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The Paris Sketch Book

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There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about
yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long
brocades! What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning
out their toes, with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and
their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches!
Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little
round Cupids, bubbling up in clusters as out of a champagne-bottle,
and melting away in air. There is, to be sure, a hidden analogy
between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by
these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling,
gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to pursue
further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm,
fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,--should be likened to a bottle
of Château Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but
Romanée Gelée?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odor almost sickens
you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as
if you had been drinking hot blood.

An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble
off this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or
too often indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart
I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great
thundering first-rates. Confess how many times you have read
Béranger, and how many Milton? If you go to the "Star and Garter,"
don't you grow sick of that vast, luscious landscape, and long for
the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of
common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this
subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never
grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with
exquisite Titania. Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according
to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of
mediocrity. I have never heard that we were great geniuses.
Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but
rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys;
and if it nothing profit us aërias tentâsse domos along with them,
let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.

I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassée" of Greuze,
which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color
(a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and
delicate. There are three more pictures by the artist, containing
exquisite female heads and color; but they have charms for French
critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and
the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine picture by Bon
Bollongue, "Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child," deserves
particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of color.
You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of
Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of
Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that
the French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better
color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the
representation of objects.

Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and
admiring; they are full of "unction" and pious mystical grace.
"Saint Scholastica" is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross"
as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the
other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about
this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian
masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at
once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the
"Jardinière" is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly
about her. I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,--a
bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad imitation of
Titian,--a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael
painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of
painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; IT
WAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!

There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and
there is no time to speak of Lesueur's "Crucifixion," which is
odiously colored, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy.
But such things are most difficult to translate into words;--one
lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks. The figures appear, and
take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to
order, in light or in gloom, the colors are reflected duly in the
little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies
there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were
fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for
the present, adieu.

Your faithful

M. A. T.

To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,

NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.




THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.


Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the
world knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows
at their profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody
bought; and Simon took a higher line, and painted portraits to
admiration, only nobody came to sit to him.

As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon
a butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to
quit the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair
creature's name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said,
"as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to
the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who
possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva,
Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady--
Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes,
lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with
young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of their
affections.

The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple
of hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be
more lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their
little household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the
reckless landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her
father, unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-
chops; and swore that his daughter, and the dauber; her husband,
should have no more of his wares. At first they embraced tenderly,
and, kissing and crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven
that they would do without: but in the course of the evening
Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his best coat.

When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a
kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that
they, in the course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her
great warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs,
a washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery,
and arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a
second father in HER UNCLE,--a base pun, which showed that her
mind was corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple
Griskinissa of other days.

I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one
whole evening with the crimson plush breeches.

Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor
changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets,
to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and
blear, and the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old
habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of
pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed
chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her
lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have the picture
of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.

Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of
his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill
luck, and cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till
night the neighbors could hear this woman's tongue, and understand
her doings; bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were
flumped down on the floor, and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots
went clattering through the windows, or down the stairs. The baby
roared all day; and Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a
small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the
way.

One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a
picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had
commenced a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and
cursed and swore in the most pathetic manner. "O miserable fate of
genius!" cried he, "was I, a man of such commanding talents, born
for this? to be bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my
masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold only for a few pieces?
Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed, be the art which is
unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself as a
soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched
than I am now!"

"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.

"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. "Who's
there?--where are you?--who are you?"

"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.

Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a
bladder of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the
mahogany. "Where are you?" cried he again.

"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.

Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze;
when, as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the
hole upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and
oily manner.

When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew
to be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and
then he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked
the poor painter what he wanted with him.

The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed
himself at last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out,
with his heels, all the white and vermilion which had just been
laid on the allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.

"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"

"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand:
besides, I am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see
when you know me a little better."

"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise
which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in
your existence."

The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr.
Macready's best looks, said,--


"There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."


Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but
felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation
of his new friend.

Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you
will starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come,
my friend, how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the
world: old Mordecai, the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily
before now: nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere
ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself, is a
supposition--a valueless, windy, uncertain property of yours,
called, by some poet of your own, I think, an animula, vagula,
blandula--bah! there is no use beating about the bush--I mean A
SOUL. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it some other
way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!"--and, having made
this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as big as a
double Times, only there was a different STAMP in the corner.

It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only
love to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are
to be found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices
emulated the skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor
Gambouge read over the paper, and signed it. He was to have all he
wished for seven years, and at the end of that time was to become
the property of the -----; PROVIDED that, during the course of the
seven years, every single wish which he might form should be
gratified by the other of the contracting parties; otherwise the
deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge should be left "to go
to the ----- his own way."

"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with
poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen
at this day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything
you ask will be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner:
believe me, it is best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything
like scandal. But if you set me about anything which is
extraordinary, and out of the course of nature, as it were, come I
must, you know; and of this you are the best judge." So saying,
Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the chimney, through the
keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody knows.
Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven forgive
me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an
opportunity to make a similar bargain.

"Heigho!" said Simon. "I wonder whether this be a reality or a
dream.--I am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the
means to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I
wish I could see a capon and a bottle of white wine."

"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.

"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did
so; and lo! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting
a tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its
side, a tall amber-colored flask of Sauterne.

"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I
believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."

Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did ASK FOR these things."
But such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had
on his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they
were for old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl,
and lived on the floor beneath.

"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
remove the plates and glasses."

The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down
to discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he
devoured the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--
seasoning his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring
nothing for the inevitable bill, which was to follow all.

"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, "what a
dinner! what wine!--and how gayly served up too!" There were
silver forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a
silver dish. "Why, the money for this dish and these spoons,"
cried Simon, "would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH"--and
here Simon whistled, and turned round to see that nobody was
peeping--"I wish the plate were mine."

Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! "Here they are," thought
Simon to himself; "why should not I TAKE THEM?" And take them he
did. "Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I
would as soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."

So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout,
and ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he
was.

He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--
that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piété.
"I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon,
"with some family plate, of which I beseech you to take care."

The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. "I can give you
nothing upon them," said he.

"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"

"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Café Morisot,' Rue de
la Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper."
And, so saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the
name of that coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the
articles which he had wished to pawn.

The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--
WHEN CRIME IS FOUND OUT!--otherwise, conscience takes matters much
more easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be
virtuous.

"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is
no reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should
not buy them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will
you have half the money?--speak, or I peach."

Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously.
"Give me half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these
pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop,
"seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won
gain."

When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted
the money which he had received, and found that he was in possession
of no less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out
his equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He
looked up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next
pursue: upon it was inscribed the simple number, 152. "A
gambling-house," thought Gambouge. "I wish I had half the money
that is now on the table, up stairs."

He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five
napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
capital stoutly upon the 0 0.

It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it
was more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went
spinning round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has
it, after Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One
hundred and thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were
counted out to the delighted painter. "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he,
"now it is that I begin to believe in thee! Don't talk about
merit," he cried; "talk about fortune. Tell me not about heroes
for the future--tell me of ZEROES." And down went twenty napoleons
more upon the 0.

The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our
friend received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the
croupiers and lookers-on began to stare at him.

There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say,
that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick
bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He
had been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues
of a prince for half a year!

Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he
had a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man.
He repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the
restaurateur's plate. "O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an
action like this of a man who has a property like mine!" So he
went back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable.
"My friend," said he, "I have sinned against all that I hold most
sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion. Here is thy
money. In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have
wrongfully sold thee!"

But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will
sell that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell
it at all."

"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet
of five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own;
it is the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled
for many months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven!
I STOLE that plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife
from wandering houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--
I cannot suffer the thought of this crime. I will go to the person
to whom I did wrong, I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I
WILL do right!"

The broker was alarmed. "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
plate."

"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted;
"sign me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote
according to Gambouge's dictation; "Received, for thirteen ounces
of plate, twenty pounds."

"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness!
thou art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five
pounds' worth of plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket?
Art thou not a convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel,
yield thy money, or I will bring thee to justice!"

The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he
gave up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be
seen that Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge.
He had taken a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a
Tartar. Simon now returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the
bill for his dinner, and restored the plate.

And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a
profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown
rich, grew likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary
father. He fed the poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a
base action. And I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late
lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar circumstances, would have acted
like the worthy Simon Gambouge.

There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse
than ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent:
when he went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and vice versâ:
in fact, she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a
dog leads a cat in the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as
may be supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things--he was the
most miserable dog in the whole city of Paris. Only in the point
of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and
during a considerable number of hours in each day, he thus
dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin. O philosophy! we may
talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the winecup, where thou
liest like truth in a well, where shall we find thee?

He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much,
there was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his
wishes, and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end
of six years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain
at all, as that which we have described at the commencement of this
history. He had grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went
regularly to mass, and had a confessor into the bargain. He
resolved, therefore, to consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay
before him the whole matter.

"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had
concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all
his desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no
other than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of
that bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."

The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church
comfortably together, and entered afterwards a café, where they sat
down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.

A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his
buttonhole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the
marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them,
and began reading the papers of the day.

"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais?
Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to
Mr. Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"

Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. "It is
enormous" he said; "but I do not read English."

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