the most famous of his name and was, indeed, the second
cabinet-maker--the first was Jean Mace--who has acquired individual
renown. That must have begun at a comparatively early age, for at thirty
he had already been granted one of those lodgings in the galleries of
the Louvre which had been set apart by Henry IV. for the use of the
most talented of the artists employed by the crown. To be admitted to
these galleries was not only to receive a signal mark of royal favour,
but to enjoy the important privilege of freedom from the trammels of the
trade gilds. Boulle was given the deceased Jean Mace's own lodging in
1672 by Louis XIV. upon the recommendation, of Colbert, who described
him as "_le plus habile ebeniste de Paris_," but in the patent
conferring this privilege he is described also as "chaser, gilder and
maker of marqueterie." Boulle appears to have been originally a painter,
since the first payment to him by the crown of which there is any record
(1669) specifies "ouvrages de peinture." He was employed for many years
at Versailles, where the mirrored walls, the floors of "wood mosaic,"
the inlaid panelling and the pieces in marqueterie in the Cabinet du
Dauphin were regarded as his most remarkable work. These rooms were long
since dismantled and their contents dispersed, but Boulle's drawings for
the work are in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. His royal commissions
were, indeed, innumerable, as we learn both from the _Comptes des
batiments_ and from the correspondence of Louvois. Not only the most
magnificent of French monarchs, but foreign princes and the great nobles
and financiers of his own country crowded him with commissions, and the
_mot_ of the abbe de Marolles, "_Boulle y tourne en ovale_," has become
a stock quotation in the literature of French cabinet-making. Yet
despite his distinction, the facility with which he worked, the high
prices he obtained, and his workshops full of clever craftsmen, Boulle
appears to have been constantly short of money. He did not always pay
his workmen, clients who had made considerable advances failed to obtain
the fine things they had ordered, more than one application was made for
permission to arrest him for debt under orders of the courts within the
asylum of the Louvre, and in 1704 we find the king giving him six
months' protection from his creditors on condition that he used the time
to regulate his affairs or "ce scra la derniere grace que sa majeste lui
fera la-dess