us." Twenty years later one of his sons was arrested at
Fontainebleau and kept in prison for debt until the king had him
released. In 1720 his finances were still further embarrassed by a fire
which, beginning in another atelier, extended to his twenty workshops
and destroyed most of the seasoned materials, appliances, models and
finished work of which they were full. The salvage was sold and a
petition for pecuniary help was sent to the regent, the result of which
does not appear. It would seem that Boulle was never a good man of
business, but, according to his friend Mariette, many of his pecuniary
difficulties were caused by his passion for collecting pictures,
engravings and other objects of art--the inventory of his losses in the
fire, which exceeded L40,000 in amount, enumerates many old masters,
including forty-eight drawings by Raphael and the manuscript journal
kept by Rubens in Italy. He attended every sale of drawings and
engravings, borrowed at high interest to pay for his purchases, and when
the next sale took place, fresh expedients were devised for obtaining
more money. Collecting was to Boulle a mania of which, says his friend,
it was impossible to cure him. Thus he died in 1732, full of fame, years
and debts. He left four sons who followed in his footsteps in more
senses than one--Jean Philippe (born before 1690, dead before 1745),
Pierre Benoit (d. 1741), Charles Andre (1685-1749) and Charles Joseph
(1688-1754). Their affairs were embarrassed throughout their lives, and
the three last are known to have died in debt.

All greatness is the product of its opportunities, and the elder Boulle
was made by the happy circumstances of his time. He was born into a
France which was just entering upon the most brilliant period of
sumptuary magnificence which any nation has known in modern times. Louis
XIV., so avid of the delights of the eye, by the reckless extravagance
of his example turned the thoughts of his courtiers to domestic
splendours which had hitherto been rare. The spacious palaces which
arose in his time needed rich embellishment, and Boulle, who had not
only inherited the rather flamboyant Italian traditions of the late
Renaissance, but had _ebenisterie_ in his blood, arose, as some such man
invariably does arise, to gratify tastes in which personal pride and
love of art were not unequally intermingled. He was by no means the
first Frenchman to practise the delightful art of marqueterie, nor was
he