There, as here, everybody loved him. People of all lands and in every kind of costume followed the procession. All the French ships in the roadstead carried their flags at half-mast and their ensigns of mourning. The whole staff of the embassy came out to meet the body at the gate of Constantinople, and a procession of over three thousand persons followed it to the French church. There he lies, sleeping, like Ophelia, still smiling and singing!
[CHAPTER IV]
Grandville
Delicate and sarcastic smile, eyes sparkling with intelligence, a satirical mouth, short figure and large heart and a delightful tincture of melancholy perceptible everywhere—that is your portrait, dear Grandville! Come! I begin to have as many friends below ground as above; come to me! tell me that friendship is stronger than the grave and I shall not fear to go down to your abode, since, dying, one rejoins one's dead friends without leaving the living ones.
You will remember, dear Grandville, when I went to call upon you in your garret in the rue des Petits-Augustins, a garret from whence I never came out without carrying away with me some wonderful sketches? What good long talks we had! What fine perceptions! I did not think of asking you then where you came from, neither where you were going; you smiled sadly at life, at the future; you had had some sadness forced out from the depths of your heart. It was easily explained, you were a connecting-link between Molière and la Fontaine. That which I did not think to ask of the artist when he was full of life, energy and health, I now ask of him when he is dead and laid in the grave. You have forgotten, you say, dear Grandville? I understand that. But there is one of your friends, a man of heart and of talent who has not forgotten: take Charles Blanc, and add to what he has forgotten that which you yourself can remember. Your life was too uninteresting, you say? Very well, but the public takes as much interest in the humble vicar of Wakefield in his village parish as in the brilliant Ralegh at the court of the proud Elizabeth—You will try to remember? Good!—I will put it down.
Grandville was born at Nancy. He was the successor, compatriot, one might almost say the pupil, of Callot. His real name was Gérard; but his father, a distinguished miniature painter, had renounced his family name to take the theatrical name of his grandfather, an excellent comedian who had more than once brought smiles to the lips of the two exiles, Hanislas and Marie Leczinski, one of whom had been a king and the other of whom was to become a queen. The grandfather was called Grandville. This child, who was to create a world of his own, half animal, half human, who was to explain the scent of flowers by making the flower the mere external covering of woman, who, by means of imagery drawn from human life, was to endow the stars with those beauteous eyes which flash amidst the darkness and with which they are supposed to gaze upon the earth, this child, I say, was born on 13 September 1802. He was born so weak that it was thought for a moment he was only born to die, but his mother took him in her arms and hid him so completely in her heart, that Death, who was looking for him, passed by and saw him not. But the child saw Death, and that is why he has since then painted him so accurately.