back from
Rome, troubled and disquieted Lebrun. In vain did the king encourage
him. Lebrun, already ill, said in the presence of Louis XIV. that fine
pictures seem to become finer after the painter's death. "Do not you be
in a hurry to die, M. Lebrun," said the king; "we esteem your pictures
now quite as highly as posterity can."

[Illustration: Perrault 678]

The small gallery at Versailles had been intrusted to Mignard. Lebrun
withdrew to Montmorency, where he died in 1690, jealous of Mignard at the
end as he had been of Lesueur at the outset of his life. Mignard became
first painter to the king. He painted the ceiling of Val-de-Grace, which
was celebrated by Moliere; but it was as a painter of portraits that he
excelled in France. "M. Mignard does them best," said Le Poussin not
long before, with lofty good nature, "though his heads are all paint,
without force or character." To Mignard succeeded Rigaud as portrait
painter, worthy to preserve the features of Bossuet and Fenelon. The
unity of organization, the brilliancy of style, the imposing majesty
which the king's taste had everywhere stamped about him upon art as well
as upon literature, were by this time beginning to decay simultaneously
with the old age of Louis XIV., with the reverses of his arms, and the
increasing gloominess of his court; the artists who had illustrated his
reign were dying one after another, as well as the orators and the poets;
the sculptor James Sarazin had been gone some time; Puget and the
Anguiers were dead, as well as Mansard, Perrault, and Le Notre; Girardon
had but a few months to live; only Coysevox was destined to survive the
king, whose statue he had many a time moulded. The great age was
disappearing slowly and sadly, throwing out to the last some noble
gleams, like the aged king who had constantly served as its centre and
guide, like olden France, which he had crowned with its last and its most
splendid wreath.

END OF VOL. V.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Popular History of France From The
Earliest Times, by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

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