Page:The Etchings of Charles Meryon.djvu/28

 many changes introduced into the sky in successive states. From the second to the sixth state of Delteil there is a balloon floating in the sky towards the left, inscribed (plate 17), to which the verses L'Espérance (plate 19) allude. In the seventh state this balloon disappears; in its stead there are great flights of birds across the sky, of which the lower resemble wild duck, while the upper ones, with longer wings, have got hooked beaks which make them look more like birds of prey than the jackdaws which one would expect to fly round the towers of a city. These remain (plate 18) during several alterations in the plate, until the tenth state, when they have disappeared from the left, though a concentrated flock wheels about the Tour de l'Horloge, and their place is taken by new balloons, near and distant, and in the eleventh state by still more balloons, one of which bears the name of Vasco de Gama. This is all rather crazy, and the alterations were made, like those on other plates to which we shall refer later, after Meryon's mind had finally become deranged. This is evidently the etching referred to in a letter from Baudelaire to Poulet Malassis (quoted by M. Loys Delteil): "Dans une de ses grandes planches, il a substituté à un petit ballon une nuée d'oiseaux de proie, et, comme je lui faisais remarquer qu'il était invraisemblable de mettre tant d'aigles dans un ciel parisien, il m'a répondu que cela n'était pas dénué de fondement, puisque ces gens-là (le gouvernement de l'Empereur) avaient souvent lâché des aigles pour étudier les présages, suivant le rite,—et que cela avait été imprimé dans les journaux, même dans le Moniteur. Je dois dire qu'il ne se cache en aucune façon de son respect pour toutes les superstitions, mais il les explique mal, et il voit de la cabale partout." This letter dates from January 1860, a few months after Meryon had been released from his first confinement in an asylum, and it must be observed that any eccentricities due to mental derangement can only be traced in plates etched subsequently to 1859, or in the late states, produced by re-touching after that date, of the "Eaux-fortes sur Paris" them-