Page:The Etchings of Charles Meryon.djvu/31

 living, almost a recluse, in his rooms in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont. He had great difficulty in selling proofs of his etchings, though he asked no more than 30 francs for a Paris set. He took them in vain to various publishers; there were then no dealers who sold etchings of this kind. He had spent the money left to him by his mother; he gained no rewards at the Salon; the Chalcographie Impériale du Louvre ignored him. He was almost starving, says Burty, when he made the acquaintance of M. Jules Niel, librarian at the Ministry of the Interior, a cultivated man who recognised at once the significance of Meryon's work. He obtained the purchase of several sets of the etchings by the Minister and orders for other work to be done by Meryon in the shape of reproductions of historical drawings. In the winter of 1855-56 the Duke of Aremberg had seen the Views of Paris at Montpellier. In 1857 he sent for Meryon to Belgium, and commissioned him to etch views of his park at Enghien. But Meryon was just then becoming a prey to mental disease, and he returned to Paris, in great trouble of mind, in March 1858. He became more and more unsociable, especially after he removed to a little hotel in the Rue Fossé St. Jacques. Delâtre looked after him as best he could, but Meryon refused to leave his bed, saying that he could not cross a sea of blood, and threatened with a pistol those who approached him. Whilst he was in this state Léopold Flameng drew, in May 1858, the well-known portrait of Meryon in bed, sitting up, with a large black cravat round his neck, the dark shadow of his head thrown upon the wall by the rays of a lamp (plate 24). The features are sharp and emaciated with self-imposed fasting. When the drawing was finished, Meryon asked to see it. He sprang out of bed and tried to tear it up, but Flameng fled with the portrait. On the following day, May 12th, Meryon was carried off to the asylum at Charenton St. Maurice. The discipline and regular food, instead of semi-starvation, had a good effect on him, and he was quiet, gentle and polite. While he was in the asylum he made one etching, from a