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“Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece,” went on Elie; “so you can very well afford to paint me three pictures.”

“True for you!” cried Fougeres, gleefully.

“And if you marry the girl, you won’t forget me.”

“Marry! I?” cried Pierre Grassou,–“I, who have a habit of sleeping alone; and get up at cock-crow, and all my life arranged–“

“One hundred thousand francs,” said Magus, “and a quiet girl, full of golden tones, as you call ’em, like a Titian.”

“What class of people are they?”

“Retired merchants; just now in love with art; have a country-house at Ville d’Avray, and ten or twelve thousand francs a year.”

“What business did they do?”

“Bottles.”

“Now don’t say that word; it makes me think of corks and sets my teeth on edge.”

“Am I to bring them?”

“Three portraits–I could put them in the Salon; I might go in for portrait-painting. Well, yes!”

Old Elie descended the staircase to go in search of the Vervelle family. To know to what extend this proposition would act upon the painter, and what effect would be produced upon him by the Sieur and Dame Vervelle, adorned by their only daughter, it is necessary to cast an eye on the anterior life of Pierre Grassou of Fougeres.

When a pupil, Fougeres had studied drawing with Servin, who was thought a great draughtsman in academic circles. After that he went to Schinner’s, to learn the secrets of the powerful and magnificent color which distinguishes that master. Master and scholars were all discreet; at any rate Pierre discovered none of their secrets. From there he went to Sommervieux’ atelier, to acquire that portion of the art of painting which is called composition, but composition was shy and distant to him. Then he tried to snatch from Decamps and Granet the mystery of their interior effects. The two masters were not robbed. Finally Fougeres ended his education with Duval-Lecamus. During these studied and these different transformations Fougeres’ habits and ways of life were tranquil and moral to a degree that furnished matter of jesting to the various ateliers where he sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his comrades by his modesty and by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters, however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright fellows, eccentric spirits, droll or fiery, or else gloomy and deeply reflective, which argue future talent. Everything about Pierre Grassou smacked of mediocrity. His nickname “Fougeres” (that of the painter in the play of “The Eglantine”) was the source of much teasing; but, by force of circumstances, he accepted the name of the town in which he had first seen light.

Grassou of Fougeres resembled his name. Plump and of medium height, he had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose, rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a distant connection of the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by the fact of an obstinacy which constitutes the Breton character. What he suffered, the manner in which he lived during those years of study, God only knows. He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are hounded by poverty and hunted like wild beasts by the pack of commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst for vengeance.

As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze’s picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision, he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in challenges sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or even by threats of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart that he would still make himself a great painter. He placed his picture on the easel, and went to one of his former masters, a man of immense talent,–to Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph at that year’s Salon was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and criticise the rejected work. The great painter left everything and went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before him Schinner, after a glance, pressed Fougeres’ hand.