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It has happened more than once that men of the highest spirituality have had small respect for religion, as it is popularly manifested. The machinery of religion and religion itself are things that are often widely separated; and Ary Scheffer was too high-minded and noble to worship the letter and relinquish the spirit that maketh alive. He was of that type that often goes through the world scourged by a yearning for peace, and like the dove sent out from the Ark finding no place to rest. All about he beheld greed, selfishness, hypocrisy and pretense. He longed for simplicity and absolute honesty, and was met by craft and diplomacy. He asked for religion, and was given a creed.

And so into the hearts of such as he there comes creeping a spirit of revolt. Instead of accepting this topsy-turvy old world and making the best of it, their eyes are fixed upon an ideal that Heaven alone can realize.

The home of Lafayette was the rendezvous of the discontented. Art, literature, politics and religion were all represented in the parlors of La Grange. Where Franklin had discoursed Poor Richard philosophy, there now gathered each Sunday night a company in which “the greatest of the Americans” would have delighted. For this company, no question was too sacred for frank and free discussion.

It was at the home of Lafayette that Scheffer met Augustin Thierry, and between these two there grew a friendship that only death was to divide.

But there was one other person Scheffer met at La Grange who was to exercise a profound influence on his life: this was the Duchess of Orleans. The quiet manliness of the young artist impressed the future Queen of France, and he was invited to Neuilly to copy certain portraits.

In the year Eighteen Hundred Twenty-six, we find Scheffer regularly established in the household of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, with commissions to paint portraits of all the members of the family, and incidentally to give lessons in drawing and mathematics to the Princess Marie.

The Princess had been a sore trial to her parents, in that she had failed to fit into the conventional ways of polite society. Once she had shocked all Neuilly by donning man’s attire and riding horseback astride. A worthy priest who had been her tutor had found her tongue too sharp for his comfort, and had resigned his post in dismay. The Princess argued religion with the Bishop and discussed politics with visitors in such a radical way that her father often turned pale. For the diversions of society she had a profound contempt that did not fail to manifest itself in sharp sallies against the smug hypocrisy of the times. She had read widely, knew history, was familiar with the poets, and had dived into the classics to a degree equaled by few women in France. So keen was her wit that, when pompous dignitaries dined at Neuilly, her father and mother perspired freely, not knowing what was coming next. In her character were traits that surely did not belie her Louis Quatorze ancestry.

And yet this father and mother had a certain secret pride in the accomplishments of their daughter. Parents always do. Her independence sort of kept them vibrating between ecstasies of joy and chills of fear.

The Princess was plain in feature but finely formed, and had attracted the favorable attention of various worthy young men, but no man had ever dared to make love to her except by post or proxy. Several lovers had pressed their claims, making appeal through her father; but the Duke of Orleans, strong as he was, never had cared to intimate to his daughter a suggestion as to whom she should wed. Love to her was a high and holy sacrament, and a marriage of convenience or diplomacy was to the mind of the Princess immoral and abhorrent.

The father knew her views and respected them.