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"On determining to exercise the ministry in this kingdom," he wrote, in 1746, to the superintendent of Languedoc, Lenain d'Asfeldt, "I was not ignorant of what I exposed myself to; so I regarded myself as a victim doomed to death. I thought I was doing the greatest good of which I was capable in devoting myself to the condition of a pastor.
M. Lenain, this gentleman wishes to be made acquainted with art; you will undertake his education you will take him to-night to "Les Trois Rats." I promised for you. She threw a merry look at the elder of her two attendants, who ceremoniously took off his hat to David and made a polite speech, in which the word enchante recurred.
'Taranne will have to put his foot down. There are one or two demons among them; one should make them know their place. Lenain threw back his head and laughed a great, frank laugh, which broke up the ordinary discontent of the face agreeably. The speaker, M. Alphonse Duchatel, had been already turned out of two ateliers for a series of the most atrocious charges on record.
In 1745, after sixty years' persecution, consequent upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Matthew Desubas, a young pastor accused before the superintendent of Languedoc, Lenain, said with high-spirited modesty, "The ministers preach nothing but patience and fidelity to the king." I am aware of it, sir," answered the superintendent.
As they receded, the man in grey, before the Pieter de Hooghe, looked up, smiled, dropped his eyeglass, and resumed his place beside Madame Cervin. She made a gesture of introduction, and he bowed across her to the young stranger. For the first time Elise perceived him. A look of annoyance and disgust crossed her face. 'Do you see, she said, turning to Lenain; 'there is that animal, Montjoie?
'He should have been a second Barye. Ah, la vie Parisienne la maudite vie Parisienne! Again Lenain exploded. 'Come and lunch, you idiot, he said, taking the lad's arm; 'for whom are you posing? But before they departed, they inquired of David in the politest way what they could do for him. He was a stranger to Mollie. Delaunay's acquaintance; they were at his service.
Then Alphonse put the Englishman through a catechism, and at the end of it they both advised him not to trouble his head about George Sand. That was all dead and done with, and Balzac not much less. He might be great, Balzac, but who could be at the trouble of reading him nowadays? Lenain, who was literary, named to him with enthusiasm Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' and the brothers Goncourt.
Sophocles, Euripides, Plautus and Terence, the Diodorus of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, St John Chrysostom and St Basil, St Jerome and St Augustine, Erasmus, Saumaise, Turnebe and Scaliger, St Thomas Aquinas, St Bonaventure, Bossuet dragging Ferri with him, Lenain, Godefroy, Mezeray, Maimbourg, Fabricius, Father Lelong and Father Pitou, all the poets, all the historians, all the fathers, all the doctors, all the theologians, all the humanists, all the compilers, assembled high and low on the walls, became witnesses to our kisses.
Then perceiving that between them they had puzzled their man, Alphonse would have proceeded to 'cram' him in the most approved style, but that Lenain interposed, and a certain cooling of the Englishman's bright eye made success look unpromising. Finally the wild fellow clapped David on the back and assured him that 'Les Trois Rats' would astonish him. 'Ah! here we are.
We note on the R. wall, an excellent Lenain, 548, A Peasant Meal, and some admirable portraits by Largillière, 484-491, of which the last, Portrait of the Artist, his Wife and Daughter, is a masterly work. Among the fine portraits by Rigaud, 791-795, that of the Young Duke of Lesdiguières, stands pre-eminent.
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