such perfection?" people would ask Le Poussin.  "By neglecting nothing,"
the painter would reply.  In the same way Newton was soon to discover the
great laws of the physical world, by always thinking thereon."

[Illustration: Le Poussin and Claude Lorrain----675]

During Le Poussin's stay at Paris he had taken as a pupil Eustache
Lesueur, who had been trained in the studio of Simon Vouet, but had been
struck from the first with the incomparable genius and proud independence
of the master sent to him by fate.  Alone he had supported Le Poussin in
his struggle against the envious; alone he entered upon the road which
revealed itself to him whilst he studied under Le Poussin.  He was poor;
he had great difficulty in managing to live.  The delicacy, the purity,
the suavity of his genius could shine forth in their entirety nowhere but
in the convent of the Carthusians, whose cloister he was commissioned to
decorate.  There he painted the life of St. Bruno, breathing into this
almost mystical work all the religious poetry of his soul and of his
talent, ever delicate and chaste even in the allegorical figures of
mythology with which he before long adorned the Hotel Lambert.  He had
returned to his favorite pursuits, embellishing the churches of Paris
with incomparable works, when, overwhelmed by the loss of his wife, and
exhausted by the painful efforts of his genius, he died at thirty-seven,
in that convent of the Carthusians which he glorified with his talent, at
the same time that he edified the monks with his religious zeal.  Lesueur
succumbed in a struggle too rude and too rough for his pure and delicate
nature.  Lebrun had returned from that Italy which Lesueur had never been
able to reach; the old rivalry, fostered in the studio of Simon Vouet,
was already being renewed between the two artists; the angelic art gave
place to the worldly and the earthly.  Lesueur died; Lebrun found himself
master of the position, assured by anticipation, and as it were by
instinct, of sovereign, dominion under the sway of the young king for
whom he had been created.


[Illustration: Lesueur----676]

Old Philip of Champagne alone might have disputed with him the foremost
rank.  He had passionately admired Le Poussin, he had attached himself to
Lesueur.  "Never," says M. Vitet, "had he sacrificed to fashion; never
had he fallen into the vagaries of the degenerate Italian style."  This
upright, simple, painstaking soul, this inflexible conscience, looking
continually into the human face, had preserved in his admirable portraits
the life and the expression of nature which he was incessantly trying to
seize and reproduce.  Lebrun was preferred to him as first painter to the
king by Louis XIV. himself; Philip of Champagne was delighted thereat; he
lived, in retirement, in fidelity to his friends of Port-Royal, whose
austere and vigorous lineaments he loved to trace, beginning with M. de
St. Cyran, and ending with his own daughter, Sister Suzanne, who was
restored to health by the prayers of Mother Agnes Arnauld.

[Illustration: Mignard  677]

Lebrun was as able a courtier as he was a good painter.  The clever
arrangement of his pictures, the richness and brilliancy of his talent,
his faculty for applying art to industry, secured him with Louis XIV. a
sway which lasted as long as his life.  He was first painter to the king;
he was director of the Gobelins and of the academy of painting.  "He let
nothing be done by the other artists but according to his own designs and
suggestions.  The worker in tapestry, the decorative painter, the
statuary, the goldsmith, took their models from him: all came from him,
all flowed from his brain, all bore his imprint."  The painter followed
the king's ideas, being entirely after his own heart.  For fourteen years
he worked for Louis XIV., representing his life and his conquests, at
Versailles; painting for the Louvre the victories of Alexander, which
were engraved almost immediately by Audran and Edelinck.  He was jealous
of the royal favor, sensitive and haughty towards artists, honestly
concerned for the king's glory and for the tasks confided to himself.
The growing reputation of Mignard, whom Louvois had brought back from
Rome, troubled and disquieted Lebrun.  In vain did the king encourage
him.  Lebrun, already ill, said in the presence of Louis XIV. that fine
pictures seem to become finer after the painter's death.  "Do not you be
in a hurry to die, M. Lebrun," said the king; "we esteem your pictures
now quite as highly as posterity can."

[Illustration: Perrault  678]

The small gallery at Versailles had been intrusted to Mignard.  Lebrun
withdrew to Montmorency, where he died in 1690, jealous of Mignard at the
end as he had been of Lesueur at the outset of his life.  Mignard became
first painter to the king.  He painted the ceiling of Val-de-Grace, which
was celebrated by Moliere; but it was as a painter of portraits that he
excelled in France.  "M. Mignard does them best," said Le Poussin not
long before, with lofty good nature, "though his heads are all paint,
without force or character."  To Mignard succeeded Rigaud as portrait
painter, worthy to preserve the features of Bossuet and Fenelon.  The
unity of organization, the brilliancy of style, the imposing majesty
which the king's taste had everywhere stamped about him upon art as well
as upon literature, were by this time beginning to decay simultaneously
with the old age of Louis XIV., with the reverses of his arms, and the
increasing gloominess of his court; the artists who had illustrated his
reign were dying one after another, as well as the orators and the poets;
the sculptor James Sarazin had been gone some time; Puget and the
Anguiers were dead, as well as Mansard, Perrault, and Le Notre; Girardon
had but a few months to live; only Coysevox was destined to survive the
king, whose statue he had many a time moulded.  The great age was
disappearing slowly and sadly, throwing out to the last some noble
gleams, like the aged king who had constantly served as its centre and
guide, like olden France, which he had crowned with its last and its most
splendid wreath.

END OF VOL.  V.