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This picture, which represents so vividly the profound pathos and depth of soul which Ary Scheffer could put upon a canvas, can now be seen in the Louvre. But the best collection of Scheffer’s portraits and historical pictures is at Versailles.

In the gentle companionship of his beloved daughter, Scheffer found the meed of joy that was his due. With her he lived over the days that had gone forever, and those other days that might have been.

And when the inevitable came and this daughter loved a worthy and suitable young man, Scheffer bowed his head, and fighting hard to keep back the tears gave the pair his blessing.

The marriage of Doctor Marjolin and Cornelie Scheffer was a happy mating; and both honored the gifted father and ministered to him in every kindly way.

But so susceptible was Scheffer’s nature that when his daughter had given her whole heart to another, the fine edge of his art was dulled and blunted. He painted through habit, and the work had merit, but only at rare intervals was there in it that undefinable something which all can recognize, but none analyze, that stamps the product as great art.

* * * * *

When, in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, Scheffer married, it was the death of his art.

The artist does business on a very small margin of inspiration. Do you understand me? The man of genius is not a genius all the time. Usually he is only a very ordinary individual. There may be days or weeks that are fallow, and sometimes even years that are years of famine. He can not conquer the mood of depression that is holding him to earth.

But some day the clouds suddenly clear away, the sun bursts out, and the soul of the man is alive with divine fervor. Sublime thoughts crowd upon him, great waves of emotion sweep over his soul, and as Webster said of his Hayne speech, “The air was full of reasons, and all I had to do was to reach up and seize them.”

All great music and all deathless poems are written in a fever of ecstasy; all paintings that move men to tears are painted in tears.

But it is easy to break in upon the sublime mood and drag the genius back to earth. Certain country cousins who occasionally visited the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson cut all mental work off short; the philosopher laid down his pen when the cousins came a-cousining and literally took to the woods. An uncongenial caller would instantly unhorse Carlyle, and Tennyson had a hatred of all lion-hunters–not merely because they were lion-hunters, but because they broke in upon his paradise and snapped the thread of inspiration.

Mrs. Grote tells us that Scheffer’s wife was intelligent and devoted–in fact, she was too devoted. She would bring her sewing and watch the artist at his work. If the great man grew oblivious of her presence she gently chided him for it; she was jealous of his brothers, jealous of his daughter, even jealous of his art. She insisted not only that he should love her, but demanded that he should love nothing else. And yet all the time she was putting forth violent efforts to make him happy. As a result she put him in a mood where he loved nothing and nobody. She clipped his wings, and instead of a soaring genius we find a whimsical, commonplace man with occupation gone.

Wives demand the society of their husbands as their lawful right, and I suppose it is expecting too much to suppose that any woman, short of a saint, could fit into the bachelor ways of a dreamer of dreams, aged fifty-five.

Before he met the widow of General Beaudrand, Scheffer was happy, with a sweet, sad happiness in the memories of the love of his youth–the love that was lost, and being lost still lived and filled his heart.

But the society of the widow was agreeable, her conversation vivacious. He decided that this being so it might be better still to have her by him all the time. And this was what the lady desired, for it was she who did the courting.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Because I like an occasional pinch of salt is no reason why you should immerse me in brine,” but Ary Scheffer, the mild, gentle and guileless, did not reason quite so far.

The vivacious Sophie took him captive, and he was shorn of his strength. And no doubt the ex-widow was as much disappointed as he; there really was no good reason why he should not paint better than ever, when here he wouldn’t work at all! Lawks-a-daisy!

His spirit beat itself out against the bars, health declined, and although he occasionally made groggy efforts to shake himself back into form, his heart was not in his work.

Seven years went dragging by, and one morning there came word from London that the Duchess of Orleans, the mother of the beloved Marie, was dying. Scheffer was ill, but he braced himself for the effort, and hastily started away alone, leaving a note for Cornelie.

He arrived in England in time to attend the funeral of his lifelong friend, and then he himself was seized with a deadly illness.

His daughter was sent for, and when she came the sick man’s longing desire was to get back to France. If he was to die, he wanted to die at home. “To die at home at last,” is the prayer of every wanderer. Ary Scheffer’s prayer was answered. He expired in the arms of his beloved daughter on June Fifteenth, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight, aged sixty-three years.