Other illustrators found fault with Tony for monopolising every book as they blamed me for monopolising every newspaper. Ah! well, Tony has been dead eighteen months; let us see where, then, are those vignettes which were only waiting for a chance to be produced? Where, then, are all the illustrated Pauls and Virginies, the Manon Lescauts, Molières, Coopers, Walter Scotts which were to cause those of the poor dead artist to be forgotten? Where, then, are the fancies and whims which are to succeed this rage? Where is the art which is to replace this trade? So far as I am concerned, since they have brought the same reproach of monopolising against me, and an occasion offers to say a word on this subject, I will say it without circumlocution. At the present moment, 15 December 1853, I have for some time past more or less left La Presse free, Le Siècle free, Le Constitutionnel free; I have only one more story to write for Le Pays: see, you victimised gentlemen, the gates stand open, the columns are empty; besides Le Constitutionnel, Le Siècle, La Presse, you have La Patrie, l'Assemblée nationale, Le Moniteur, the Revue de Paris, the Revue des Deux Mondes; write your Reine Margots, gentlemen! Write Monte-Cristo, the Mousquetaires, Capitaine Paul, Amaury, Comtesse de Charny, Conscience, Pasteur d'Ashbourn; write all these, gentlemen! do not wait till I am dead. I have but one regret: it is that I cannot divert myself from my gigantic work by reading my own books; distract my thoughts by letting me read yours, and I assure you it will be a good thing for both me and yourselves and, perhaps, even better for you than for me.
Tony did as I did; he first of all worked at the rate of six hours a day, then eight, then ten, then twelve, then fifteen: work is like the intoxication of hashish and of opium: it creates a fictitious life inside real life, so full of delicious dreams and adorable hallucinations that one ends by preferring the fictitious life to the real one. Tony then worked fifteen hours a day—which speaks for itself.
Thus, after he had exhibited with his brother, the series of tableaus-vignettes to which I have referred in connection with Alfred, he did the following by himself: Minna et Brenda sur le bord de la mer, La Bataille de Rosbecque, La Mort de Julien d'Avenel, La Bataille de Fontenoy, l'Enfance de Duguesclin, l'Embarquement d'Élisabeth à Kenilworth, Deux Jeunes Femmes près d'une fenêtre, La Sieste, Louis XIII. forçant le passage du Méandre, a subject taken from George Sand's André, a subject from the Gospels, one from the Imitation of Christ, Le Roi Louis-Philippe offrant à la reine Victoria deux tapisseries des Gobelins au Château d'Eu. Then, after failing to exhibit in the Exhibitions of 1843, 1845 and 1846, he sent twelve pictures in 1848, five in 1850, three in 1851 and, in 1852, a Scène de village and the Plaisirs de l'automne. Three or four years previously, Tony's friends had been alarmed by a thing which, in spite of the fear of the doctors, seemed nevertheless quite impossible. He had been threatened with pulmonary phthisis. Nothing could have been more solidly constructed, it must be said, than Tony Johannot's chest, and, allowing for immoderate ambition, never were lungs more commodiously situated for fulfilling their functions; so Tony's friends did not feel anxious. He coughed, spat a little blood, took a course of treatment and got better. He had not stopped working. Work is a factor of health in the case of all who are producers. He had just done his Évangile and Imitation of Christ, he had stopped work on an oil-painting of Ruth and Boaz to start upon illustrations to the works of Victor Hugo, when, suddenly, he sank down and fell on his knees. He was struck by a crushing attack of apoplexy. On 4 August 1852, he died. The twofold news came too late: I could neither follow d'Orsay to the cemetery of Chambourcy, nor follow Tony Johannot to the cemetery of Montmartre. There it is that the creator of many charming vignettes, many fascinating pictures, sleeps in the vault where his two brothers Charles and Alfred had preceded him.
[BOOK II]
[CHAPTER I]
Sequel to the preparations for my ball—Oil and distemper —Inconveniences of working at night—How Delacroix did his task —The ball—Serious men—La Fayette and Beauchene—Variety of costumes—The invalid and the undertaker's man—The last galop—A political play—A moral play