Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

FONTAINEBLEAU
secondary lights, and those who in my day made
the stranger welcome, have since deserted it. The
good Lachevre has departed, carrying his household
gods ; and long before that Gaston Lafenestre was
taken from our midst by an untimely death. He
died before he had deserved success ; it may be, he
would never have deserved it ; but his kind, comely,
modest countenance still haunts the memory of all
who knew him. Another — whom I will not name —
has moved farther on, pursuing the strange Odyssey
of his decadence. His days of royal favour had
departed even then ; but he still retained, in his
narrower life at Barbizon, a certain stamp of con-
scious importance, hearty, friendly, filling the room,
the occupant of several chairs ; nor had he yet ceased
his losing battle, still labouring upon great canvases
that none would buy, still waiting the return of for-
tune. But these days also were too good to last;
and the former favourite of two sovereigns fled, if I
heard the truth, by night. There was a time when
he was counted a great man, and Millet but a
dauber ; behold, how the whirligig of time brings
in his revenges ! To pity Millet is a piece of arro-
gance ; if life be hard for such resolute and pious
spirits, it is harder still for us, had we the wit to
understand it ; but we may pity his unhappier rival,
who, for no apparent merit, was raised to opulence
and momentary fame, and, through no apparent
fault, was suffered step by step to sink again to
nothing. No misfortune can exceed the bitterness
of such back-foremost progress, even bravely sup-
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