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
immensetalent,--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.

"You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must
not deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made

in the studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your
brush, my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and

not take the canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton
night-cap, and be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to

some government office, ask for a place, and give up art."
"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it

is not a verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that verdict."
"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;

your drawing is heavy, pasty; your composition is a medley of Greuze,
who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."

While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
face so deep an expression of sadness that he carried him off to

dinner and tried to console him. The next morning at seven o'clock
Fougeres was at his easel working over the rejected picture; he warmed

the colors; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched
up his figures. Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the

picture to Elie Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian,
had three reasons for being what he became,--rich and avaricious.

Coming last from Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old
pictures and living on the boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who

relied on his palette to go to the baker's, bravely ate bread and
nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and cheese,

according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first
picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen francs.

"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."

Elie Magus made a gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might
have had that picture for five francs.

For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and
stationed himself at the corner of the boulevard opposite to Elie's

shop, whence his eye could rest upon his picture, which did not obtain
any notice from the eyes of the passers along the street. At the end

of a week the picture disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and
approached the dealer's shop in a lounging manner. The Jew was at his

door.
"Well, I see you have sold my picture."

"No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one
who fancies he knows about painting."

Fougeres had not the heart to return to the boulevard. He set about
another picture, and spent two months upon it,--eating mouse's meals

and working like a galley-slave.
One evening he went to the boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully

to the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
"I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus, seeing him.

"For how much?"
"I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish

interiors, a lesson of anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll
buy them of you," said Elie.

Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him
as a father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great painter

Schinner was mistaken after all! In that immense city of Paris there
were some hearts that beat in unison with Pierre's; his talent was

understood and appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the
innocence of a lad of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful,

surly artists, would have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face
and seen the twitching of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his

moustache, and the movement of his shoulders which betrayed the
satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew in swindling a Christian.

Fougeres marched along the boulevard in a state of joy which gave to
his honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy

protecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one
of those eccentricgeniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph

Bridau, who had, to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket,
took Fougeres to the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't

hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was painting. He left
Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by

lamp-light. He invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt
himself a man of genius. The next day he bought colors, and canvases

of various dimensions; he piled up bread and cheese on his table, he
filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a provision of wood for his

stove; then, to use a studio expression, he dug at his pictures. He
hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.

After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures.
Again he asked counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the

invitation. The two painters saw in three of these pictures a servile
imitation of Dutch landscapes and interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a

copy of Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be

original."
"You ought to do something else than painting," said Bridau.

"What?" asked Fougeres.
"Fling yourself into literature."

Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked
and obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before

taking them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs apiece. At
that price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose,

thanks to his sober living. He made a few excursions to the boulevard
to see what became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular

hallucination. His neat, clean paintings, hard as tin and shiny as
porcelain, were covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old

daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre could obtain no information on this
phenomenon. He fancied something was wrong with his eyes.

The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After
seven years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute

quite passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned

laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
hundred.

At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the

art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the
poverty of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the

grand salon of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture,
powerful in interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and

from Dubufe's first manner as to execution, represented a young man in
prison, whose hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one

side was a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in
tears. A sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched

table was a meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a
window near the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois

shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been
inspired by the masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of

the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full