A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 29

The grace, the naturalness, the original independence of the mind and the works of La Fontaine had not the luck to please Louis XIV., who never accorded him any favor, and La Fontaine did not ask for any:--

"All dumb I shrink once more within my sh.e.l.l, Where un.o.btrusive pleasures dwell; True, I shall here by Fortune be forgot Her favors with my verse agree not well; To importune the G.o.ds beseems me not."

Once only, from the time of Fouquet's trial, the poet demanded a favor: Louis XIV., having misgivings about the propriety of the _Contes of La Fontaine,_ had not yet given the a.s.sent required for his election to the French Academy, when he set out for the campaign in Luxemburg. La Fontaine addressed to him a ballad:--

"Just as, in Homer, Jupiter we see Alone o'er all the other G.o.ds prevail; You, one against a hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale.

Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; A happy consummation cannot fail.

"Sweet thought! that doth this month or two avail To somewhat soothe my Muse's anxious care.

For certain minds at certain stories rail, Certain poor jests, which nought but trifles are.

If I with deference their lessons hail, What would they more? Be you more p.r.o.ne to spare, More kind than they; less sheathed in rigorous mail; Prince, in a word, your real self declare A happy consummation cannot fail."

The election of Boileau to the Academy appeased the king's humor, who preferred the other's intellect to that of La Fontaine. "The choice you have made of M. Despreaux is very gratifying to me," he said to the board of the Academy: "it will be approved of by everybody. You can admit La Fontaine at once; he has promised to be good." It was a rash promise, which the poet did not always keep.

The friends, of La Fontaine had but lately wanted to reconcile him to his wife. They had with that view sent him to Chateau-Thierry; he returned without having seen her whom he went to visit. "My wife was not at home," said he; "she had gone to the sacrament (_au salut_)." He was becoming old. Those same faithful friends--Racine, Boileau, and Maucroix --were trying to bring him home to G.o.d. Racine took him to church with him; a Testament was given him. "That is a very good book," said he; "I a.s.sure you it is a very good book." Then all at once addressing Abbe Boileau, "Doctor, do you think that St. Augustin was as clever as Rabelais?" He was ill, however, and began to turn towards eternity his dreamy and erratic thoughts. He had set about composing pious hymns.

"The best of thy friends has not a fortnight to live," he wrote to Maucroix; "for two months I have not been out, unless to go to the Academy for amus.e.m.e.nt. Yesterday, as I was returning, I was seized in the middle of Rue du Chantre with a fit of such great weakness that I really thought I was dying. O, my dear friend, to die is nothing; but thinkest thou that I am about to appear before G.o.d? Thou knowest how I have lived. Before thou hast this letter, the gates of eternity will, perchance, be opened for me." "He is as simple as a child," said the woman who took care of him in his last illness; "if he has done amiss, it was from ignorance rather than wickedness." A charming and a curious being, serious and simple, profound and childlike, winning by reason of his very vagaries, his good-natured originality, his helplessness in common life, La Fontaine knew how to estimate the literary merits as well as the moral qualities of his ill.u.s.trious friends. "When they happened to be together," says he, in his tale of _Psyche,_ "and had talked to their heart's content of their diversions, if they chanced to stumble upon any point of science or literature, they profited by the occasion, without, however, lingering too long over one and the same subject, but flitting from one topic to another like bees that meet as they go with different sorts of flowers. Envy, malignity, or cabal had no voice amongst them; they adored the works of the ancients, refused not the moderns the praises which were their due, spoke of their own with modesty, and gave one another honest advice when any one of them fell ill of the malady of the age and wrote a book, which happened now and then.

In this case, Acanthus (Racine) did not fail to propose a walk in some place outside the town, in order to hear the reading with less noise and more pleasure. He was extremely fond of gardens, flowers, foliage.

Polyphile (La Fontaine) resembled him in this; but then Polyphile might be said to love all things. Both of them were lyrically inclined, with this difference, that Acanthus was rather the more pathetic, Polyphile the more ornate."

When La Fontaine died, on the 13th of April, 1695, of the four friends lately a.s.sembled at Versailles to read the tale of _Psyche,_ Moliere alone had disappeared. La Fontaine had admired at Vaux the young comic poet, who had just written the _Facheux_ for the entertainment given by Fouquet to Louis XIV.:--

"It is a work by Moliere; This writer, of a style so rare, Is nowadays the court's delight His fame, so rapid is its flight, Beyond the bounds of Rome must be: Amen! For he's the man for me."

In his old age he gave vent to his grief and his regret at Moliere's death in this touching epitaph:--

"Beneath this stone Plautus and Terence lie, Though lieth here but Moliere alone Their threefold gifts of mind made up but one, That witched all France with n.o.ble comedy.

Now are they gone: and little hope have I That we again shall look upon the three Dead men, methinks, while countless years roll by, Terentius, Plautus, Moliere will be."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Moliere----664]

Moliere and French comedy had no need to take shelter beneath the mantle of the ancients; they, together, had shed upon the world incomparable l.u.s.tre. Shakespeare might dispute with Corneille and Racine the sceptre of tragedy; he had succeeded in showing himself as full of power, with more truth, as the one, and as full of tenderness, with more profundity, as the other. Moliere is superior to him in originality, abundance, and perfection of characters; he yields to him neither in range, nor penetration, nor complete knowledge of human nature. The lives of these two great geniuses, authors and actors both together, present in other respects certain features of resemblance. Both were intended for another career than that of the stage; both, carried away by an irresistible pa.s.sion, a.s.sembled about them a few actors, leading at first a roving life, to end by becoming the delight of the court and of the world. John Baptist Poquelin, who before long a.s.sumed the name of Moliere, was born at Paris in 1622; his father, upholstery-groom-of-the-chamber (_valet de chambre tap.i.s.sier_) to Louis XIV., had him educated with some care at Clermont (afterwards Louis-le-Grand) College, then in the hands of the Jesuits. He attended, by favor, the lessons which the philosopher Ga.s.sendi, for a longtime, the opponent of Descartes, gave young Chapelle.

He imbibed at these lessons, together with a more extensive course of instruction, a certain freedom of thinking which frequently cropped out in his plays, and contributed later on to bring upon him an accusation of irreligion. In 1645 (?1643), Moliere had formed, with the ambitious t.i.tle of _ill.u.s.tre theatre,_ a small company of actors, who, being unable to maintain themselves at Paris, for a long while tramped the provinces through all the troubles of the Fronde. It was in 1653 that Moliere brought out at Lyons his comedy _l'Etourdi,_ the first regular piece he had ever composed. The _Depit amoureux_ was played at Beziers in 1656, at the opening of the session of the States of Languedoc; the company returned to Paris in 1658; in 1659, Moliere, who had obtained a license from the king, gave at his own theatre _les Precieuses ridicules_. He broke with all imitation of the Italians and the Spaniards, and, taking off to the life the manners of his own times, he boldly attacked the affected exaggeration and absurd pretensions of the vulgar imitators of the Hotel de Rambouillet. "Bravo! Moliere," cried an old man from the middle of the pit; "this is real comedy." When he published his piece, Moliere, anxious not to give umbrage to a powerful clique, took care to say in his preface that he was not attacking real _precieuses,_ but only the bad imitations.

Just as he had recalled Corneille to the stage, Fouquet was for protecting Moliere upon it. The _Ecole des Mans_ and the _Facheux_ were played at Vaux. Amongst the ridiculous characters in this latter, Moliere had not described the huntsman. Louis XIV. himself indicated to him the Marquis of Soyecour. "There's one you have forgotten," he said.

Twenty-four hours later, the bore of a huntsman, with all his jargon of venery, had a place forever amongst the _Facheux_ of Moliere. The _Ecole des Femmes,_ the _Impromptu de Versailles,_ the _Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes,_ began the bellicose period in the great comic poet's life.

Accused of impiety, attacked in the honor of his private life, Moliere, returning insult for insult, delivered over those amongst his enemies who offered a b.u.t.t for ridicule to the derision of the court and of posterity. The _Festin de Pierre_ and the signal punishment of the libertine (free-thinker) were intended to clear the author from the reproach of impiety; _la Princesse d'Elide_ and _l'Amour medecin_ were but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth inst.i.tuted between reality and appearance. In 1666, Moliere produced _le Misanthrope,_ a frank and n.o.ble spirit's sublime invective against the frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. "This misanthrope's despitefulness against bad verses was copied from me; Moliere himself confessed as much to me many a time," wrote Boileau one day. The indignation of Alceste is deeper and more universal than that of Boileau against bad poets; he is disgusted with the court and the world because he is honest, virtuous, and sincere, and sees corruption triumphant around him; he is wroth to feel the effects of it in his life, and almost in his own soul. He is a victim to the eternal struggle between good and evil without the strength and the unquenchable hope of Christianity. The _Misanthrope_ is a shriek of despair uttered by virtue, excited and almost distraught at the defeat she forebodes. The _Tartuffe_ was a new effort in the same direction, and bolder in that it attacked religious hypocrisy, and seemed to aim its blows even at religion itself. Moliere was a long time working at it; the first acts had been played in 1664, at court, under the t.i.tle of _l'Hypocrite,_ at the same time as _la Princesse d'Elide_. "The king," says the account of the entertainment in the _Gazette de Loret,_ "saw so much a.n.a.logy of form between those whom true devotion sets in the way of heaven and those whom an empty ostentation of good deeds does not hinder from committing bad, that his extreme delicacy in respect of religious matters could with difficulty brook this resemblance of vice to virtue; and though there might be no doubt of the author's good intentions, he prohibited the playing of this comedy before the public until it should be quite finished and examined by persons qualified to judge of it, so as not to let advantage be taken of it by others less capable of just discernment in the matter." Though played once publicly, in 1667, under the t.i.tle of _l'Imposteur,_ the piece did not appear definitively on the stage until 1669, having undoubtedly excited more scandal by interdiction than it would have done by representation. The king's good sense and judgment at last prevailed over the terrors of the truly devout and the resentment of hypocrites. He had just seen an impious piece of buffoonery played.

"I should very much like to know," said he to the Prince of Conde, who stood up for Moliere, an old fellow-student of his brother's, the Prince of Conti's, "why people who are so greatly scandalized at Moliere's comedy say nothing about _Scaramouche?_" "The reason of that," answered the prince, "is, that Scaramouche makes fun of heaven and religion, about which those gentry do not care, and that Moliere makes fun of their own selves, which they cannot brook." The prince might have added that all the blows in _Tartuffe,_ a masterpiece of shrewdness, force, and fearless and deep wrath, struck home at hypocrisy.

Whilst waiting for permission to have _Tartufe_ played, Moliere had brought out _le Medecin malgre lui, Amphitryon, Georges Dandin,_ and _l'Avare,_ lavis.h.i.+ng freely upon them the inexhaustible resources of his genius, which was ever ready to supply the wants of kingly and princely entertainments. _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_ was played for the first time at Chambord, on the 6th of October, 1669; a year afterwards, on the same stage, appeared _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,_ with the interludes and music of Lulli. The piece was a direct attack upon one of the most frequent absurdities of his day; many of the courtiers felt in their hearts that they were attacked; there was a burst of wrath at the first representation, by which the king had not appeared to be struck. Moliere thought it was all over with him. Louis XIV. desired to see the piece a second time. "You have never written anything yet which has amused me so much; your comedy is excellent," said he to the poet; the court was at once seized with a fit of admiration.

The king had lavished his benefits upon Moliere, who had an hereditary post near him as groom-of-the-chamber; he had given him a pension of seven thousand livres, and the license of the king's theatre; he had been pleased to stand G.o.dfather to one of his children, to whom the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans was G.o.dmother; he had protected him against the superciliousness of certain servants of his bedchamber, but all the monarch's puissance and constant favors could not obliterate public prejudice, and give the comedian whom they saw every day on the boards the position and rank which his genius deserved. Moliere's friends urged him to give up the stage. "Your health is going," Boileau would say to him, "because the duties of a comedian exhaust you. Why not give it up?" "Alas!" replied Moliere, with a sigh, "it is a point of honor that prevents me."

"A what?" rejoined Boileau; "what! to smear your face with a mustache as Sganarelle, and come on the stage to be thrashed with a stick? That is a pretty point of honor for a philosopher like you!"

Moliere might probably have followed the advice of Boileau, he might probably have listened to the silent warnings of his failing powers, if he had not been unfortunate and sad. Unhappy in his marriage, justly jealous and yet pa.s.sionately fond of his wife, without any consolation within him against the bitternesses and vexations of his life, he sought in work and incessant activity the only distractions which had any charm for a high spirit, constantly wounded in its affections and its legitimate pride: _Psyche, Les Fourberies de Scapin, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas,_ betrayed nothing of their author's increasing sadness or suffering. _Les Femmes Savantes_ had at first but little success; the piece was considered heavy; the marvellous nicety of the portraits, the correctness of the judgments, the delicacy and elegance of the dialogue, were not appreciated until later on. Moliere had just composed _Le Malade Imaginaire,_ the last of that succession of blows which he had so often dealt the doctors; he was more ailing than ever; his friends, even his actors themselves pressed him not to have any play. "What would you have me do?" he replied; "there are fifty poor workmen who have but their day's pay to live upon; what will they do if we have no play? I should reproach myself with having neglected to give them bread for one single day, if I could really help it." Moliere had a bad voice, a disagreeable hiccough, and harsh inflexions. "He was, nevertheless," say his contemporaries, "a comedian from head to foot; he seemed to have several voices, everything about him spoke, and, by a caper, by a smile, by a wink of the eye and a shake of the head, he conveyed more than, the greatest speaker could have done by talking in an hour." He played as usual on the 17th of February, 1673; the curtain had risen exactly at four o'clock; Moliere could hardly stand, and he had a fit during the burlesque ceremony (at the end of the play) whilst p.r.o.nouncing the word Juro. He was icy-cold when he went back to Baron's box, who was waiting for him, who saw him home to Rue Richelieu, and who at the same time sent for his wife and two sisters of charity. When he went up again, with Madame Moliere, into the room, the great comedian was dead. He was only fifty-one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Death of Moliere----669]

It has been a labor of love to go into some detail over the lives, works, and characters of the great writers during the age of Louis XIV. They did too much honor to their time and their country, they had too great and too deep an effect in France and in Europe upon the successive developments of the human intellect, to refuse them an important place in the history of that France to whose influence and glory they so powerfully contributed.

Moliere did not belong to the French Academy; his profession had shut the doors against him. It was nearly a hundred years after his death, in 1778, that the Academy raised to him a bust, beneath which was engraved,

"O His glory lacks naught, ours did lack him."

It was by instinct and of its own free choice that the French Academy had refused to elect a comedian: it had grown, and its liberty had increased under the sway of, Louis XIV. In 1672, at the death of Chancellor Seguier, who became its protector after Richelieu, "it was so honored that the king was graciously pleased to take upon himself this office: the body had gone to thank him; his Majesty desired that the dauphin should be witness of what pa.s.sed on an occasion so honorable to literature; after the speech of M. Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, and the man in France with most inborn talent for speaking, the king, appearing somewhat touched, gave the Academicians very great marks of esteem, inquired the names, one after another, of those whose faces were not familiar to him, and said aside to M. Colbert, who was there in his capacity of simple Academician, 'You will let me know what I must do for these gentlemen.' Perhaps M. Colbert, that minister who was so zealous for the fine arts, never received an order more in conformity with his own inclinations." From that time, the French Academy held its sittings at the Louvre, and, as regarded complimentary addresses to the king on state occasions, it took rank with the sovereign bodies.

For thirty-five years the Academy had been working at its Dictionnaire.

From the first, the work had appeared interminable:--

"These six years past they toil at letter F, And I'd be much obliged if Destiny would whisper to me, Thou shalt live to G,--

wrote Bois-Robert to Balzac. The Academy had intrusted Vaugelas with the preparatory labor. "It was," says Pellisson, "the only way of coming quickly to an end." A pension, which he had, not been paid for a long time past was revived in his favor. Vaugelas took his plan to Cardinal Richelieu. "Well, sir," said the minister, smiling with a somewhat contemptuous air of kindness, "you will not forget the word pension in this Dictionary." "No, Monsignor," replied M. de Vaugelas, with a profound bow, "and still less _reconnaissance_ (grat.i.tude)." Vaugelas had finished the first volume of his _Remarques sur la Langue Francaise,_ which has ever since reniained the basis of all works on grammar. "He had imported into the body of the work a something or other so estimable (_d'honnete homme_), and so much frankness, that one could scarcely help loving its author." He was working at the second volume when he died, in 1649, so poor that his creditors seized his papers, making it very difficult for the Academy to recover his _Memoires_. The Dictionary, having lost its princ.i.p.al author, went on so slowly that Colbert, curious to know whether the Academicians honestly earned their modest medals for attendance (_jetons de presence_) which he had a.s.signed to them, came one day unexpectedly to a sitting: he was present at the whole discussion, "after which, having seen the attention and care which the Academy was bestowing upon the composition of its Dictionary, he said, as he rose, that he was convinced that it could not get on any faster, and his evidence ought to be of so much the more weight in that never man in his position was more laborious or more diligent."

The Academicians who were men of letters worked at the Dictionary; the Academicians who were men of fas.h.i.+on had become pretty numerous; Arnauld d'Andilly and M. de Lamoignon, whom the body had honored by election, declined to join, and the Academy resolved to never elect anybody without a previously expressed desire and request. At the time when M. de Lamoignon declined, the kin, fearing that it might bring the Academy into some disfavor, procured the appointment, in his stead, of the Coadjutor of Strasbourg, Armand de Rohan-Soubise. "Splendid as your triumph may be," wrote Boileau to M. de Lamoignon, "I am persuaded, sir, from what I know of your n.o.ble and modest character, that you are very sorry to have caused this displeasure to a body which is after all very ill.u.s.trious, and that you will attempt to make it manifest to all the earth. I am quite willing to believe that you had good reasons for acting as you have done." The Academy from that moment regarded the t.i.tle it conferred as irrevocable: it did not fill up the place of the Abbe de St. Pierre when it found itself obliged to exclude him from its sittings, by order of Louis XV.; it did not fill up the place of Mgr. Dupanloup, when he thought proper to send in his resignation. In spite of court intrigues, it from that moment maintained its independence and its dignity.

"M. Despreaux," writes the banker Leverrier to the Duke of Noailles, "represented to the Academy, with a great deal of heat, that all was rack and ruin, since it was nothing more but a cabal of women that put Academicians in the place of those who died. Then he read out loud some verses by M. de St. Aulaire. . . . Thus M. Despreaux, before the eyes of everybody, gave M. de St. Aulaire a black ball, and nominated, all by himself, M. de Mimeure. Here, monseigneur, is proof that there are Romans still in the world, and, for the future, I will trouble you to call M. Despreaux no longer your dear poet, but your dear Cato."

With his extreme deafness, Boileau had great difficulty in fulfilling his Academic duties. He was a member of the Academy of medals and inscriptions, founded by Colbert in 1662, "in order to render the acts of the king immortal, by deciding the legends of the medals struck in his honor." Pontchartrain raised to forty the number of the members of the _pet.i.te acadamie,_ extended its functions, and intrusted it thenceforth with the charge of publis.h.i.+ng curious doc.u.ments relating to the history of France. "We had read to us to-day a very learned work, but rather tiresome," says Boileau to M. Pontchartrain, "and we were bored right eruditely; but afterwards there was an examination of another which was much more agreeable, and the reading of which attracted considerable attention. As the reader was put quite close to me, I was in a position to hear and to speak of it. All I ask you, to complete the measure of your kindnesses, is to be kind enough to let everybody know that, if I am of so little use at the Academy of Medals, it is equally true that I do not and do not wish to obtain any pecuniary advantage from it."

The Academy of Sciences had already for many years had sittings in one of the rooms of the king's library. Like the French Academy, it had owed its origin to private meetings at which Descartes, Ga.s.sendi, and young Pascal were accustomed to be present. "There are in the world scholars of two sorts," said a note sent to Colbert about the formation of the new Academy. "One give themselves up to science because it is a pleasure to them: they are content, as the fruit of their labors, with the knowledge they acquire, and, if they are known, it is only amongst those with whom they converse unambitiously and for mutual instruction; these are _bona fide_ scholars, whom it is impossible to do without in a design so great as that of the _Academie royale_. There are others who cultivate science only as a field which is to give them sustenance, and, as they see by experience that great rewards fall only to those who make the most noise in the world, they apply themselves especially, not to making new discoveries, for hitherto that has not been recompensed, but to whatever may bring them into notice; these are scholars of the fas.h.i.+onable world, and such as one knows best." Colbert had the true scholar's taste; he had brought Ca.s.sini from Italy to take the direction of the new Observatory; he had ordered surveys for a general map of France; he had founded the _Journal des Savants;_ literary men, whether Frenchmen or foreigners, enjoyed the king's bounties. Colbert had even conceived the plan of a Universal Academy, a veritable forerunner of the Inst.i.tute.

The arts were not forgotten in this grand project; the academy of painting and sculpture dated from the regency of Anne of Austria; the pretensions of the Masters of Arts (maitres is arts), who placed an interdict upon artists not belonging to their corporation, had driven Charles Lebrun, himself the son of a Master, to agitate for its foundation; Colbert added to it the academy of music and the academy of architecture, and created the French school of painting at Rome. Beside the palace for a long time past dedicated to this establishment, lived, for more than thirty-five years, Le Poussin, the first and the greatest of all the painters of that French school which was beginning to spring up, whilst the Italian school, though blooming still in talent and strength, was forgetting more and more every day the n.o.bleness, the purity, and the severity of taste which had carried to the highest pitch the art of the fifteenth century. The tradition of the masters in vogue in Italy, of the Caracci, of Guido, of Paul Veronese, had reached Paris with Simon Vouet, who had long lived at Rome. He was succeeded there by a Frenchman "whom, from his grave and thoughtful air, you would have taken for a father of Sorbonne," says M. Vitet in his charming _Vie de Lesueur_: "his black eye beneath his thick eyebrow nevertheless flashed forth a glance full of poesy and youth. His manner of living was not less surprising than his personal appearance. He might be seen walking in the streets of Rome, tablets in hand, hitting off by a stroke or two of his pencil at one time the antique fragments he came upon, at another the gestures, the att.i.tudes, the faces of the persons who presented themselves in his path. Sometimes, in the morning, he would sit on the terrace of Trinity del Monte, beside another Frenchman five or six years younger, but already known for rendering landscapes with such fidelity, such, fresh and marvellous beauty, that all the Italian masters gave place to him, and that, after two centuries, he has not yet met his rival."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lebrun----674]

"Of these two artists, the older evidently exercised over the other the superiority which genius has over talent. The smallest hints of Le Poussin were received by Claude Lorrain with deference and respect; and yet, to judge from the prices at which they severally sold their pictures, the landscape painter had for the time an indisputable superiority."

Claude Gelee, called Lorrain, had fled when quite young from the shop of the confectioner with whom his parents had placed him. He had found means of getting to Rome; there he worked, there he lived, and there he died, returning but once to France, in the height of his renown, for just a few months, without even enriching his own land with any great number of his works; nearly all, of them remained on foreign soil. Le Poussin, born at the Andelys in 1593, made his way with great difficulty to Italy.

He was by that time thirty years old, and had no more desire than Claude to return to France, where painting was with difficulty beginning to obtain a standing. His reputation, however, had penetrated thither.

King Louis XIII. was growing weary of Simon Vouet's fact.i.tious l.u.s.tre; he wanted Le Poussin to go to Paris. The painter for a long while held out; the king insisted. "I shall go," said Le Poussin, "like one sentenced to be sawn in halves and severed in twain." He pa.s.sed eighteen months in France, welcomed enthusiastically, lodged at the Tuileries, magnificently paid, but exposed to the jealousies of Simon Vouet and his pupils. Worried, thwarted, frozen to death by the h.o.a.rfrosts of Paris, he took the road back to Rome in November, 1642, on the pretext of going to fetch his wife, and did not return any more. He had left in France some of his masterpieces, models of that, new, independent, and conscientious art, faithfully studied from nature in all its Italian grandeur, and from the treasures of the antique. "How did you arrive at such perfection?" people would ask Le Poussin. "By neglecting nothing,"

the painter would reply. In the same way Newton was soon to discover the great laws of the physical world, by always thinking thereon."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Le Poussin and Claude Lorrain----675]

During Le Poussin's stay at Paris he had taken as a pupil Eustache Lesueur, who had been trained in the studio of Simon Vouet, but had been struck from the first with the incomparable genius and proud independence of the master sent to him by fate. Alone he had supported Le Poussin in his struggle against the envious; alone he entered upon the road which revealed itself to him whilst he studied under Le Poussin. He was poor; he had great difficulty in managing to live. The delicacy, the purity, the suavity of his genius could s.h.i.+ne forth in their entirety nowhere but in the convent of the Carthusians, whose cloister he was commissioned to decorate. There he painted the life of St. Bruno, breathing into this almost mystical work all the religious poetry of his soul and of his talent, ever delicate and chaste even in the allegorical figures of mythology with which he before long adorned the Hotel Lambert. He had returned to his favorite pursuits, embellis.h.i.+ng the churches of Paris with incomparable works, when, overwhelmed by the loss of his wife, and exhausted by the painful efforts of his genius, he died at thirty-seven, in that convent of the Carthusians which he glorified with his talent, at the same time that he edified the monks with his religious zeal. Lesueur succ.u.mbed in a struggle too rude and too rough for his pure and delicate nature. Lebrun had returned from that Italy which Lesueur had never been able to reach; the old rivalry, fostered in the studio of Simon Vouet, was already being renewed between the two artists; the angelic art gave place to the worldly and the earthly. Lesueur died; Lebrun found himself master of the position, a.s.sured by antic.i.p.ation, and as it were by instinct, of sovereign, dominion under the sway of the young king for whom he had been created.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lesueur----676]

Old Philip of Champagne alone might have disputed with him the foremost rank. He had pa.s.sionately admired Le Poussin, he had attached himself to Lesueur. "Never," says M. Vitet, "had he sacrificed to fas.h.i.+on; never had he fallen into the vagaries of the degenerate Italian style." This upright, simple, painstaking soul, this inflexible conscience, looking continually into the human face, had preserved in his admirable portraits the life and the expression of nature which he was incessantly trying to seize and reproduce. Lebrun was preferred to him as first painter to the king by Louis XIV. himself; Philip of Champagne was delighted thereat; he lived, in retirement, in fidelity to his friends of Port-Royal, whose austere and vigorous lineaments he loved to trace, beginning with M. de St. Cyran, and ending with his own daughter, Sister Suzanne, who was restored to health by the prayers of Mother Agnes Arnauld.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mignard 677]

Lebrun was as able a courtier as he was a good painter. The clever arrangement of his pictures, the richness and brilliancy of his talent, his faculty for applying art to industry, secured him with Louis XIV. a sway which lasted as long as his life. He was first painter to the king; he was director of the Gobelins and of the academy of painting. "He let nothing be done by the other artists but according to his own designs and suggestions. The worker in tapestry, the decorative painter, the statuary, the goldsmith, took their models from him: all came from him, all flowed from his brain, all bore his imprint." The painter followed the king's ideas, being entirely after his own heart. For fourteen years he worked for Louis XIV., representing his life and his conquests, at Versailles; painting for the Louvre the victories of Alexander, which were engraved almost immediately by Audran and Edelinck. He was jealous of the royal favor, sensitive and haughty towards artists, honestly concerned for the king's glory and for the tasks confided to himself.

The growing reputation of Mignard, whom Louvois had brought back from Rome, troubled and disquieted Lebrun. In vain did the king encourage him. Lebrun, already ill, said in the presence of Louis XIV. that fine pictures seem to become finer after the painter's death. "Do not you be in a hurry to die, M. Lebrun," said the king; "we esteem your pictures now quite as highly as posterity can."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Perrault 678]

The small gallery at Versailles had been intrusted to Mignard. Lebrun withdrew to Montmorency, where he died in 1690, jealous of Mignard at the end as he had been of Lesueur at the outset of his life. Mignard became first painter to the king. He painted the ceiling of Val-de-Grace, which was celebrated by Moliere; but it was as a painter of portraits that he excelled in France. "M. Mignard does them best," said Le Poussin not long before, with lofty good nature, "though his heads are all paint, without force or character." To Mignard succeeded Rigaud as portrait painter, worthy to preserve the features of Bossuet and Fenelon. The unity of organization, the brilliancy of style, the imposing majesty which the king's taste had everywhere stamped about him upon art as well as upon literature, were by this time beginning to decay simultaneously with the old age of Louis XIV., with the reverses of his arms, and the increasing gloominess of his court; the artists who had ill.u.s.trated his reign were dying one after another, as well as the orators and the poets; the sculptor James Sarazin had been gone some time; Puget and the Anguiers were dead, as well as Mansard, Perrault, and Le Notre; Girardon had but a few months to live; only Coysevox was destined to survive the king, whose statue he had many a time moulded. The great age was disappearing slowly and sadly, throwing out to the last some n.o.ble gleams, like the aged king who had constantly served as its centre and guide, like olden France, which he had crowned with its last and its most splendid wreath.