment when his property thus laid by would give him the
+imposing income of two thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum
+dignitate of the artist and paint pictures; but oh! what pictures!
+true pictures! each a finished picture! chouette, Koxnoff, chocnosoff!
+His future, his dreams of happiness, the superlative of his hopes--do
+you know what it was? To enter the Institute and obtain the grade of
+officer of the Legion of honor; to side down beside Schinner and Leon
+de Lora, to reach the Academy before Bridau, to wear a rosette in his
+buttonhole! What a dream! It is only commonplace men who think of
+everything.
+
+Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed
+up his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was
+not a little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face
+vulgarly called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted
+a pumpkin, clothed in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of
+tintinnabulating baubles. The melon puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin
+advanced on turnips, improperly called legs. A true painter would have
+turned the little bottle-vendor off at once, assuring him that he
+didn't paint vegetables. This painter looked at his client without a
+smile, for Monsieur Vervelle wore a three-thousand-franc diamond in
+the bosom of his shirt.
+
+Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
+term then much in vogue in the studios.
+
+Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois
+drew after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of
+his wife and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her
+face, and in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head
+and tied in around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were
+tap-rooted, and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly
+exhibited unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of
+a first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned
+her shoulders, as round behind as they were before; consequently, the
+spherical form of the cocoa-nut was perfect. Her feet, of a kind that
+painters call abatis, rose above the varnished leather of the shoes in
+a swelling that was some inches high. How the feet were ever got into
+the shoes, no one knows.
+
+Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented
+a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that
+a Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish
+spots upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any
+brows, a leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two
+honest bows of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of
+her mother. The faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round
+the studio, an air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable
+enthusiasm for Art.
+
+"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said
+the father, assuming a jaunty air.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
+
+"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while
+the painter's back was turned.
+
+"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who
+wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
+
+Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
+accompanied him to the landing.
+
+"There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
+
+"One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
+
+"Yes, but what a family!"
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
+Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
+
+"Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
+teeth on edge."
+
+"Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
+departed.
+
+That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst
+into his garret that morning.
+
+While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the
+bottle-dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full of
+violent tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel,
+marvelling at all his preparations; they evidently thought him a
+demigod. This visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf
+threw upon the family its fantastic reflections.
+
+"You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you
+get it," said the mother.
+
+"No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the
+means to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I
+have; as soon as I have taken him the money I never think of it
+again."
+
+"I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were
+baskets with holes in them."
+
+"Who is your notary--if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame
+Vervelle.
+
+"A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
+
+"Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our
+notary too."
+
+"Take care! don't move," said the painter.
+
+"Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about
+you'll make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then
+you'd understand."
+
+"Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle
+Vervelle to her parents.
+
+"Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn
+certain things. When you are married--well, till then, keep quiet."
+
+During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate
+with the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As
+they went away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite
+of this separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally
+awakened her curiosity.
+
+"Decorated--thirty-seven years old--an artist who gets orders--puts
+his money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de
+Fougeres! not a bad name--doesn't look like a bad man either! One
+might prefer a merchant; but before a merchant retires from business
+one can never know what one's daughter may come to; whereas an
+economical artist--and then you know we love Art--Well, we'll see!"
+
+While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou
+discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible
+to stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard,
+and looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a
+series of the oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of
+metals; a tawny yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of
+red-haired women, and he turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage
+what man would ever care about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty
+fades,--but ugliness remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That
+night when he went to bed the painter had come to think Virginie
+Vervelle charming.
+
+When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the
+artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on
+clean linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and
+chosen a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with
+pointed toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of
+the artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes,
+and turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou
+thought these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace;
+happily she didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did
+she look like?
+
+During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family
+and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty.
+This flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of
+the artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the
+mother.
+
+"What! for nothing?" they said.
+
+Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
+
+"You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money,"
+said old Vervelle.
+
+At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of
+pictures which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens,
+Gerard Douw, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
+
+"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
+ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
+pictures."
+
+"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
+
+When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was
+nearly finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The
+notary had spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou
+was, he said, one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by
+thirty-six thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now
+saved about ten thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest;
+in short, he was incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark
+had enormous weight in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of
+nothing but the celebrated painter Fougeres.
+
+The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie,
+he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three
+Vervelles bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed
+to consider as one of their residences; there was to them an
+inexplicable attraction in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic
+abode. Abyssus abyssum, the commonplace attracts the commonplace.
+Toward the end of the sitting the stairway shook, the door was
+violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he came like a whirlwind, his
+hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face as he looked about him,
+casting everywhere the lightning of his glance; then he walked round
+the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou, pulling his coat
+together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but in vain, to
+button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule of cloth.
+
+"Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do
+you paint such things as that?"
+
+"Hold your tongue!"
+
+"Ah! to be sure, yes."
+
+The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary
+apparition, passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades
+deeper.
+
+"Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if
+the fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit
+of me left. What a crew!"
+
+"I'll write you a line for my notary."
+
+"Have you got a notary?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a
+perfumer's sign."
+
+Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.
+
+"Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with
+his lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All
+things are magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your
+palette, and warm up those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots;
+come, butter it well in. Do you pretend to have more sense than
+Nature?"
+
+"Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that
+note."
+
+Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear:--
+
+"Won't that country lout spoilt it?"
+
+"If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be
+worth a thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.
+
+Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who
+was stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very
+uneasy at his co-operation in her daughter's portrait.
+
+"Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette,
+and taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to
+d'Arthez' chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora
+the tops of the doors--masterpieces! Come and see us."
+
+And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at
+Virginie.
+
+"Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
+
+"A great artist," answered Grassou.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
+portrait? He frightened me."
+
+"He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
+
+"Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you,"
+said Madame Vervelle.
+
+The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
+
+The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
+just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man
+of genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out
+to his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how
+little attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
+
+"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty
+talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of
+pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with
+mere merchants."
+
+This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was
+charming to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such
+compliments. The honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart
+of gold, that loyal soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow,
+decorated by royalty itself with the Legion of honor, put himself
+under arms to go out to Ville d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of
+the year. The painter went modestly by public conveyance, and he could
+not but admire the beautiful villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a
+park of five acres at the summit of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble
+view of the landscape. Marry Virginie, and have that beautiful villa
+some day for his own!
+
+He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a
+kindliness, a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was
+indeed a day of triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about
+the grounds on the nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be
+for the steps of so great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed
+and combed, and the lawns had just been mown. The pure country air
+wafted to the nostrils a most enticing smell of cooking. All things
+about the mansion seemed to say:
+
+"We have a great artist among us."
+
+Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the
+daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified
+step. These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou
+for seven hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its
+magnificence, Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their
+grand theatrical effect,--the opening of the picture gallery
+illuminated by lamps, the reflections of which were managed with the
+utmost care. Three neighbours, also retired merchants, an old uncle
+(from whom were expectations), an elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a
+number of other guests invited to be present at this ovation to a
+great artist followed Grassou into the picture gallery, all curious to
+hear his opinion of the famous collection of pere Vervelle, who was
+fond of oppressing them with the fabulous value of his paintings. The
+bottle-merchant seemed to have the idea of competing with King
+Louis-Philippe and the galleries of Versailles.
+
+The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read
+in black letters on a gold ground:
+
+               Rubens
+     Dance of fauns and nymphs
+
+                         Rembrandt
+     Interior of a dissecting room. The physician van Tromp
+             instructing his pupils.
+
+In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and
+dusted. Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not
+undrawn in presence of young ladies.
+
+Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon
+his lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art.
+He was Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard
+Douw! He was twenty great masters all by himself.
+
+"What is the matter? You've turned pale!"
+
+"Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The
+painter took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a
+corner on pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then
+the rage.
+
+"You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"
+
+"Yes, all originals."
+
+"Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall
+point out to you."
+
+Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
+gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
+examine each picture.
+
+"Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached
+the last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
+
+"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is
+nothing at all!"
+
+"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
+francs' worth of pictures?"
+
+"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear,
+"and I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand
+francs the whole lot."
+
+"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
+'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard
+Douw!"
+
+"And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw
+the meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in
+Elie's shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had
+required of him.
+
+Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur
+de Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou)
+advanced so much that when the portraits were finished he presented
+them gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his
+wife.
+
+At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
+Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He
+earns some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs'
+worth of canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and
+he lives with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who
+agree delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on
+earth. Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in
+which he is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not
+a family portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue
+du Temple that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs
+less than five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois
+families have for employing him is this:--
+
+"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year
+with his notary."
+
+As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May
+12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major
+in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to
+order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked
+about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying
+to them:--
+
+"The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
+
+Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two
+children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to
+eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh
+at his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and
+that the feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still
+works on; he aims for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter.
+And--oh! vengeance which dilates his heart!--he buys the pictures of
+celebrated artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these
+true works of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the
+collection at Ville d'Avray.
+
+There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than
+that of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and
+truly obliging.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Bridau, Joseph
+  The Purse
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Start in Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Another Study of Woman
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Cardot (Parisian notary)
+  The Muse of the Department
+  A Man of Business
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Grassou, Pierre
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Lora, Leon de
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Start in Life
+  Honorine
+  Cousin Betty
+  Beatrix
+
+Magus, Elie
+  The Vendetta
+  A Marriage Settlement
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
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+Schinner, Hippolyte
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+  Albert Savarus
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+  The Unconscious Humorists
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diff --git a/old/old/29950627-1230.zip b/old/old/29950627-1230.zip
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@@ -0,0 +1,1279 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
+#7 in our series by Balzac
+
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+Pierre Grassou
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+by Honore de Balzac
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+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
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+March, 1998  [Etext #1230]
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Pierre Grassou, by Honore de Balzac
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+BY
+
+HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+
+Translated By
+Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To the Lieutenant-Colonel of Artillery, Periollas,
+
+As a Testimony of the Affectionate Esteem of the Author,
+
+
+De Balzac
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE GRASSOU
+
+
+
+Whenever you have gone to take a serious look at the exhibition of
+works of sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the
+revolution of 1830, have you not been seized by a sense of uneasiness,
+weariness, sadness, at the sight of those long and over-crowded
+galleries? Since 1830, the true Salon no longer exists. The Louvre has
+again been taken by assault,--this time by a populace of artists who
+have maintained themselves in it.
+
+In other days, when the Salon presented only the choicest works of
+art, it conferred the highest honor on the creations there exhibited.
+Among the two hundred selected paintings, the public could still
+choose: a crown was awarded to the masterpiece by hands unseen. Eager,
+impassioned discussions arose about some picture. The abuse showered
+on Delacroix, on Ingres, contributed no less to their fame than the
+praises and fanaticism of their adherents. To-day, neither the crowd
+nor the criticism grows impassioned about the products of that bazaar.
+Forced to make the selection for itself, which in former days the
+examining jury made for it, the attention of the public is soon
+wearied and the exhibition closes. Before the year 1817 the pictures
+admitted never went beyond the first two columns of the long gallery
+of the old masters; but in that year, to the great astonishment of the
+public, they filled the whole space. Historical, high-art, genre
+paintings, easel pictures, landscapes, flowers, animals, and water-
+colors,--these eight specialties could surely not offer more than
+twenty pictures in one year worthy of the eyes of the public, which,
+indeed, cannot give its attention to a greater number of such works.
+The more the number of artists increases, the more careful and
+exacting the jury of admission ought to be.
+
+The true character of the Salon was lost as soon as it spread along
+the galleries. The Salon should have remained within fixed limits of
+inflexible proportions, where each distinct specialty could show its
+masterpieces only. An experience of ten years has shown the excellence
+of the former institution. Now, instead of a tournament, we have a
+mob; instead of a noble exhibition, we have a tumultuous bazaar;
+instead of a choice selection we have a chaotic mass. What is the
+result? A great artist is swamped. Decamps' "Turkish Cafe," "Children
+at a Fountain," "Joseph," and "The Torture," would have redounded far
+more to his credit if the four pictures had been exhibited in the
+great Salon with the hundred good pictures of that year, than his
+twenty pictures could, among three thousand others, jumbled together
+in six galleries.
+
+By some strange contradiction, ever since the doors are open to every
+one there has been much talk of unknown and unrecognized genius. When,
+twelve years earlier, Ingres' "Courtesan," and that of Sigalon, the
+"Medusa" of Gericault, the "Massacre of Scio" by Delacroix, the
+"Baptism of Henri IV." by Eugene Deveria, admitted by celebrated
+artists accused of jealousy, showed the world, in spite of the denials
+of criticism, that young and vigorous palettes existed, no such
+complaint was made. Now, when the veriest dauber of canvas can send in
+his work, the whole talk is of genius neglected! Where judgment no
+longer exists, there is no longer anything judged. But whatever
+artists may be doing now, they will come back in time to the
+examination and selection which presents their works to the admiration
+of the crowd for whom they work. Without selection by the Academy
+there will be no Salon, and without the Salon art may perish.
+
+Ever since the catalogue has grown into a book, many names have
+appeared in it which still remain in their native obscurity, in spite
+of the ten or a dozen pictures attached to them. Among these names
+perhaps the most unknown to fame is that of an artist named Pierre
+Grassou, coming from Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his
+brother-artists, who, at the present moment holds a place, as the
+saying is, "in the sun," and who suggested the rather bitter
+reflections by which this sketch of his life is introduced,--
+reflections that are applicable to many other individuals of the tribe
+of artists.
+
+In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of
+one of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor,
+and possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings,
+three windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a
+courtyard, or, to speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above
+the three or four rooms occupied by Grassou of Fougeres was his
+studio, looking over to Montmartre. This studio was painted in brick-
+color, for a background; the floor was tinted brown and well frotted;
+each chair was furnished with a bit of carpet bound round the edges;
+the sofa, simple enough, was clean as that in the bedroom of some
+worthy bourgeoise. All these things denoted the tidy ways of a small
+mind and the thrift of a poor man. A bureau was there, in which to put
+away the studio implements, a table for breakfast, a sideboard, a
+secretary; in short, all the articles necessary to a painter, neatly
+arranged and very clean. The stove participated in this Dutch
+cleanliness, which was all the more visible because the pure and
+little changing light from the north flooded with its cold clear beams
+the vast apartment. Fougeres, being merely a genre painter, does not
+need the immense machinery and outfit which ruin historical painters;
+he has never recognized within himself sufficient faculty to attempt
+high-art, and he therefore clings to easel painting.
+
+At the beginning of the month of December of that year, a season at
+which the bourgeois of Paris conceive, periodically, the burlesque
+idea of perpetuating their forms and figures already too bulky in
+themselves, Pierre Grassou, who had risen early, prepared his palette,
+and lighted his stove, was eating a roll steeped in milk, and waiting
+till the frost on his windows had melted sufficiently to let the full
+light in. The weather was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who
+ate his bread with that patient, resigned air that tells so much,
+heard and recognized the step of a man who had upon his life the
+influence such men have on the lives of nearly all artists,--the step
+of Elie Magus, a picture-dealer, a usurer in canvas. The next moment
+Elie Magus entered and found the painter in the act of beginning his
+work in the tidy studio.
+
+"How are you, old rascal?" said the painter.
+
+Fougeres had the cross of the Legion of honor, and Elie Magus bought
+his pictures at two and three hundred francs apiece, so he gave
+himself the airs of a fine artist.
+
+"Business is very bad," replied Elie. "You artists have such
+pretensions! You talk of two hundred francs when you haven't put six
+sous' worth of color on a canvas. However, you are a good fellow, I'll
+say that. You are steady; and I've come to put a good bit of business
+in your way."
+
+"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," said Fougeres. "Do you know Latin?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, it means that the Greeks never proposed a good bit of business
+to the Trojans without getting their fair share of it. In the olden
+time they used to say, 'Take my horse.' Now we say, 'Take my bear.'
+Well, what do you want, Ulysses-Lagingeole-Elie Magus?"
+
+These words will give an idea of the mildness and wit with which
+Fougeres employed what painters call studio fun.
+
+"Well, I don't deny that you are to paint me two pictures for
+nothing."
+
+"Oh! oh!"
+
+"I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest
+man."
+
+"Come, out with it!"
+
+"Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
+
+"All for me?"
+
+"Yes--they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois--they are crazy
+about art--have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a 'dot' of
+a hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,--perhaps they'll
+turn out family portraits."
+
+And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who
+was called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh
+which frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles
+talking marriage.
+
+"Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you
+can very well afford to paint me three pictures."
+
+"True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
+
+"And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."
+
+"Marry! I?" cried Pierre Grassou,--"I, who have a habit of sleeping
+alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged--"
+
+"One hundred thousand francs," said Magus, "and a quiet girl, full of
+golden tones, as you call 'em, like a Titian."
+
+"What class of people are they?"
+
+"Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at
+Ville d'Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year."
+
+"What business did they do?"
+
+"Bottles."
+
+"Now don't say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth
+on edge."
+
+"Am I to bring them?"
+
+"Three portraits--I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for
+portrait-painting. Well, yes!"
+
+Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle
+family. To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the
+painter, and what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and
+Dame Vervelle, adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast
+an eye on the anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.
+
+When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was
+thought a great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to
+Schinner's, to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color
+which distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all
+discreet; at any rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From
+there he went to Sommervieux' atelier, to acquire that portion of the
+art of painting which is called composition, but composition was shy
+and distant to him. Then he tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet
+the mystery of their interior effects. The two masters were not
+robbed. Finally Fougeres ended his education with Duval-Lecamus.
+During these studied and these different transformations Fougeres'
+habits and ways of life were tranquil and moral to a degree that
+furnished matter of jesting to the various ateliers where he
+sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his comrades by his modesty and
+by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters,
+however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright
+fellows, eccentric spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy and deeply
+reflective, which argue future talent. Everything about Pierre Grassou
+smacked of mediocrity. His nickname "Fougeres" (that of the painter in
+the play of "The Eglantine") was the source of much teasing; but, by
+force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the town in which he
+had first seen light.
+
+Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he
+had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose,
+rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned
+air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy
+that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born
+to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to
+Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a
+distant connection of the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by
+the fact of an obstinacy which constitutes the Breton character. What
+he suffered, the manner in which he lived during those years of study,
+God only knows. He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are
+hounded by poverty and hunted like wild beasts by the pack of
+commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst for vengeance.
+
+As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres
+took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
+to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
+picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
+represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
+picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
+he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
+strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in
+challenges sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or
+even by threats of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas,
+wrapped it in a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart
+that he would still make himself a great painter. He placed his
+picture on the easel, and went to one of his former masters, a man of
+immense talent,--to Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph
+at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and
+criticise the rejected work. The great painter left everything and
+went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before him
+Schinner, after a glance, pressed Fougeres' hand.
+
+"You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must
+not deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made
+in the studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your
+brush, my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and
+not take the canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton
+night-cap, and be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to
+some government office, ask for a place, and give up art."
+
+"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it
+is not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
+
+"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
+your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
+who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
+
+While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
+face so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to
+dinner and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock
+Fougeres was at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed
+the colors; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched
+up his figures. Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the
+picture to Elie Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian,
+had three reasons for being what he became,--rich and avaricious.
+Coming last from Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old
+pictures and living on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who
+relied on his palette to go to the baker's, bravely ate bread and
+nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and cheese,
+according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first
+picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen francs.
+
+"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
+expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
+
+Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might
+have had that picture for five francs.
+
+For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and
+stationed himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's
+shop, whence his eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain
+any notice from the eyes of the passers along the street. At the end
+of a week the picture disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and
+approached the dealer's shop in a lounging manner. The Jew was at his
+door.
+
+"Well, I see you have sold my picture."
+
+"No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one
+who fancies he knows about painting."
+
+Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
+another picture, and spent two months upon it,--eating mouse's meals
+and working like a galley-slave.
+
+One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully
+to the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
+
+"I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.
+
+"For how much?"
+
+"I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
+interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll
+buy them of you," said Elie.
+
+Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him
+as a father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter
+Schinner was mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there
+were some hearts that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was
+understood and appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the
+innocence of a lad of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful,
+surly artists, would have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face
+and seen the twitching of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his
+moustache, and the movement of his shoulders which betrayed the
+satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew in swindling a Christian.
+
+Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to
+his honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy
+protecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one
+of those eccentric geniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph
+Bridau, who had, to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket,
+took Fougeres to the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't
+hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left
+Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by
+lamp-light. He invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt
+himself a man of genius. The next day he bought colors, and canvases
+of various dimensions; he piled up bread and cheese on his table, he
+filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a provision of wood for his
+stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug at his pictures. He
+hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.
+
+After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures.
+Again he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the
+invitation. The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile
+imitation of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a
+copy of Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
+
+"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
+original."
+
+"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.
+
+"What?" asked Fougeres.
+
+"Fling yourself into literature."
+
+Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked
+and obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before
+taking them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At
+that price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose,
+thanks to his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard
+to see what became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular
+hallucination. His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as
+porcelain, were covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old
+daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre could obtain no information on this
+phenomenon. He fancied something was wrong with his eyes.
+
+The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After
+seven years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute
+quite passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
+Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
+laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
+hundred.
+
+At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
+three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the
+art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the
+poverty of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the
+grand salon of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture,
+powerful in interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and
+from Dubufe's first manner as to execution, represented a young man in
+prison, whose hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one
+side was a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in
+tears. A sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched
+table was a meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a
+window near the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois
+shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been
+inspired by the masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of
+the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full
+front. The condemned man was substituted for the dying woman--same
+pallor, same glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor,
+he had painted the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk
+attired in black; but he had added an old woman to the young one of
+Gerard Douw. The cruelly simple and good-humored face of the
+executioner completed and dominated the group. This plagiarism, very
+cleverly disguised, was not discovered. The catalogue contained the
+following:--
+
+  510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
+  Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
+
+Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
+recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd
+collected every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X.
+paused to look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the
+poor Breton, became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the
+price of the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the
+subject was suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a
+most satisfying religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin
+admired the dust on the stone-floor,--a huge blunder, by the way, for
+Fougeres had painted greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the
+base of the walls. "Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand
+francs, and the Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the
+cross of the Legion of honor to this son of a peasant who had fought
+for the royal cause in 1799. (Joseph Bridau, the great painter, was
+not yet decorated.) The minister of the Interior ordered two church
+pictures of Fougeres.
+
+This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame,
+future, and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy,
+imitate, and you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou
+de Fougeres obtained his benefit of the fatal principle to which
+society owes the wretched mediocrities to whom are intrusted in these
+days the election of leaders in all social classes; who proceed,
+naturally, to elect themselves and who wage a bitter war against all
+true talent. The principle of election applied indiscriminately is
+false, and France will some day abandon it.
+
+Nevertheless the modesty, simplicity, and genuine surprise of the good
+and gentle Fougeres silenced all envy and all recriminations. Besides,
+he had on his side all of his clan who had succeeded, and all who
+expected to succeed. Some persons, touched by the persistent energy of
+a man whom nothing had discouraged, talked of Domenichino and said:--
+
+"Perseverance in the arts should be rewarded. Grassou hasn't stolen
+his successes; he has delved for ten years, the poor dear man!"
+
+That exclamation of "poor dear man!" counted for half in the support
+and the congratulations which the painter received. Pity sets up
+mediocrities as envy pulls down great talents, and in equal numbers.
+The newspapers, it is true, did not spare criticism, but the chevalier
+Fougeres digested them as he had digested the counsel of his friends,
+with angelic patience.
+
+Possessing, by this time, fifteen thousand francs, laboriously earned,
+he furnished an apartment and studio in the rue de Navarin, and
+painted the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, also the two
+church pictures, and delivered them at the time agreed on, with a
+punctuality that was very discomforting to the exchequer of the
+ministry, accustomed to a different course of action. But--admire the
+good fortune of men who are methodical--if Grassou, belated with his
+work, had been caught by the revolution of July he would not have got
+his money.
+
+By the time he was thirty-seven Fougeres had manufactured for Elie
+Magus some two hundred pictures, all of them utterly unknown, by the
+help of which he had attained to that satisfying manner, that point of
+execution before which the true artist shrugs his shoulders and the
+bourgeoisie worships. Fougeres was dear to friends for rectitude of
+ideas, for steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great
+loyalty; though they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man
+who held it.
+
+"What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said
+his comrades.
+
+But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
+feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a
+book is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary
+critics and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt
+them, he acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit
+of justice that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After the
+revolution of July, Fougeres sent about ten pictures a year to the
+Salon, of which the jury admitted four or five. He lived with the most
+rigid economy, his household being managed solely by an old charwoman.
+For all amusement he visited his friends, he went to see works of art,
+he allowed himself a few little trips about France, and he planned to
+go to Switzerland in search of inspiration. This detestable artist was
+an excellent citizen; he mounted guard duly, went to reviews, and paid
+his rent and provision-bills with bourgeois punctuality.
+
+Having lived all his life in toil and poverty, he had never had the
+time to love. Poor and a bachelor, until now he did not desire to
+complicate his simple life. Incapable of devising any means of
+increasing his little fortune, he carried, every three months, to his
+notary, Cardot, his quarterly earnings and economies. When the notary
+had received about three thousand francs he invested them in some
+first mortgage, the interest of which he drew himself and added to the
+quarterly payments made to him by Fougeres. The painter was awaiting
+the fortunate moment when his property thus laid by would give him the
+imposing income of two thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum
+dignitate of the artist and paint pictures; but oh! what pictures!
+true pictures! each a finished picture! chouette, Koxnoff, chocnosoff!
+His future, his dreams of happiness, the superlative of his hopes--do
+you know what it was? To enter the Institute and obtain the grade of
+officer of the Legion of honor; to side down beside Schinner and Leon
+de Lora, to reach the Academy before Bridau, to wear a rosette in his
+buttonhole! What a dream! It is only commonplace men who think of
+everything.
+
+Hearing the sound of several steps on the staircase, Fougeres rubbed
+up his hair, buttoned his jacket of bottle-green velveteen, and was
+not a little amazed to see, entering his doorway, a simpleton face
+vulgarly called in studio slang a "melon." This fruit surmounted a
+pumpkin, clothed in blue cloth adorned with a bunch of
+tintinnabulating baubles. The melon puffed like a walrus; the pumpkin
+advanced on turnips, improperly called legs. A true painter would have
+turned the little bottle-vendor off at once, assuring him that he
+didn't paint vegetables. This painter looked at his client without a
+smile, for Monsieur Vervelle wore a three-thousand-franc diamond in
+the bosom of his shirt.
+
+Fougeres glanced at Magus and said: "There's fat in it!" using a slang
+term then much in vogue in the studios.
+
+Hearing those words Monsieur Vervelle frowned. The worthy bourgeois
+drew after him another complication of vegetables in the persons of
+his wife and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her
+face, and in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head
+and tied in around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap-
+rooted, and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly
+exhibited unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of
+a first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned
+her shoulders, as round behind as they were before; consequently, the
+spherical form of the cocoa-nut was perfect. Her feet, of a kind that
+painters call abatis, rose above the varnished leather of the shoes in
+a swelling that was some inches high. How the feet were ever got into
+the shoes, no one knows.
+
+Following these vegetable parents was a young asparagus, who presented
+a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that
+a Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish
+spots upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any
+brows, a leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two
+honest bows of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of
+her mother. The faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round
+the studio, an air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable
+enthusiasm for Art.
+
+"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said
+the father, assuming a jaunty air.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
+
+"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while
+the painter's back was turned.
+
+"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who
+wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
+
+Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
+accompanied him to the landing.
+
+"There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
+
+"One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
+
+"Yes, but what a family!"
+
+"Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
+Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
+
+"Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
+teeth on edge."
+
+"Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
+departed.
+
+That idea entered the head of Pierre Grassou as the daylight had burst
+into his garret that morning.
+
+While he posed the father of the young person, he thought the bottle-
+dealer had a good countenance, and he admired the face full of violent
+tones. The mother and daughter hovered about the easel, marvelling at
+all his preparations; they evidently thought him a demigod. This
+visible admiration pleased Fougeres. The golden calf threw upon the
+family its fantastic reflections.
+
+"You must earn lots of money; but of course you don't spend it as you
+get it," said the mother.
+
+"No, madame," replied the painter; "I don't spend it; I have not the
+means to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I
+have; as soon as I have taken him the money I never think of it
+again."
+
+"I've always been told," cried old Vervelle, "that artists were
+baskets with holes in them."
+
+"Who is your notary--if it is not indiscreet to ask?" said Madame
+Vervelle.
+
+"A good fellow, all round," replied Grassou. "His name is Cardot."
+
+"Well, well! if that isn't a joke!" exclaimed Vervelle. "Cardot is our
+notary too."
+
+"Take care! don't move," said the painter.
+
+"Do pray hold still, Antenor," said the wife. "If you move about
+you'll make monsieur miss; you should just see him working, and then
+you'd understand."
+
+"Oh! why didn't you have me taught the arts?" said Mademoiselle
+Vervelle to her parents.
+
+"Virginie," said her mother, "a young person ought not to learn
+certain things. When you are married--well, till then, keep quiet."
+
+During this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate
+with the worthy artist. They were to come again two days later. As
+they went away the father told Virginie to walk in front; but in spite
+of this separation, she overheard the following words, which naturally
+awakened her curiosity.
+
+"Decorated--thirty-seven years old--an artist who gets orders--puts
+his money with our notary. We'll consult Cardot. Hein! Madame de
+Fougeres! not a bad name--doesn't look like a bad man either! One
+might prefer a merchant; but before a merchant retires from business
+one can never know what one's daughter may come to; whereas an
+economical artist--and then you know we love Art-- Well, we'll see!"
+
+While the Vervelle family discussed Pierre Grassou, Pierre Grassou
+discussed in his own mind the Vervelle family. He found it impossible
+to stay peacefully in his studio, so he took a walk on the boulevard,
+and looked at all the red-haired women who passed him. He made a
+series of the oddest reasonings to himself: gold was the handsomest of
+metals; a tawny yellow represented gold; the Romans were fond of red-
+haired women, and he turned Roman, etc. After two years of marriage
+what man would ever care about the color of his wife's hair? Beauty
+fades,--but ugliness remains! Money is one-half of all happiness. That
+night when he went to bed the painter had come to think Virginie
+Vervelle charming.
+
+When the three Vervelles arrived on the day of the second sitting the
+artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on
+clean linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and
+chosen a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with
+pointed toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of
+the artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes,
+and turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou
+thought these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace;
+happily she didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did
+she look like?
+
+During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family
+and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty.
+This flattery brought the family on the double-quick to the heart of
+the artist; he gave a drawing to the daughter, and a sketch to the
+mother.
+
+"What! for nothing?" they said.
+
+Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.
+
+"You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money,"
+said old Vervelle.
+
+At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of
+pictures which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens,
+Gerard Douw, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.
+
+"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
+ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
+pictures."
+
+"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.
+
+When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was
+nearly finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The
+notary had spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou
+was, he said, one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by
+thirty-six thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now
+saved about ten thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest;
+in short, he was incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark
+had enormous weight in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of
+nothing but the celebrated painter Fougeres.
+
+The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie,
+he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three
+Vervelles bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed
+to consider as one of their residences; there was to them an
+inexplicable attraction in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic
+abode. Abyssus abyssum, the commonplace attracts the commonplace.
+Toward the end of the sitting the stairway shook, the door was
+violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he came like a whirlwind, his
+hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face as he looked about him,
+casting everywhere the lightning of his glance; then he walked round
+the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou, pulling his coat
+together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but in vain, to
+button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule of cloth.
+
+"Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do
+you paint such things as that?"
+
+"Hold your tongue!"
+
+"Ah! to be sure, yes."
+
+The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary
+apparition, passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades
+deeper.
+
+"Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker?"
+
+"How much do you want?"
+
+"Five hundred. I've got one of those bull-dog dealers after me, and if
+the fellow once gets his teeth in he won't let go while there's a bit
+of me left. What a crew!"
+
+"I'll write you a line for my notary."
+
+"Have you got a notary?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That explains to me why you still make cheeks with pink tones like a
+perfumer's sign."
+
+Grassou could not help coloring, for Virginie was sitting.
+
+"Take Nature as you find her," said the great painter, going on with
+his lecture. "Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a sin? All
+things are magnificent in painting. Put some vermillion on your
+palette, and warm up those cheeks; touch in those little brown spots;
+come, butter it well in. Do you pretend to have more sense than
+Nature?"
+
+"Look here," said Fougeres, "take my place while I go and write that
+note."
+
+Vervelle rolled to the table and whispered in Grassou's ear:--
+
+"Won't that country lout spoilt it?"
+
+"If he would only paint the portrait of your Virginie it would be
+worth a thousand times more than mine," replied Fougeres, vehemently.
+
+Hearing that reply the bourgeois beat a quiet retreat to his wife, who
+was stupefied by the invasion of this ferocious animal, and very
+uneasy at his co-operation in her daughter's portrait.
+
+"Here, follow these indications," said Bridau, returning the palette,
+and taking the note. "I won't thank you. I can go back now to
+d'Arthez' chateau, where I am doing a dining-room, and Leon de Lora
+the tops of the doors--masterpieces! Come and see us."
+
+And off he went without taking leave, having had enough of looking at
+Virginie.
+
+"Who is that man?" asked Madame Vervelle.
+
+"A great artist," answered Grassou.
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"Are you quite sure," said Virginie, "that he has done no harm to my
+portrait? He frightened me."
+
+"He has only done it good," replied Grassou.
+
+"Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you,"
+said Madame Vervelle.
+
+The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
+
+The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
+just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man
+of genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out
+to his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how
+little attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
+
+"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty
+talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of
+pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with
+mere merchants."
+
+This form of idolatry, which stroked his innocent self-love, was
+charming to our poor Pierre Grassou, so little accustomed to such
+compliments. The honest artist, that atrocious mediocrity, that heart
+of gold, that loyal soul, that stupid draughtsman, that worthy fellow,
+decorated by royalty itself with the Legion of honor, put himself
+under arms to go out to Ville d'Avray and enjoy the last fine days of
+the year. The painter went modestly by public conveyance, and he could
+not but admire the beautiful villa of the bottle-dealer, standing in a
+park of five acres at the summit of Ville d'Avray, commanding a noble
+view of the landscape. Marry Virginie, and have that beautiful villa
+some day for his own!
+
+He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a
+kindliness, a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was
+indeed a day of triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about
+the grounds on the nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be
+for the steps of so great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed
+and combed, and the lawns had just been mown. The pure country air
+wafted to the nostrils a most enticing smell of cooking. All things
+about the mansion seemed to say:
+
+"We have a great artist among us."
+
+Little old Vervelle himself rolled like an apple through his park, the
+daughter meandered like an eel, the mother followed with dignified
+step. These three beings never let go for one moment of Pierre Grassou
+for seven hours. After dinner, the length of which equalled its
+magnificence, Monsieur and Madame Vervelle reached the moment of their
+grand theatrical effect,--the opening of the picture gallery
+illuminated by lamps, the reflections of which were managed with the
+utmost care. Three neighbours, also retired merchants, an old uncle
+(from whom were expectations), an elderly Demoiselle Vervelle, and a
+number of other guests invited to be present at this ovation to a
+great artist followed Grassou into the picture gallery, all curious to
+hear his opinion of the famous collection of pere Vervelle, who was
+fond of oppressing them with the fabulous value of his paintings. The
+bottle-merchant seemed to have the idea of competing with King Louis-
+Philippe and the galleries of Versailles.
+
+The pictures, magnificently framed, each bore labels on which was read
+in black letters on a gold ground:
+
+         Rubens
+Dance of fauns and nymphs
+
+             Rembrandt
+Interior of a dissecting room. The physician van Tromp
+        instructing his pupils.
+
+In all, there were one hundred and fifty pictures, varnished and
+dusted. Some were covered with green baize curtains which were not
+undrawn in presence of young ladies.
+
+Pierre Grassou stood with arms pendent, gaping mouth, and no word upon
+his lips as he recognized half his own pictures in these works of art.
+He was Rubens, he was Rembrandt, Mieris, Metzu, Paul Potter, Gerard
+Douw! He was twenty great masters all by himself.
+
+"What is the matter? You've turned pale!"
+
+"Daughter, a glass of water! quick!" cried Madame Vervelle. The
+painter took pere Vervelle by the button of his coat and led him to a
+corner on pretence of looking at a Murillo. Spanish pictures were then
+the rage.
+
+"You bought your pictures from Elie Magus?"
+
+"Yes, all originals."
+
+"Between ourselves, tell me what he made you pay for those I shall
+point out to you."
+
+Together they walked round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the
+gravity in which the artist proceeded, in company with the host, to
+examine each picture.
+
+"Three thousand francs," said Vervelle in a whisper, as they reached
+the last, "but I tell everybody forty thousand."
+
+"Forty thousand for a Titian!" said the artist, aloud. "Why, it is
+nothing at all!"
+
+"Didn't I tell you," said Vervelle, "that I had three hundred thousand
+francs' worth of pictures?"
+
+"I painted those pictures," said Pierre Grassou in Vervelle's ear,
+"and I sold them one by one to Elie Magus for less than ten thousand
+francs the whole lot."
+
+"Prove it to me," said the bottle-dealer, "and I double my daughter's
+'dot,' for if it is so, you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Gerard
+Douw!"
+
+"And Magus is a famous picture-dealer!" said the painter, who now saw
+the meaning of the misty and aged look imparted to his pictures in
+Elie's shop, and the utility of the subjects the picture-dealer had
+required of him.
+
+Far from losing the esteem of his admiring bottle-merchant, Monsieur
+de Fougeres (for so the family persisted in calling Pierre Grassou)
+advanced so much that when the portraits were finished he presented
+them gratuitously to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and his
+wife.
+
+At the present day, Pierre Grassou, who never misses exhibiting at the
+Salon, passes in bourgeois regions for a fine portrait-painter. He
+earns some twenty thousand francs a year and spoils a thousand francs'
+worth of canvas. His wife has six thousand francs a year in dowry, and
+he lives with his father-in-law. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who
+agree delightfully, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on
+earth. Pierre Grassou never emerges from the bourgeois circle, in
+which he is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not
+a family portrait is painted between the barrier du Trone and the rue
+du Temple that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs
+less than five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois
+families have for employing him is this:--
+
+"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year
+with his notary."
+
+As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May
+12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major
+in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to
+order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked
+about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying
+to them:--
+
+"The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
+
+Madame de Fougeres adores her husband, to whom she has presented two
+children. This painter, a good father and a good husband, is unable to
+eradicate from his heart a fatal thought, namely, that artists laugh
+at his work; that his name is a term of contempt in the studios; and
+that the feuilletons take no notice of his pictures. But he still
+works on; he aims for the Academy, where, undoubtedly, he will enter.
+And--oh! vengeance which dilates his heart!--he buys the pictures of
+celebrated artists who are pinched for means, and he substitutes these
+true works of arts that are not his own for the wretched daubs in the
+collection at Ville d'Avray.
+
+There are many mediocrities more aggressive and more mischievous than
+that of Pierre Grassou, who is, moreover, anonymously benevolent and
+truly obliging.
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Bridau, Joseph
+  The Purse
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  A Start in Life
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Another Study of Woman
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Cardot (Parisian notary)
+  The Muse of the Department
+  A Man of Business
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Grassou, Pierre
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Cousin Betty
+  The Middle Classes
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Lora, Leon de
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Start in Life
+  Honorine
+  Cousin Betty
+  Beatrix
+
+Magus, Elie
+  The Vendetta
+  A Marriage Settlement
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Schinner, Hippolyte
+  The Purse
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  A Start in Life
+  Albert Savarus
+  The Government Clerks
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Pierre Grassou, by de Balzac
+
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