POVERTY AND DEATH
Suddenly, amidst all the splendour of his great reputation, the Revolution smote Paris, and Greuze was bereaved of all his glory. The pension he had received from the King ceased with the authority of the King. The attention of the people was withdrawn from him, and such regard as was paid to pictures during this distracted epoch went to the paintings of David, who was both painter and politician. Greuze's ironical inquiry each morning, "Who is King to-day, then?" is significant of the instability of the time. No more the elite of Paris crowded round his easel; but one of his two daughters still remained with him; and a number of his scholars, especially his girl pupils, were faithful to the end.
"You have a family and you have talent, young man," he once said to Prudhon; "that is enough in these days to bring about one's death by starvation. Look at my cuffs," continued the old man bitterly; and then Greuze would show him his torn shirt-sleeves, "for even he could no longer find means of getting on in the new order of things."
How poor he was may be inferred from his letter to the Minister of the Interior: "The picture which I am painting for the government is but half finished. The situation in which I find myself has forced me to ask you to pay me part of the money in advance, so that I may be enabled to finish the work. I have been honoured by your sympathy in all my misfortunes; I have lost everything but my talent and my courage. I am seventy-five years of age, and have not a single order for a picture; indeed, this is the most painful moment of my life. You have a kind heart, and I flatter myself that you will relieve me in accordance with the urgency of my need."
"Well, Greuze," said his friend Barthélemy one day to him, when sitting at his bedside.
"Well, my friend," replied the artist, "I am dying.... I am commencing to know no longer what I am saying; but patience! yet a little while and I shall say nothing more."
"Allons, mon ami—courage, one doesn't die on the first day of spring."
"Ah! my God, since the Sans-culottides I have taken no heed of the seasons. Are we in Ventóse or in Germinal? Is to-day Saint Pissenlit or Saint Asperge?"
"What matters! See how beautifully the sun shines."
"I am quite at ease for my journey. Adieu, Barthelemy. I await you at my burial. You will be all alone like the poor man's dog."
So in poverty and neglect the artist died. There is a tradition that when Napoleon heard of it, he exclaimed, "Dead! poor and neglected! Why did he not speak? I would have given him a pitcher made of Sèvres china, filled to the brim with gold, for every copy of his Broken Pitcher."
At the funeral, when the coffin rested in the church, a lady, whose emotion could not be hidden, even by the thick veil which she wore, advanced to the coffin, and placed upon it a bouquet of immortelles. She then withdrew again to an obscure part of the church. Tied to the bouquet was discovered a piece of paper which bore this inscription: "These flowers, offered by the most grateful of his pupils, are the emblem of his glory."
A newspaper of the time gave the name of the young lady as Mademoiselle Mayer, the artist who, before she committed suicide, did so much to cheer the desolate life of Prudhon, and who now occupies the same tomb as Prudhon in the cemetery of Père la Chaise in Paris. Madame de Valory, however, the god-daughter of Greuze, has stated that the woman was Madame Jubot, another of the pupils of Greuze.
Tournus neglected him in his life, but to-day is proud of its illustrious son. A monument of the artist has been erected in the town, some of his pictures hang in the church and in the museum, and a tablet marks the house in which he was born.