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Updated: June 18, 2025
As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum.
This demand for contingents, and the positive way in which the Emperor insisted upon them, gave rise to an immense correspondence, which, however, was unattended by any result. The notes and orders remained in the portfolios, and the contingents stayed at home. M. Metternich, whose talent has since been so conspicuously displayed, had been for upwards of a year Ambassador from Austria to Paris.
It was always taught by Professors, a class of learned young men who acquired their title by abandoning the plough and anvil, and, in a suit of ready-made clothing, travelling about the country with portfolios under their arms. It was an experience to make loafers for life of them: and I fancy the girls who learnt their art never afterwards made so good butter and cheese.
Longdon, who had once more been arrested, once more sidled away. Then he spoke from the other side of the expanse of a table covered with books for which the shelves had no space covered with portfolios, with well-worn leather-cased boxes, with documents in neat piles. The place was a miscellany, yet not a litter, the picture of an admirable order.
'E used to say they ought to be well made, the same as any other h'article of trade. I can lay my 'and on the pose studies for you, sir." He rummaged in one of the portfolios and produced half a dozen drawings, "These three," he continued, "was discarded; these two was the pose he finally accepted; this one without alteration, as it were.
O Tche!" inhaling with delight the odour of government, of administration, pervading the air, watching admiringly the ministers as they passed, following in their trail with keen nose, as though from their respected pockets, from their swollen portfolios, there might fall some appointment; but especially surrounding "Moussiou" Jansoulet with so many exacting petitions, reclamations, demonstrations, that, in order to free himself from the gesticulating uproar which made everybody turn round, and turned him as it were into the delegate of a tribe of Tuaregs in the midst of civilized folk, he was obliged to implore with a look the help of some attendant on duty familiar with such acts of rescue, who would come to him with an air of urgency to say "that he was wanted immediately in Bureau No. 8."
Then the French Minister approached and insinuated himself into the droll council of peace; the Spanish Minister, as doyen, also appeared, and one or two others. But those Ministers who are without Legations, who so uncomfortably resemble their colleagues at home those without portfolios formed a group in the middle distance, humble as men only are who have to rely upon bounty.
His colleagues were gathered together, awaiting him, and chatting in the salon, decorated in white and gold, the invariable salon of official apartments with the inevitable Sèvres vases with deep-blue, light-green or buff color grounds, placed upon consoles or pedestals. The portfolios appeared stuffed or empty, limp or bursting with paper bundles, under the arms of their Excellencies.
In those days of blissful ignorance I had, of course, no conception of the difficulties of art, and was making that delusively rapid apparent progress which is so very encouraging to all incipient amateurs. Not a single study of those times remains in my portfolios to-day, and I know not what may have become of them.
Why not? There are roses with yellow pistils. Why should not we do in stuffs what nature does in flowers? For us couturiers, as for the painter and the sculptor, the great source of inspiration is nature. There are many of my colleagues who fill their portfolios with the engravings of Eisen, Debucourt, Moreau, and the masters of the eighteenth century.
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