had a dull complexion, brown eyes, black hair, a turned-up nose,
rather wide mouth, and long ears. His gentle, passive, and resigned
air gave a certain relief to these leading features of a physiognomy
that was full of health, but wanting in action. This young man, born
to be a virtuous bourgeois, having left his native place and come to
Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a
distant connection of the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by
the fact of an obstinacy which constitutes the Breton character. What
he suffered, the manner in which he lived during those years of study,
God only knows. He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are
hounded by poverty and hunted like wild beasts by the pack of
commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst for vengeance.

As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres
took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
represented a village wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in
challenges sent to the director or the secretary of the Museum, or
even by threats of assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his canvas,
wrapped it in a handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart
that he would still make himself a great painter. He placed his
picture on the easel, and went to one of his former masters, a man of
immense talent,--to Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph
at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and
criticise the rejected work. The great painter left everything and
went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before him