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Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C., which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.
So the first question he addressed to Gras concerned the Tennis goldsmith, and it was a keen disappointment to Hermon when he learned that the earliest time he could expect to see him would be the following day. The skilful artisan had been engaged for weeks upon the gold ornaments on the new doors of the holy of holies in the Temple of Amon at Tanis.
Any one who knows in his own flesh what mechanical work is like, who knows the feeling of hanging with one's whole soul on the creeping movement of the minute-hand, the horror that seizes him when a glance at the watch shows that the eternity which has passed has lasted only ten minutes, who has had to measure the day's task by the sound of a bell, who kills his lifetime, hour after hour, with the one longing that it might die more quickly he knows how the shortening of the working day, whatever may be put in its place, has become for the factory artisan a goal of existence.
There are many such ringsmiths among the privates at the front, and the severe, somewhat archaic design of their rings is a proof of the sureness of French taste; but the two we visited happened to be Paris jewellers, for whom "artisan" was really too modest a pseudonym.
This said man had had for a father a Tryballot, who was in his lifetime a skilled artisan, so economical and careful, that he left considerable wealth to his son.
Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice.
But many a young man's advancement in life is impeded by the conscription; it often occurs that an industrious shopman, or artisan, has with economy saved some hundred francs, when he is drawn for the army, and glad to appropriate his little savings towards procuring him some comforts more than the common soldier is allowed; the troops generally are very quiet and orderly behaved, in the different towns where they are quartered, but the infantry have not a very brilliant appearance, having found small men so very active and serviceable in climbing the rocks, enduring fatigue, and braving all kinds of impediments, men two inches shorter than would have before been received, were admitted into the ranks, the consequence is that the regiments of the line now make but a poor display, as regards the height of the men, and indeed in their manner of marching, and carrying their muskets, some nearly upright others more horizontally, they have not a regular orderly appearance, like many of the other troops on the Continent; most of the largest sized men are taken up for the cavalry, and very well looking fellows they many of them are, particularly in the Carabineers, which, in regard to the height of the men, is a remarkably fine regiment, but might be much more so, if the government paid that attention which is devoted by other powers to the selections for their choice regiments; in the Carabineers there are men as much as six feet three, and four, and others as short as five feet ten, whilst in other regiments, such as the Lancers and Dragoons, they have here and there men above six feet, which if placed in the Carabineers, and those who were the shortest in that corps removed into the others, all those regiments would be improved, as being rendered more even, whilst the Carabineers would then be equal in appearance, with regard to the men, to any regiment in the world.
Thou art always fond of dice. Thou art cunning. Thou art adorned with red garlands and attired in robes that are red. Thou sleepest on the mountain-breast, and thou art fond of the red hue. Thou art the artisan; thou art the foremost of artists; and it is thou from whom all arts have flowed.
With the aid of it, not only did the Peruvian artisan hew into shape porphyry and granite, but by his patient industry accomplished works which the European would not have ventured to undertake.
Doubtless many a slum-housed artisan in the big town, driven from his country home by the flood of unfair foreign competition, looks back with longing to the bright old cottage garden of his youth and in his dreams hears the music of the forge, sees the blazing fire, and sniffs the pungency of scorching hoof.
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