From these laborious preparations it may be understood that he spent almost as many millions of francs upon his pictures as he received. In his article, _What an Old Work of Art is Worth_, Julius Lessing has admirably dealt with the hidden ways of taste and commerce applied to art. Amongst all painters of modern times Meissonier is the only one whose pictures, during his own lifetime, fetched prices such as are only reached by the works of famous old masters of the greatest epochs. And yet he sold them straight from his easel, and never to dealers. Meissonier avenged himself magnificently for the privations of his youth. In 1832, when he gave up his apprenticeship with Menier, the great chocolate manufacturer, to become a painter, he had fifteen francs a month to spend. He had great difficulty in disposing of his drawings and illustrations for five or ten francs, and was often obliged to console himself with a roll for the want of a dinner. Only ten years later he was able to purchase a small place in Poissy, near St. Germain, where he went for good in 1850, to give himself up to work without interruption. Gradually this little property became a pleasant country seat, and in due course of time the stately house in Paris, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, was added to it. His "Napoleon, 1814," for which the painter himself received three hundred thousand francs, was bought at an auction by one of the owners of the "Grands Magasins du Louvre" for eight hundred and fifty thousand francs; "Napoleon III at Solferino" brought him two hundred thousand, and "The Charge of the Cuirassiers" three hundred thousand. And in general, after 1850, he only painted for such sums. It was calculated that he received about five thousand francs for every centimetre of painted canvas, and left behind him pictures which, according to present rate, were worth more than twenty million francs, without having really become a rich man; for, as a rule, every picture that he painted cost him several thousand.