ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY
It was peculiarly fitting that a lady should deposit upon the coffin of Greuze a bouquet of immortelles, for his romantic and chivalrous regard for women, from a very early period in his career, had a great influence upon his life and work. Even as a pupil of Grandon, Greuze fell in love with his master's wife, a woman of very great beauty and charm. He never told his love; but one day Grandon's daughter surprised Greuze on his knees in the studio. She asked him what he was doing there, and he replied that he was looking for something he had lost. But she had seen that he had one of her mother's shoes, and that he was covering it with ardent kisses.
Exceptionally romantic, too, was his love for the beautiful Lætitia during the two years that he spent in Italy. Greuze had carried with him to that country letters of introduction to the Duc del Or...., by whom he had been received with great cordiality. The Duke's wife had died, but he had a charming daughter, Lætitia, to whom it was arranged that Greuze should give lessons in painting. Greuze was a man to whom women and girls were instinctively attracted, and Lætitia fell in love with him, with all the violence and passion of the Italian temperament. Her beauty and her charming manners had also fascinated Greuze; but he was very much disconcerted when he found that she loved him, because he was conscious of the gulf which birth and fortune had placed between them. He, therefore, rigorously repressed his desire to see her, and forced himself to stay away from the palace.
Meanwhile, his doleful demeanour, innocent face, and light curls obtained for him, from Fragonard and other French students, who were in Italy at the time, the name of the love-sick cherub.
Greuze at length heard that Lætitia was ill, and that no one could discover the cause or nature of her malady. He loitered near her home to try to obtain tidings of her, and one day he encountered the Duke, who took him to the palace to show him two pictures by Titian, which he had recently purchased.
"My daughter," he said, "has promised herself the pleasure of copying them when her health has been restored. I hope that you will come to superintend her work. That is what she wishes."
The Duke further asked Greuze to make a copy of one of the pictures as soon as he could, because he wished to send the copy away as a present. Greuze could not refuse; and thus he was soon installed in the palace again, working there day by day. Each morning he was informed, by an old retainer of the family, who had been Lætitia's nurse, how the young lady fared. The old nurse knew the two were in love with each other. Indeed, a little later, she arranged a secret interview between them, and Greuze found his idol pale and thin, but not less beautiful than before.
At first neither of them could speak; but, encouraged by the nurse, Lætitia blurted out: