"Meissonier Vindication," by making an exhibition of one hundred
fifty-five "Meissoniers"--and the public was invited to come and be the
jury. Art-lovers from England went in bodies, and all Paris filed through
the gallery, as well as a goodly portion of provincial France. By the
side of each canvas stood a gendarme to protect it from a possible
fanatic whose artistic hate could not be restrained.

To a great degree this exhibition brought feeling to a normal condition.
Meissonier was still a great artist, yet he was human and his effects
were now believed to be gotten by natural methods. But there was a lull
in the mad rush to secure his wares. The Vanderbilts grew lukewarm;
titled connoisseurs from England were not so anxious; and Mrs. Mackay sat
back and smiled through her tears.

Meissonier had expended over a million francs on his house in the
Boulevard Malesherbes in Paris, and nearly as much on the country-seat at
Poissy. These places were kingly in their appointments and such as only
the State should attempt to maintain. For a single man, by the work of
his right hand, to keep them up was too much to expect.

Meissonier's success had been too great. As a collector he had overdone
the thing. Only poor men, or those of moderate incomes, should be
collectors, for then the joy of sacrifice is theirs. Charles Lamb's
covetous looking on the book when it was red, daily for months, meanwhile
hoarding his pay, and at last one Saturday night swooping down and
carrying the volume home to Bridget in triumph, is the true type.

But money had come to Meissonier by hundreds of thousands of francs, and
often sums were forced upon him as advance payments. He lived royally and
never imagined that his hand and brain could lose their cunning, or the