Pierre Grassou

To Lieutenant-Colonel Périollas (of the Artillery) as a proof of the author’s affection and esteem.

De Balzac.

On every occasion when you have gone seriously to study the Exhibition of works in sculpture and painting, such as it has been since the Revolution of 1830, have you not been seized by a feeling of discomfort, boredom, and melancholy at the sight of the long, overfilled galleries? Since 1830 the Salon has ceased to exist. Once more the Louvre has been taken by storm by the mob of artists, and they have kept possession. Formerly, when the Salon gave us a choice collection of works of art, it secured the greatest honors for the examples exhibited there. Among the two hundred selected pictures the public chose again; a crown was awarded to the masterpieces by unknown hands. Impassioned discussions arose as to the merits of a painting. The abuse heaped on Delacroix and on Ingres were not of less service to them than the praises and fanaticism of their adherents.

In our day neither the crowd nor the critic can be vehement over the objects in this bazaar. Being compelled to make the selection which was formerly undertaken by the examining jury, their attention is exhausted by the effort; and by the time it is finished the Exhibition closes.

Until 1817 the pictures accepted never extended beyond the first two columns of the long gallery containing the works of the old masters, and this year they filled the whole of this space, to the great surprise of the public. Historical painting, genre, easel pictures, landscape, flowers, animals, and watercolor painting⁠—each of these eight classes could never yield more than twenty pictures worthy of the eye of the public, who cannot give attention to a larger collection of pictures.

The more the number of artists increases, the more exacting should the jury of selection become. All was lost as soon as the Salon encroached further on the gallery. The Salon should have been kept within fixed and restricted limits, inflexibly defined, where each class might exhibit its best works. The experience of ten years has proved the excellence of the old rules. Instead of a tourney, you now have a riot; instead of a glorious exhibition, you have a medley bazaar; instead of a selection, you have everything at once. What is the result? A great artist is swamped. The Turkish Café, the Children at the Well, the Torture by Hooks, and the Joseph by Decamps would have done more for his glory if exhibited all four, in the great room with the hundred other good pictures of the year, than his twenty canvases buried among three thousand paintings, and dispersed among six galleries.

With strange perversity, since the doors have been thrown open to all, there has been much talk of unappreciated genius. When, twelve years before, the Courtesan, by Ingres, and Sigalon’s pictures, Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, Delacroix’s Massacre of Scio, and Eugène Deveria’s Baptism of Henri IV⁠—accepted, as they were, by yet more famous men, who were taxed with jealousy⁠—revealed to the world, notwithstanding the carping of critics, the existence of youthful and ardent painters, not a complaint was ever heard. But now, when the veriest dauber of canvas can display his works, we hear of nothing but misunderstood talent. Where there is no longer any judgment, nothing is judged. Our artists, do what they may, will come back to the ordeal of selection which recommends their work to the admiration of the public for whom they toil. Without the choice exercised by the Academy, there will be no Salon; and without the Salon, art may perish.

Since the catalogue has grown to be a fat volume, many names are found there which remain obscure, notwithstanding the list of ten or twelve pictures that follows them. Among these names, the least known of all perhaps is that of an artist named Pierre Grassou, a native of Fougères, and called, for shortness, Fougères in the artist world⁠—a name which nowadays fills so much space on the page, and which has suggested the bitter reflections introducing this sketch of his life, and applicable to some other members of the artist tribe.

In 1832 Fougères was living in the Rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of one of those tall, narrow houses that are like the obelisk of Luxor, which have a passage and a dark, narrow staircase with dangerous turnings, which are not wide enough for more than three windows on each floor, and have a courtyard, or, to be exact, a square well at the back. Above the three or four rooms inhabited by Fougères was his studio, looking out over Montmartre. The studio, painted brick red; the floor, carefully stained brown and polished; each chair provided with a square, bordered mat; the sofa, plain enough, but as clean as that in a tradeswoman’s bedroom, everything betrayed the petty existence of a narrow mind and the carefulness of a poor man. There was a closet for keeping the studio properties in, a breakfast table, a sideboard, a desk, and the various objects necessary for painting, all clean and in order. The stove, too, had the benefit of this Dutch neatness, which was all the more conspicuous because the pure and steady northern sky flooded the back room with clear, cold light. Fougères, a mere painter of genre, had no need for the huge machinery which ruins historical painters; he had never discerned in himself faculties competent to venture on the higher walks of art, and was still content with small easels.

In the beginning of the month of December of that year, the season when Paris Philistines are periodically attacked by the burlesque idea of perpetuating their faces⁠—in themselves a sufficient burden⁠—Pierre Grassou, having risen early, was setting his palette, lighting his stove, eating a roll soaked in milk, and waiting to work till his window panes should have thawed enough to let daylight in. The weather was dry and fine. At this instant, the painter, eating with the patient, resigned look that tells so much, recognized the footfall of a man who had had the influence over his life which people of his class have in the career of most artists⁠—Elias Magus, a picture dealer, an usurer in canvas. And, in fact, Elias Magus came in, at the moment when the painter was about to begin work in his elaborately clean studio.

“How is yourself, old rascal?” said the painter.

Fougères had won the Cross; Elias bought his pictures for two or three hundred francs, and gave himself the most artistic airs.

“Business is bad,” replied Elias. “You all are such lords; you talk of two hundred francs as soon as you have six sous worth of paint on the canvas. — But you are a very good fellow, you are. You are a man of method, and I have come to bring you a good job.”

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” said Fougères. “Do you know Latin?”

“No.”

“Well, that means that the Greeks did not offer a bit of good business to the Trojans without making something out of it. In those days they used to say, ‘Take my horse.’ Nowadays we say, ‘Take my trash!’⁠—Well, what do you want, Ulysses-Lagningeole-Elias-Magus?”

This speech shows the degree of sweetness and wit which Fougères could put into what painters call studio-chaff.

“I don’t say that you will not have to paint me two pictures for nothing.”

“Oh! oh!”

“I leave it to you; I do not ask for them. You are an honest artist.”

“Indeed?”

“Well. I am bringing you a father, a mother, and an only daughter.”

“All unique specimens?”

“My word, yes, indeed!⁠—to have their portraits painted. The worthy folks, crazy about art, have never dared venture into a studio. The daughter will have a hundred thousand francs on her marriage. You may do well to paint such people. Family portraits for yourself, who knows?”

The old German image, who passes muster as a man, and is called Elias Magus, broke off to laugh a dry cackle that horrified the painter. He felt as if he had heard Mephistopheles talking of marriage.

“The portraits are to be five hundred francs apiece; you may give me three pictures.”

“Right you are!” said Fougères cheerfully.

“And if you marry the daughter, you will not forget me⁠—”

“Marry? I!” cried Pierre Grassou; “I, who am used to have a bed to myself, to get up early, whose life is all laid out⁠—”

“A hundred thousand francs,” said Magus, “and a sweet girl, full of golden lights like a Titian!”

“And what position do these people hold?”

“Retired merchants: in love with the arts at the present moment; they have a country house at Ville-d’Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year.”

“What was their business?”

“Bottles.”

“Don’t speak that, word; I fancy I hear corks being cut, and it sets my teeth on edge.”

“Well; am I to bring them?”

“Three portraits; I will send them to the Salon; I might go in for portrait-painting. — All right, yes.”

And old Elias went downstairs to fetch the Vervelle family.

To understand exactly what the outcome of such a proposal would be on the painter, and the effect produced on him by Monsieur and Madame Vervelle, graced by the addition of their only daughter, it is necessary to glance for a moment at the past life of Pierre Grassou of Fougères. As a pupil, he had learned to draw of Servin, who was regarded in the academical world as a great draughtsman. He afterwards worked under Schinner, to discover the secrets of the powerful and splendid coloring that characterizes that master. The master and his disciples had kept the secrets; Pierre had discovered nothing. From thence Fougères had gone to Sommervieux’s studio to familiarize himself with that part of art which is called composition; but composition was shy and held aloof from him. Then he had tried to steal from Granet and Drolling the mystery of their luminous interiors; the two masters had not allowed him to rob them. Finally, Fougères had finished his training under Duval-Lecamus.

Through all these studies and various transformations, Fougères’ quiet, steady habits had furnished materials for mockery in every studio where he had worked; but he everywhere disarmed his comrades by his diffidence and his lamblike patience and meekness. The masters had no sympathy with this worthy lad; masters like brilliant fellows, eccentric spirits, farcical and fiery, or gloomy and deeply meditative, promising future talent. Everything in Fougères proclaimed mediocrity. His nickname of Fougères⁠—the name of the painter in the play by Fabre d’Eglantine⁠—was the pretext for endless affronts, but by force of circumstances he was saddled with the name of the town “where he first saw the light.”

Grassou de Fougères matched his name. Plump and rather short, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a thick prominent nose, a rather wide mouth, and long ears. His placid, gentle, resigned expression did little to improve these features of a face that was full of health but not of movement. He could never suffer from the flow of blood, the vehemence of thought, or the spirit of comedy by which a great artist is to be known. This youth, born to be a virtuous citizen, had come from his provincial home to serve as shop clerk to a color-man, a native of Mayenne, distantly related to the d’Orgemonts, and he had made himself a painter by the sheer obstinacy which is the backbone of the Breton character. What he had endured, and the way in which he lived during his period of study, God alone knows. He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are haunted by want, and hunted down like wild beasts by the pack of inferior souls, and the whole army of vanity thirsting for revenge.

As soon as he thought himself strong enough for flight on his own wings, he took a studio at the top of the Rue des Martyrs, and there he began to work. He first sent in a picture in 1819. The picture he offered the jury for their exhibition at the Louvre represented a Village Wedding, a laborious imitation of Greuze’s picture. It was refused. When Fougères heard the fatal sentence, he did not fly into those furies or fits of epileptic vanity to which proud spirits are liable, and which sometimes end in a challenge sent to the President or the Secretary, or in threats of assassination. Fougères calmly received his picture back, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and brought it home to his studio swearing that he would yet become a great painter.

He placed the canvas on the easel and went to call on his old master, a man of immense talent⁠—Schinner⁠—a gentle and patient artist, whose success had been brilliant in the last Salon. He begged him to come and criticise the rejected work. The great painter left everything and went. When poor Fougères had placed him in front of the painting, Schinner at the first glance took Fougères by the hand:

“You are a capital good fellow; you have a heart of gold, it will not be fair to deceive you. Listen; you have kept all the promise you showed at the studio. When a man has such stuff as that at the end of his brush, my good fellow, he had better leave his paints in Brullon’s shop, and not deprive others of the canvas. Get home early, pull on your cotton nightcap, be in bed by nine; and tomorrow morning at ten o’clock go to some office and ask for work, and have done with art.”

“My good friend,” said Fougères, “my picture is condemned already. It is not a verdict that I want, but the reasons for it.”

“Well, then, your tone is gray and cold; you see nature through a crape veil; your drawing is heavy and clumsy; your composition is borrowed from Greuze, who only redeemed his faults by qualities which you have not.”

As he pointed out the faults of the picture, Schinner saw in Fougères’ face so deep an expression of grief that he took him away to dine, and tried to comfort him.

Next day, by seven in the morning, Fougères, before his easel, was working over the condemned canvas; he warmed up the color, made the corrections suggested by Schinner, and touched up the figures. Then, sick of such patching, he took it to Elias Magus. Elias Magus, being a sort of Dutch-Belgian-Fleming, had three reasons for being what he was⁠—miserly and rich. He had lately come from Bordeaux, and was starting in business in Paris as a picture-dealer; he lived on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougères, who trusted to his palette to take him to the baker’s, bravely ate bread and walnuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and cheese, according to the season. Elias Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first picture, eyed it for a long time, and then gave him fifteen francs.

“Taking fifteen francs a year and spending a thousand, I shall go fast and far,” said Fougères, smiling.

Elias Magus gave a shrug and bit his thumb at the thought that he might have had the picture for five francs. Every morning, for some days, Fougères went down to the Rue des Martyrs, lost himself in the crowd in the boulevard opposite Magus’ shop, and fixed his eyes on his picture⁠—which did not attract the gaze of the passersby. Towards the end of the week the picture disappeared. Fougères wandered up the boulevard towards the picture-dealer’s shop with an affectation of amusing himself. The Jew was standing in the doorway.

“Well, you have sold my picture?”

“There it is,” said Magus. “I am having it framed to show to some man who fancies himself knowing in paintings.”

Fougères did not dare to come along the boulevard any more. He began a new picture; for two months he labored at it, feeding like a mouse and working like a galley-slave. One evening he walked out on the boulevard; his feet carried him involuntarily to Magus’ shop; he could nowhere see his picture.

“I have sold your picture,” said the dealer to the artist.

“For how much?”

“I got my money back with a little interest. Paint me some Flemish interiors, an anatomy lecture, a landscape; I will take them of you,” said Elias.

Fougères could have hugged Magus in his arms; he looked upon him as a father. He went home with joy in his heart. Then Schinner, the great Schinner, was mistaken! In that vast city of Paris there were some hearts that beat in unison with that of Grassou; his talent was discerned and appreciated!

The poor fellow, at seven-and-twenty, had the artlessness of a boy of sixteen. Anyone else, one of your distrustful, suspicious artists, would have noticed Elias’ diabolical expression, have seen the quiver of his beard, the ironical curl of his moustache, the action of his shoulders, all betraying the satisfaction of Walter Scott’s Jew cheating a Christian. Fougères paraded the boulevards with a joy that gave his face an expression of pride. He looked like a schoolboy protecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his fellow-students, one of those eccentric men of genius who are predestined to glory and disaster. Joseph Bridau, having a few sous in his pocket, as he expressed it, took Fougères to the opera. Fougères did not see the ballet, did not hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting.

He left Joseph halfway through the evening, and ran home to make sketches by lamplight; he invented thirty pictures, full of reminiscences, and believed himself a genius. Next day he bought some colors and canvases of various sizes: he spread out some bread and some cheese on his table; he got some water in a jug, and a store of wood for his stove; then, to use the studio phrase, he pegged away at his painting; he employed a few models, and Magus lent him draperies. After two months of seclusion, the Breton had finished four pictures. He again asked Schinner’s advice, with the addition of Joseph Bridau’s. The two painters found these works to be a servile imitation of Dutch landscapes, of Metzu’s interiors, and the fourth was a version of Rembrandt’s Anatomy lecture.

“Always imitations!” said Schinner. “Ah! Fougères would find it hard to be original.”

“You ought to turn your attention to something else than painting,” said Bridau.

“To what?” said Fougères.

“Go in for literature.”

Fougères bent his head as sheep do before rain. Then he asked and got some practical advice, touched up his paintings, and carried them to Elias. Elias gave him twenty-five francs for each. At this price Fougères made nothing, but, thanks to his abstemiousness, he lost nothing. He took some walks to see what became of his pictures, and had a singular hallucination. His works, so firmly painted, so neat, as hard as tinplate iron, and as shining as painting on porcelain, seemed to be covered with a fog; they looked quite like old masters.

Elias had just gone out; Fougères could obtain no information as to this phenomenon. He thought his eyes deceived him.

The painter went home to his studio to make new old masters. After seven years of constant work, Fougères was able to compose and paint fairly good pictures. He did as well as all the other artists of the second class. Elias bought and sold all the poor Breton’s pictures, while he laboriously earned a hundred louis a year, and did not spend more than twelve hundred francs.

At the Exhibition of 1829, Léon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all three filled a large space, and were at the head of the new movement in art, took pity on their old comrade’s perseverance and poverty; they managed to get a picture by Fougères accepted and hung in the great room. This work, of thrilling interest, recalling Vigneron in its sentiment, and Dubufe’s early manner in its execution, represented a young man in prison having the back of his head shaved. On one side stood a priest, on the other a young woman in tears. A lawyer’s clerk was reading an official document. On a wretched table stood a meal which no one had eaten. The light came in through the bars of a high window. It was enough to make the good folks shudder, and they shuddered.

Fougères had borrowed directly from Gerard Dow’s masterpiece: he had turned the group of the Dropsical Woman towards the window instead of facing the spectator. He had put the condemned prisoner in the place of the dying woman⁠—the same pallor, the same look, the same appeal to heaven. Instead of the Dutch physician, there was the rigid official figure of the clerk dressed in black; but he had added an old woman by the side of Gerard Dow’s young girl. The cruelly good-humored face of the executioner crowned the group. The plagiarism, skilfully concealed, was not recognized.

The catalogue contained these words:⁠—

510, Grassou de Fougères (Pierre), Rue de Navarin, 2. The Chouan’s Toilet; condemned to Death, 1809.

Though quite mediocre, the picture had a prodigious success, for it reminded the spectators of the affair of the robbers⁠—known as the Chauffeurs⁠—of Mortagne. A crowd collected every day in front of the picture, which became the fashion, and Charles X stopped to look at it. Madame, having heard of the poor Breton’s patient life, grew enthusiastic about him. The Duc d’Orleans asked the price of the painting. The priests told Madame the Dauphiness that the work was full of pious feeling; it had no doubt a very satisfactory suggestion of religion. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on the window panes, a stupid, dull mistake, for what Fougères had intended was a greenish tone, which spoke of damp at the bottom of the walls. Madame bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the Dauphin gave a commission for another. Charles X bestowed the Cross on this son of a peasant who had fought for the Royal Cause in 1799; Joseph Bridau, a great painter, was not decorated. The Minister of the Interior ordered two sacred pictures for the church at Fougères. This Salon was to Pierre Grassou fortune, glory, a future, and life.

To invent in any kind is to die by inches; to copy is to live. Having at last discovered a vein full of gold, Grassou of Fougères practised that part of this barbarous maxim to which the world owes the atrocious mediocrity whose duty it is to elect its superiors in every class of society, but which naturally elects itself, and wages pitiless war against all real talent. The principle of election universally applied is a bad one; France will get over it. At the same time, Fougères was so gentle and kind that his modesty, his simplicity, and his astonishment silenced recriminations and envy. Then, again, he had on his side all the successful Grassous, representing all the Grassous to come. Some people, touched by the energy of a man whom nothing had discouraged, spoke of Domenichino, and said, “Hard work in the arts must be rewarded. Grassou has earned his success. He has been pegging at it for ten years, poor old fellow!”

This exclamation, “poor old fellow!” counted for a great deal in the support and congratulations the painter received. Pity elevates as many second-rate talents as envy runs down great artists. The newspapers had not been sparing of criticism, but the Chevalier Fougères took it all as he took his friend’s advice, with angelic patience. Rich now, with fifteen thousand francs very hardly earned, he furnished his rooms and his studio in the Rue de Navarin, he painted the picture ordered by Monseigneur the Dauphin, and the two sacred works commanded by the Minister, finishing them to the day, with a punctuality perfectly distracting to the cashier of the Ministry, accustomed to quite other ways. But note the good luck of methodical people! If he had delayed, Grassou, overtaken by the revolution of July, would never have been paid.

By the time he was seven-and-thirty Fougères had manufactured for Elias Magus about two hundred pictures, all perfectly unknown, but by which he had gained with practice that satisfactory handling, that pitch of dexterity at which an artist shrugs his shoulders, and which is dear to the Philistine. Fougères was loved by his friends for his rectitude of mind and steadfastness of feeling, for his perfectly obliging temper and loyal spirit; though they had no respect for his palette, they were attached to the man who held it.

“What a pity that Fougères should indulge in the vice of painting!” his friends would say.

Grassou, however, could give sound advice, like the newspaper writers, who are incapable of producing a book, but who know full well where a book is faulty. But there was a difference between Fougères and these literary critics; he was keenly alive to every beauty, he acknowledged it, and his advice was stamped with a sense of justice which made his strictures acceptable.

After the revolution of July Fougères sent in ten or more paintings to every exhibition, of which the jury would accept four or five. He lived with the strictest economy, and his whole household consisted of a woman to manage the housework. His amusements lay solely in visits to his friends, and in going to see works of art; he treated himself to some little tours in France, and dreamed of seeing inspiration in Switzerland. This wretched artist was a good citizen; he served in the Guard, turned out for inspection, and paid his rent and bills with the vulgarest punctuality. Having lived in hard work and penury, he had never had time to be in love. A bachelor and poor, up to the present day he had had no wish to complicate his simple existence.

Having no idea of any way of increasing his wealth, he took his savings and his earnings every quarter to his notary, Cardot. When the notary had a thousand crowns in hand, he invested them in a first mortgage, with substitution in favor of the wife’s rights if the borrower should marry, or in favor of the seller if the borrower should wish to pay it off. The notary drew the interest and added it to the sums deposited by Grassou de Fougères. The painter looked forward to the happy day when his investments should reach the imposing figure of two thousand francs a year, when he would indulge in the otium cum dignitate of an artist and paint pictures⁠—oh! but such pictures! Real pictures, finished pictures⁠—something like, clipping, stunning! His fondest hope, his dream of joy, the climax of all his hopes⁠—would you like to know it? It was to be elected to the Institute and wear the rosette of the officers of the Legion of Honor! To sit by Schinner and Léon de Lora! To get into the Academy before Bridau! To have a rosette in his buttonhole.⁠— What a vision! Only your commonplace mind can think of everything.


On hearing several footsteps on the stairs, Fougères pushed his fingers through his topknot of hair, buttoned his bottle-green waistcoat, and was not a little surprised at the entrance of a face of the kind known in the studio as a melon. This fruit was perched on a pumpkin dressed in blue cloth, and graced with a dangling bunch of jingling seals. The melon snorted like a porpoise, the pumpkin walked on turnips incorrectly called legs. A real artist would at once have sketched such a caricature of the bottle merchant and then have shown him out, saying that he did not paint vegetables. Fougères looked at his customer without laughing, for M. Vervelle wore in his shirtfront a diamond worth a thousand crowns. Fougères glanced at Magus, and said in the studio slang of the day, “A fat job,” meaning that the worthy was rich.

M. Vervelle heard it and frowned. He brought in his train some other vegetable combinations in the persons of his wife and daughter. The wife had in her face a fine mahogany tone; she looked like a coconut surmounted by a head and tightened in with a belt; she twirled round on her feet; her dress was yellow, with black stripes. She proudly displayed absurd mittens on a pair of hands as swollen as a glover’s sign. The feathers of a first-class funeral waved over a coal-scuttle bonnet; lace frills covered a figure as round behind as before, thus the spherical form of the coconut was perfect. Her feet, which a painter would have termed hoofs, had a garnish of half-an-inch of fat projecting beyond her patent-leather shoes. How had her feet been got into the shoes? Who can tell?

Behind her came a young asparagus shoot, green and yellow as to her dress, with a small head covered with hair in flat braids of a carroty yellow which a Roman would have adored, thread-paper arms, a fairly white but freckled skin, large innocent eyes, with colorless lashes and faintly marked eyebrows, a Leghorn straw hat, trimmed with a couple of honest white satin bows, and bound with white satin, virtuously red hands, and feet like her mother’s.

These three persons, as they looked round the studio, had a look of beatitude which showed a highly-respectable enthusiasm for art.

“And it is you, sir, who are going to take our likenesses?” said the father, assuming a little dashing air.

“Yes, sir,” replied Grassou.

“Vervelle, he has the Cross,” said the wife to her husband in a whisper while the painter’s back was turned.

“Should I have our portraits painted by an artist who was not ‘decorated’?” retorted the bottle-merchant.

Elias Magus bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou followed him on to the landing.

“Who but you would have discovered such a set of phizzes?”

“A hundred thousand francs in settlement!”

“Yes, but what a family!”

“And three hundred thousand francs in expectations, a house in the Rue Boucherat, and a country place at Ville d’Avray.”

“Boucherat, bottles, bumpkins, and bounce!” said the painter.

“You will be out of want for the rest of your days,” said Elias.

This idea flashed into Pierre Grassou’s brain as the morning light had broken on his attic. As he placed the young lady’s father in position, he thought him really good-looking, and admired his face with its strong purple tones. The mother and daughter hovered round the painter, wondering at all his preparations; to them he seemed a god. This visible adoration was pleasing to Fougères. The golden calf cast its fantastic reflection on this family.

“You must earn enormous sums; but you spend it as fast as you get it?” said the mother.

“No, madame,” replied the painter, “I do not spend. I have not means to amuse myself. My notary invests my money; he knows what I have, and when once the money is in his hands I think no more about it.”

“And I have always been told that painters were a thriftless set!” said father Vervelle.

“Who is your notary, if it is not too great a liberty?” said Madame Vervelle.

“A capital fellow all round⁠—Cardot.”

“Lord! lord! Isn’t that funny nowl” said Vervelle. “Why, Cardot is ours too.”

“Do not move,” said the painter.

“Sit still, do, Anténor,” said his wife; “you will put the gentleman out; if you could see him working you would understand.”

“Gracious me, why did you never have me taught art?” said Mademoiselle Vervelle to her parents.

“Virginie!” exclaimed her mother, “there are certain things a young lady cannot learn. When you are married⁠—well and good. Till then be content.”

In the course of this first sitting the Vervelle family became almost intimate with the worthy artist. They were to come again two days after. After they left, the father and mother desired Virginie to go first; but in spite of the distance between them, she heard these words, of which the meaning must have roused her curiosity:

Décoré⁠—thirty-seven⁠—an artist who gets commissions, and places his money in our notary’s hands. We will consult Cardot. Madame de Fougères, heh! not a bad name! He does not look like a bad fellow! A man of business, you would say? But so long as a merchant has not retired from business, you can never tell what your daughter may come to; while an artist who saves. — And then we are fond of art. —Well, well!⁠—”

While the Vervelles were discussing him, Pierre Grassou was thinking of the Vervelles. He found it impossible to remain quietly in his studio; he walked up and down the boulevard, looking at every red-haired woman who went by! He argued with himself in the strangest way: Gold was the most splendid of the metals, yellow stood for gold; the ancient Romans liked red-haired women, and he became a Roman, and so forth. After being married two years, what does a man care for his wife’s complexion? Beauty fades⁠—but ugliness remains! Money is half of happiness. That evening, when he went to bed, the painter had already persuaded himself that Virginie Vervelle was charming.

When the trio walked in on the day fixed for the second sitting, the artist received them with an amiable smile. The rogue had shaved, had put on a clean white shirt; he had chosen a becoming pair of trousers, and red slippers with Turkish toes. The family responded with a smile as flattering as the artist’s; Virginie turned as red as her hair, dropped her eyes, and turned away her head, looking at the studies. Pierre Grassou thought these little affectations quite bewitching. Virginie was graceful; happily, she was like neither father nor mother. But whom was she like?

“Ah, I see,” said he to himself; “the mother has had an eye to business.”

During the sitting there was a war of wits between the family and the painter, who was so audacious as to say that father Vervelle was witty. After this piece of flattery the family took possession of the painter’s heart in double-quick time; he gave one of his drawings to Virginie, and a sketch to her mother.

“For nothing?” they asked.

Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.

“You must not give your works away like this; they are money,” said Vervelle.

At the third sitting old Vervelle spoke of a fine collection of pictures he had in his country house at Ville d’Avray⁠—Kubens, Gerard Dow, Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, a Titian, Paul Potter, etc.

M. Vervelle has been frightfully extravagant,” said Madame Vervelle pompously. “He has a hundred thousand francs’ worth of pictures.”

“I am fond of the arts,” said the bottle-merchant.

When Madame Vervelle’s portrait was begun, that of her husband was nearly finished. The enthusiasm of the family now knew no bounds. The notary had praised the artist in the highest terms. Pierre Grassou was in his opinion the best fellow on earth, one of the steadiest of artists, who had indeed saved thirty-six thousand francs; his days of poverty were past; he was making ten thousand francs a year, he was reinvesting his interest, and he was incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last sentence was of great weight in the scale. The friends of the family heard nothing talked of but the celebrated Fougères.

By the time Fougères began the portrait of Virginie he was already the son-in-law elect of the Vervelle couple. The trio expanded in this studio, which they had begun to regard as a home; there was an inexplicable attraction to them in this cleaned, cared-for, neat, artistic spot. Abyssus abyssum, like to like.

Towards the end of the sitting the stairs were shaken, the door was flung open, and in came Joseph Bridau; he rode the whirlwind, his hair was flying; in he came with his broad, deeply-seamed face, shot lightning glances all round the room, and came suddenly up to Grassou, pulling his coat across the gastric region, and trying to button it, but in vain, for the button mold had escaped from its cloth cover.

“Times are bad,” he said to Grassou.

“Hah?”

“The duns are at my heels. — Hallo! are you painting that sort of thing?”

“Hold your tongue!”

“To be sure⁠—”

The Vervelle family, excessively taken aback by this apparition, turned from the usual red to the cherry scarlet of a fierce fire.

“It pays,” said Joseph. “Have you any shot in your locker?”

“Do you want much?”

“A five hundred franc note.⁠ ⁠… There is a party after me of the bloodhound kind, who, when once they have set their teeth, do not let go without having the piece out. What a set!”

“I will give you a line to my notary⁠—”

“What! have you a notary?”

“Yes.”

“Then that accounts for your still painting cheeks rosepink, only fit for a hairdresser’s doll!”

Grassou could not help reddening, for Virginie was sitting to him.

“Paint nature as it is,” the great painter went on. “Mademoiselle is red-haired. Well, is that a deadly sin? Everything is fine in painting. Squeeze me out some cinnabar, warm up those cheeks, give me those little brown freckles, butter your canvas boldly! Do you want to do better than Nature?”

“Here,” said Fougères, “take my place while I write.”

Vervelle waddled to the writing-table and spoke in Grassou’s ear.

“That interfering muddler will spoil it,” said the bottle-merchant.

“If he would paint your Virginia’s portrait, it would be worth a thousand of mine,” replied Fougères indignantly.

On hearing this, the goodman quietly beat a retreat to join his wife, who sat bewildered at the invasion of this wild beast, and not at all happy at seeing him cooperating in her daughter’s portrait.

“There, carry out those hints,” said Bridau, returning the palette, and taking the note. “I will not thank you. — I can get back to D’Arthez’s château; I am painting a dining-room for him, and Léon de Lora is doing panels over the doors⁠—masterpieces. Come and see us!”

He went off without bowing even, so sick was he of looking at Virginie.

“Who is that man?” asked Madame Vervelle.

“A great artist,” replied Grassou.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Are you quite sure,” said Virginie, “that he has brought no ill-luck to my portrait?⁠ ⁠… He frightened me.”

“He has only improved it,” said Grassou.

“If he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you,” said Madame Vervelle.

“Oh, mamma, Monsieur Fougères is a much greater artist. He will take me full length,” remarked Virginie.

The eccentricities of genius had scared these steadygoing Philistines.

The year had now reached that pleasant autumn season prettily called Saint-Martin’s summer. It was with the shyness of a neophyte in the presence of a man of genius that Vervelle ventured to invite Grassou to spend the following Sunday at his country house. He knew how little attraction a bourgeois family could offer to an artist.

“You artists,” said he, “must have excitement, fine scenes, and clever company. But I can give you some good wine, and I rely on my pictures to make up for the dullness an artist like you must feel among tradesfolks.”

This worship, which greatly soothed his vanity, delighted poor Pierre Grassou, who was little used to such compliments. This worthy artist, this ignominious mediocrity, this heart of gold, this loyal soul, this blundering draughtsman, this best of good fellows, displaying the Cross of the Royal Order of the Legion of Honor, got himself up with care to go and enjoy the last fine days of the year at Ville d’Avray. The painter arrived unpretentiously by the public conveyance, and could not help admiring the bottle-merchant’s handsome residence placed in the midst of a park of about five acres, at the top of the hill, and the best point of view. To marry Virginie meant owning this fine house some day!

He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a delight, a genuine heartiness, a simple, commonplace stupidity that overpowered him. It was a day of triumph. The future son-in-law was taken to walk along the nankeen-colored paths, which had been raked, as was due, for a great man. The very trees looked as if they had been brushed and combed, the lawns were mown. The pure country air diluted kitchen odors of the most comforting character. Everything in the house proclaimed, “We have a great artist here!” Little father Vervelle rolled about his paddock like an apple, the daughter wriggled after him like an eel, and the mother followed with great dignity. For seven hours these three beings never released Grassou.

After a dinner, of which the length matched the splendor, Monsieur and Madame Vervelle came to their grand surprise⁠—the opening of the picture gallery, lighted up by lamps carefully arranged for effect. Three neighbors, all retired business men, an uncle from whom they had expectations, invited in honor of the great artist, an old Aunt Vervelle, and the other guests followed Grassou into the gallery, all curious to hear his opinion of little Daddy Vervelle’s famous collection, for he overpowered them by the fabulous value of his pictures. The bottle-merchant seemed to wish to vie with King Louis-Philippe and the galleries of Versailles.

The pictures, splendidly framed, bore tickets, on which might be read in black letters on a gold label:⁠—

Rubens

A Dance, of Fauns and Nymphs

Rembrandt

Interior of a Dissecting-room

Doctor Tromp giving a Lesson to his Pupils

There were a hundred and fifty pictures, all varnished and dusted; a few had green curtains over them, not to be raised in the presence of the young person.

The artist stood with limp arms and a gaping mouth, without a word on his lips, as he recognized in this gallery half his own works; he, He was Rubens, Paul Potter, Mieris, Metzu, Gerard Dow! He alone was twenty great masters!

“What is the matter? you look pale.”

“Daughter, a glass of water!” cried Madame Vervelle.

The painter took the old man by the button of his coat and led him into a corner, under pretence of examining a Murillo. — Spanish pictures were then the fashion.

“You bought your pictures of Elias Magus?” said he.

“Yes. All original works.”

“Between ourselves, what did he make you pay for those I will point out to you?”

The couple went round the gallery. The guests were amazed at the solemnity with which the artist, following his host, examined all these masterpieces.

“Three thousand francs!” exclaimed Vervelle in an undertone, as he came to the last. “But I tell you forty thousand francs!”

“Forty thousand francs for a Titian!” said the artist aloud; “why, it is dirt-cheap!”

“When I told you I had a hundred thousand crowns’ worth of pictures⁠—” exclaimed Vervelle.

“I painted every one of those pictures,” said Pierre Grassou in his ear; “and I did not get more than ten thousand francs for the whole lot.”

“Prove it,” replied the bottle-merchant, “and I will double my daughter’s settlements; for in that case you are Rubens, Rembrandt, Terburg, Titian!”

“And Magus is something like a picture-dealer!” added the painter, who could account for the antique look of the pictures, and the practical end of the subjects ordered by the dealer.


Far from falling in his admirer’s estimation, M. de Fougères⁠—for so the family insisted on calling Pierre Grassou⁠—rose so high that he painted his family for nothing, and of course presented the portraits to his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, and his wife.

Pierre Grassou, who never misses a single exhibition, is now regarded in the Philistine world as a very good portrait-painter. He earns about twelve thousand francs a year, and spoils about five hundred francs’ worth of canvas. His wife had six thousand francs a year on her marriage, and they live with her parents. The Vervelles and the Grassous, who get on perfectly well together, keep a carriage, and are the happiest people on earth. Pierre Grassou moves in a commonplace circle, where he is considered one of the greatest artists of the period. Not a family portrait is ordered between the Barrière du Trône and the Rue du Temple that is not the work of this great painter, or that costs less than five hundred francs. The great reason why the townsfolk employ this artist is this: “Say what you like, he invests twenty thousand francs a year through his notary.”

As Grassou behaved very well in the riots of the 12th of May, he has been promoted to be an officer of the Legion of Honor. He is major in the National Guard. The Versailles gallery was bound to order a battle scene of so worthy a citizen, who forthwith walked all about Paris to meet his old comrades and to say with an air of indifference, “The King has ordered me to paint a battle!”

Madame de Fougères adores her husband, whom she has presented with two children. The painter, however, a good father and a good husband, cannot altogether get rid of a haunting thought: other painters make fun of him; his name is a term of contempt in every studio; the newspapers never notice his works. Still, he works on, and is making his way to the Academy; he will be admitted. And then⁠—a revenge that swells his heart with pride⁠—he buys pictures by famous artists when they are in difficulties, and he is replacing the daubs at the Ville d’Avray by real masterpieces⁠—not of his own painting.

There are mediocrities more vexatious and more spiteful than that of Pierre Grassou, who is in fact anonymously benevolent and perfectly obliging.