United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"And that is all," Petitot said, his long nose drooping, his inquisitive eyes looking over his glasses, "that you know about him, Messer Blondel?" Did they know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his convictions?" he asked with a sneer.
And then these finds served as so many springs which, turned on by a question, played off an essay on Jean Goujon, Michel Columb, Germain Pilon, Boulle, Van Huysum, and Boucher, the great native painter of Le Berry; on Clodion, the carver of wood, on Venetian mirrors, on Brustolone, an Italian tenor who was the Michael-Angelo of boxwood and holm oak; on the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, on the glazes of Bernard de Palissy, the enamels of Petitot, the engravings of Albrecht Durer whom she called Dur; on illuminations on vellum, on Gothic architecture, early decorated, flamboyant and pure enough to turn an old man's brain and fire a young man with enthusiasm.
Perhaps this structure is the remains of some great mansion; but after examining all the existing old maps of Paris, we find nothing which bears out this conjecture. Moreover, the title-deeds of property under Louis XIV. was Petitot, the celebrated painter in miniature, who obtained it originally from President Lecamus.
He bent one knee to the ground, respectfully kissed the hand of the monarch, and promised to complete his portrait immediately. He kept his word to us. The King's miniature and my four portraits were finished without hesitation or postponement; and Petitot also consented to copy, for his Majesty, a superb Christine of Sweden, a full-length picture, painted by Le Bourdon.
"I have also," he continued, "my eye upon him, as I shall have it upon Basterga. Will that satisfy you, Messer Petitot?" The councillor leaned forward. "Fac salvam Genevam!" he replied in a voice low and not quite steady. "Do that, keep Geneva safe guard well our faith, our wives and little ones and I care not what you do!" And he rose from his seat. The Fourth Syndic did not answer.
"Yes, in the case of wise and honest men like yourself, my good friend Petitot; but just as all your brothers have not your talents, so they have not your rectitude and loyalty, which are known to me." "Sire, your Majesty overwhelms me; but I beg you to be persuaded that my brothers have been calumniated."
At the moment when the first edicts, were issued against the public exercise of the Reformed Religion, the famous and incomparable Petitot, refusing all the supplications of France and of Europe, executed for me, in my chateau of Clagny, five infinitely precious portraits, upon which it was his caprice only to work alternately, and which still demanded from him a very great number of sittings.
He smiled but his manner was that of some great French noble who gently yet firmly dismisses the attentions of a too-officious servant, and Petitot, much to his own surprise, found himself bowing low, and scrambling out of the poorly furnished room in as much embarrassment as though he had accidentally stumbled into a palace where his presence was not required.
Petitot, it is true, limited himself to a smile, and Baudichon shrugged his shoulders. But for the moment the challenge silenced them. The game passed to Blondel's hands, and his spirits rose. "If M. Baudichon wants to know more about him," he said contemptuously, "I dare say that the information can be obtained." "The point is," Fabri answered, "what are we to do?" "As to what?"
A little royal amenity, a little conversation and blandishment, a la Louis XIV., will seduce his artistic vanity. At the cost of that, your portrait, Sire, will be terminated. It would not be without." The surprise of his Majesty was extreme when he had to learn and comprehend that the prodigious talent of Petitot was joined to a Huguenot conscience, and this talent spoke of expatriating itself.
Word Of The Day