"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.