"That is beautiful," said Monsieur de Marigny, standing before Greuze's painting of La Pleureuse.
"Sir, I know it; moreover, people praise me, and yet I am in need of more commissions."
"It is because you have a host of enemies," said Vernet, who was present at the time, "and amongst those enemies is one who appears to love you to the verge of folly, but he will nevertheless ruin you."
"And who is that?"
"It is yourself."
Greuze's irritability sometimes revealed itself in downright rudeness. Natoire, the professor at the Academy, looking through a portfolio of drawings of some other artist, questioned the accuracy of one of the figures, whereupon Greuze turned upon him and said:
"Sir, you would be happy if you could draw one as well."
The Dauphin, when Greuze had painted his portrait, wishing to show how pleased he was with Greuze's work, paid him the high compliment of suggesting that he should now paint the portrait of the Dauphine, who was present. Greuze looked at her face, and alluding to the thick covering of rouge which appeared upon her cheeks, asked to be excused, for he could not paint such a face as that. No wonder that Mariette should say that Greuze had the manners of a cobbler.
There are also hints that Greuze was sometimes jealous. In Un Homme d'Autrefois, by the Marquis Costa de Beauregard, it has been narrated that Henry Costa, one of the author's ancestors, wishing to be an artist, went at the age of fourteen years to Paris. He was received with great kindness by Greuze, and the enthusiastic boy said "il parle comme un ange," but in an article contributed by Augustus Mansion to Temple Bay we have read, "Another chagrin followed. Greuze became jealous of his prodigy, tried to shake him off, ignored letters, and declined to permit himself to be seen at work. It was an unkindness keenly felt by the boy, who was learning every day a little more of the world: 'Quelle froideur et quelle mystère!' he says. 'Greuze told me he could not communicate certain processes he was employing, that what was useful for him might not be the same for me. I cannot understand how a fine genius can be capable of such meanness.'"
Yet one cannot estimate the whole character of Greuze by these isolated incidents. Like other people, he said and did different things when he was in different moods, and we know that when the artists of Paris held aloof from Prudhon, whose poverty had compelled him to "draw vignettes on letter sheets for the government offices, business cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for bon-bonnières... Greuze alone treated him amicably."