ncied
something was wrong with his eyes.

The painter went back to his studio and made more pictures. After seven
years of continued toil Fougeres managed to compose and execute quite
passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
Elie bought and sold all the paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
hundred.

At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the
art movement, were filled with pity for the perseverance and the poverty
of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the grand salon
of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture, powerful in
interest but derived from Vigneron as to sentiment and from Dubufe's
first manner as to execution, represented a young man in prison, whose
hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one side was
a priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in tears. A
sheriff's clerk was reading aloud a document. On a wretched table was a
meal, untouched. The light came in through the bars of a window near
the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois shudder, and
the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been inspired by the
masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of the "Dropsical
Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full front. The
condemned man was substituted for the dying woman--same pallor, same
glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor, he had painted
the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk attired in black; but
he had added an old woman to the young one of Gerard Douw. The cruelly
simple and good-humored face of the executioner completed and dominated
the group. This plagiarism, very cleverly disguised, was not discovered.
The catalogue contained the following:--

510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.

Though wholly second-rate, the picture had immense success, for it
recalled the affair of the "chauffeurs," of Mortagne. A crowd collected
every day before the now fashionable canvas; even Charles X. paused to
look at it. "Madame," being told of the patient life of the poor Breton,
became enthusiastic over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of
the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was
suggesti