The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864

To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his. John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over, and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much less than its worth. "It was all I could give, though," he said; "and one who paid four times as much could not value it more." And so John took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,—our rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same, let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a bow-shot from our Boston.

This picture had always been the ruling star of John's house, his main dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the picture was still his mine of gold. For a picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something of the charm of the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the rallying-point of their hopes.

"Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, "I am really in doubt whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa for our parlors? They are putting in such splendid things at the other door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost disreputable,—like a heap of rubbish."

"Well," said John, laughing, "I don't suppose all together sent to an auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are, they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary, the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really is no money to get any more."

"Ah, well, then, if there isn't, we must see what we can do with these, and summon all the good fairies to our aid," said Mary. "There's your little cabinet-maker, John, will look over the things, and furbish them up; there's that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and everything revarnished; then I have found such a lovely rep, of just the richest shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they will be quite another thing."

"Trust you for that, Mary! By-the-by, I've found a nice little woman, who has worked on upholstery, who will come in by the day, and be the hands that shall execute the decrees of your taste."

"Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you know that I'm almost glad we can't get new things? it's a sort of enterprise to see what we can do with old ones."

"Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a lime-cask which the plasterers had left, and taking out his memorandum-book, "you see, I've calculated this thing all over; I've found a way by which I can make our rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on new furniture."

"Well, let's hear."

"Well, my way is short and simple. We must put things into our rooms that people will look at, so that they will forget to look at the furniture, and never once trouble their heads about it. People never look at furniture so long as there is anything else to look at; just as Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the dome des Invalides' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking at that, forgot everything else."

"But I'm not clear yet," said Mary, "what is coming of this rhetoric."

"Well, then, Mary, I'll tell you. A suit of new carved black-walnut furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, such as I should choose at David and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars, and I haven't the three hundred to give. What, then, shall we do? We must fall back on our resources; we must look over our treasures. We have our proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's; we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before, we have 'our picture.' What has been the use of our watching at the gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. Take this front-room. I propose to fill those two recesses each side of the fireplace with my books, in their plain pine cases, just breast-high from the floor: they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top of these shelves on either side to be covered with the same stuff as the furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie and put it the other side. Then I shall get of Williams and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which give you all the style and charm of the best English water-color school. I will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from those suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como over my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be 'our picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in; and the glorious Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed and hung here and there, and your flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging in the most graceful ways and places, and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which you are always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent three times the money on new furniture."

In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such beautiful rooms,—so charmingly furnished,—you must go and see them. What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the folk,—for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often, "How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family. Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue, though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original. Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art!

There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets, speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber, she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum.

But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.

"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? In house-furnishing, nothing is more economical than beauty."

"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up."

THE BLACK PREACHER

A BRETON LEGENDAt Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay,They show you a church, or rather the grayRibs of a dead one, left there to bleachWith the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach;Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone,'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone,'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to seeThat may have their teaching for you and me.Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell.But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,He talking his patois and I English-French,I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,Built as a death-bed atonement for crime:'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose;But sinners are plenty, and you can choose.Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat,'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat,Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl,Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fireLapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire,And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary,Where only the wind sings miserere.Of what the monks came by no legend runs,At least they were lucky in not being nuns.No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot,Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root,Nor sound of service is ever heard,Except from throat of the unclean bird,Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they passIn midnights unholy his witches' mass,Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry highAs the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by;But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls,Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls,Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work,The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk,The skeleton windows are traced anewOn the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue,And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith,To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fairHear the dull summons and gather there:No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail,Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale;No knight whispers love in the châtelaine's ear,His next-door neighbor this five hundred year;No monk has a sleek benediciteFor the great lord shadowy now as he;Nor needeth any to hold his breath,Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.He chooses his text in the Book Divine,Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:—"'Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do,That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue;For no man is wealthy or wise or braveIn that quencher of might-bes and would-bes, the grave.'Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye said,And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed;Ye said, 'God can wait; let us finish our wine';Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!"But I can't pretend to give you the sermon,Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German;Whatever he preached in, I give you my wordThe meaning was easy to all that heard;Famous preachers there have been and be,But never was one so convincing as he;So blunt was never a begging friar,No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire,Cameronian never, nor Methodist,Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.And would you know who his hearers must be?I tell you just what my guide told me:Excellent teaching men have, day and night,From two earnest friars, a black and a white,The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life;And between these two there is never strife,For each has his separate office and station,And each his own work in the congregation;Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears,And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears,Awake in his coffin must wait and wait,In that blackness of darkness that means too late,And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls,As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls,To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brineOf the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.

FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT

Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria, and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and refinement. The grande nation, delivered from Ligue and Fronde, took her position with England at the head of civilized Europe. This great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder, anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci to America.

There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science, literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with which we are so familiar. Then commenced the grand siècle, the era Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly, indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh fields, and society seems to be entering upon a new era.

No man more fully recognized the great change that was going on, or did more to help it forward, than Nicolas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and Marquis de Belleîle,—but better known as the Surintendant. In the pleasant social annals of France, Fouquet is the type of splendor, and of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in their Mémoires. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the "Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its magical beauty to the Genies. The pillars are of jasper, the bases and capitals of massive gold. The Sultan frowns, waves his hand, and the crowd, who kissed the favorite's slipper yesterday, hoot and jeer as they see him pass by to his dungeon, disgraced, stripped, and beaten, Fouquet was of good family, the son of a Councillor of State in Louis XIII.'s time. Educated for the magistracy, he became a Maître des Requétes (say Master in Chancery) at twenty, and at thirty-five Procureur-Général (or Attorney-General) of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur and his brother, the Abbé Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to the throne. The Abbé, in the ardor of his zeal, once offered the Queen his services to kill De Retz and salt him, if she would give her consent. It was at the request of the Queen that the Cardinal made the trusty Procureur Surintendant des Finances, the first position in France after the throne and the prime-ministership.

Pensions, and the promise of comfortable places, had collected about the Surintendant talent, fashion, and beauty. Some of the ablest men in the kingdom were in his employ. Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, the Acanthe of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho Scudéry, was his chief clerk. Pellisson was then a Protestant; but Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reëxamine the grounds of his religious faith. He became, luckily, enlightened on the subject of his heresies at a time when the renunciation of Protestantism led to honors and wealth. Change of condition followed change of doctrine. The King attached him to his person as Secretary and Historiographer, and gave him the management of the fund for the conversion of Huguenots. Gourville, whom Charles II., an excellent judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a receiver-general of taxes. Molière wrote two of his earlier plays for the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favorite. He bound himself to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas. He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables."

"Le Roi, l'État, la Patrie,Partagent toute votre vie."

That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is a dull piece. Four fairies, Palatiane, Hortésie, Apellanire, and Calliopée, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at Vaux. Their names sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's alias, in the affected jargon of the period)

    "fait bâtir un palais magnifique,Où règne l'ordre IoniqueAvec beaucoup d'agrément."

Apollo comes and promises to take charge of the live-stock, and of the picture-gallery. The Muses, too, are busy.

"Pour lui Melpomène médite,Thalie en est jalouse,"—

and soon—

Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his treatise, "De Motu Chyli," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were then, and so long after, violently opposed by the Purgons and the Diafoirus of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as punishment for a "Mazarinade," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden. He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated courses. In a Carnival frolic, he appeared in the streets with two companions in the character of bipeds with feathers,—a scanty addition to Plato's definition of man. This airy costume was too much for French modesty, proverbially shrinking and sensitive. The mob hooted and gave chase. The maskers fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome travestissement was the death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of the letter Z.

The Surintendant's hôtel, at St. Mandé, was a marvel of art, his library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the château. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical designs. Le Nôtre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,—an aviary of foreign birds,—tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, and everything was new,—so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and no artists so skilful as these pour embellir son règne. He was obliged to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon enrolled in the service of the King.

In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honor. His favorite saying, "Il tiempo è un galantuomo," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many desperate disappointments and defeats, Messer Tiempo had made him rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "L'État, c'est moi," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have said,) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a subject,—by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrées. When the Council came together, the King told them, that hitherto he had permitted the late Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should take the duty upon himself,—the gentlemen present would aid him with their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it. It was a "neat little speech," and very much to the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of making neat little speeches. But the Surintendant, who presided in the Council, did not believe him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty years of age, fond of show and of pleasure, of moderate capacity, and with no education, might undertake for a while the cares of government, but, when the novelty wore off, would tire of the labor. And then, whose pretensions to shoulder the burden were so well founded as Fouquet's? He was almost a king, and had the political patronage of a president. The revenue of the nation passed through his hands. Fermiers and traitants, those who farmed the taxes and those who gathered them for a consideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offerings at his feet. A judicious mixture of presents and promises had given him the control of judges enough in the different Parliaments to fortify his views of the public business by legal decisions. In his own Parliament he was supreme. Clever agents, stationed in important places, both at home and abroad, watched over his interests, and kept him informed of all that transpired, by faithful couriers. But he misunderstood his position, and was mistaken in his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little talent and less education. He could never learn Latin, at that time as much a part of a gentleman's training as French is now with us; but he had what for want of a more distinctive word we may call character,—that well-proportioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-reliance which obtains for its possessor more success in life, and more respect from those about him, than brilliant mental endowments. It was the moral side of his nature which was deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel; and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,—"There is stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in him,—a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry might be.