The
pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do
better to turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is more
glory to be looked for there than from our luckless canvases!"
Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were
exhibited. The _Interior_ made a revolution in painting. It gave birth
to the pictures of genre which pour into all our exhibitions in such
prodigious quantity that they might be supposed to be produced by
machinery. As to the portrait, few artists have forgotten that
lifelike work; and the public, which as a body is sometimes
discerning, awarded it the crown which Girodet himself had hung over
it. The two pictures were surrounded by a vast throng. They fought for
places, as women say. Speculators and moneyed men would have covered
the canvas with double napoleons, but the artist obstinately refused
to sell or to make replicas. An enormous sum was offered him for the
right of engraving them, and the print-sellers were not more favored
than the amateurs.
Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not of a nature
to penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude in the Rue
Saint-Denis. However, when paying a visit to Madame Guillaume, the
notary's wife spoke of the exhibition before Augustine, of whom she was
very fond, and explained its purpose. Madame Roguin's gossip naturally
inspired Augustine with a wish to see the pictures, and with courage
enough to ask her cousin secretly to take her to the Louvre.
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