VIII

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.