"Well, Greuze," said his friend Barthélemy one day to him, when sitting at his bedside. "Well, my friend," replied the artist, "I am dying.... I am commencing to know no longer what I am saying; but patience! yet a little while and I shall say nothing more." "_Allons, mon ami_--courage, one doesn't die on the first day of spring." "Ah! my God, since the Sans-culottides I have taken no heed of the seasons. Are we in _Ventóse_ or in _Germinal_? Is to-day Saint _Pissenlit_ or _Saint Asperge_?" "What matters! See how beautifully the sun shines." "I am quite at ease for my journey. Adieu, Barthelemy. I await you at my burial. You will be all alone like the poor man's dog." {15} So in poverty and neglect the artist died. There is a tradition that when Napoleon heard of it, he exclaimed, "Dead! poor and neglected! Why did he not speak? I would have given him a pitcher made of Sèvres china, filled to the brim with gold, for every copy of his _Broken Pitcher_." At the funeral, when the coffin rested in the church, a lady, whose emotion could not be hidden, even by the thick veil which she wore, advanced to the coffin, and placed upon it a bouquet of _immortelles_. She then withdrew again to an obscure part of the church. Tied to the bouquet was discovered a piece of paper which bore this inscription: "These flowers, offered by the most grateful of his pupils, are the emblem of his glory." A newspaper of the time gave the name of the young lady as Mademoiselle Mayer, the artist who, before she committed suicide, did so much to cheer the desolate life of Prudhon, and who now occupies the same tomb as Prudhon in the cemetery of Père la Chaise in Paris. Madame de Valory, however, the god-daughter of Greuze, has stated that the woman was Madame Jubot, another of the pupils of Greuze. Tournus neglected him in his life, but to-day is proud of its illustrious son. A monument of the artist has been erected in the town, some of his pictures hang in the church and in the museum, and a tablet marks the house in which he was born. {16} ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY It was peculiarly fitting that a lady should deposit upon the coffin of Greuze a bouquet of _immortelles_, for his romantic and chivalrous regard for women, from a very early period in his career, had a great influence upon his life and work. Even as a pupil of Grandon, Greuze fell in love with his master's wife, a woman of very great beauty and charm. He never told his love; but one day Grandon's daughter surprised Greuze on his knees in the studio. She asked him what he was doing there, and he replied that he was looking for something he had lost. But she had seen that he had one of her mother's shoes, and that he was covering it with ardent kisses.