Brun

“ Vigée Le Brun was to paint her royal mistress close on thirty times during the next ten years, until the prison doors shut upon the Royal house of France; and there grew up between the two women a subtle and charming friendship that was to make the talented woman a dogged and convinced royalist to her dying day—indeed, the temperament of women needs small incense towards the worshipping of idols. ”

“ In Vigée Le Brun's portrait of herself and her child we see in full career the Greek ideals that were come upon France—a France weary of light trifling with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower. ”

“ I'm old-fashioned. I like the old settled laws and customs and the rest of it, and yet I'm not afraid of this new Individualism; but what I expect and what you expect to come of it all are sure to be mightily different things."
"They are," said Brun, laughing. "You see, Christopher, as I've often said to you before, you're a sentimentalist—people matter to you; you're concerned in their individual good or bad luck. Now none of that is worth anything to me. I observe from the outside—always. What I want to see is less muddle, more brain, less waste of time, more progress. ”

“ She has a sort of politeness which pleases peculiarly—a mixture of the ease of high rank and early habit with something that is sentimental without affectation. Madame Le Brun is painting her picture: Madame Le Brun is sixty-six, with great vivacity as well as genius, and better worth seeing than her pictures; for though they are speaking, she speaks, and speaks uncommonly well. ”

“ THE DUEL OF DR. HIRSCH
M. Maurice Brun and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit Champs Elysées with a kind of vivacious respectability. They were both short, brisk and bold. They both had black beards that did not seem to belong to their faces, after the strange French fashion which makes real hair look like artificial. M. Brun had a dark wedge of beard apparently affixed under his lower lip. M. Armagnac, by way of a change, had two beards; one sticking out from each corner of his emphatic chin. They were both young. ”

“ The second wife of the Baron de la Motte-Fouquet, was a very accomplished woman, and the author of several poems and romances.
Frederica Brun, (born Münter,) the daughter of a learned ecclesiastic of Gotha, is celebrated for her prose writings, and particularly her travels in Italy, where she resided at different periods. Madame Brun was a friend of Madame de Staël, who mentions her in her de l'Allemagne, and describes the extraordinary talents for classical pantomime possessed by her daughter Ida Brun. ”

“ Christopher had been changed by the events of the last few weeks, and Brun, if he had not been so personally involved, had seen enough to excite his most eager curiosity and speculation.
Brun's sharp little eyes, flashing across the tip of his cigar, sought Christopher's large comfortable face, fell from there over his large comfortable body, down at last to his large comfortable boots.
"Well ... First time I've seen a Continental crowd in England."
"Continental?"
"Always your Englishman, however excited and of whatever rank, knows there are things a gentleman doesn't do. ”

“ Down we went into a seemingly bottomless abyss, but gradually the daylight crept upon us, and the glorious morning star shone out above the Malte Brun ridge to light us on our way. As we crept up the opposite slopes the wind began to rise, and drift snow showered down upon us from the Silberhorn ridge. We climbed to the lip of a great crevasse, and saw our shadows reflected deep blue on the white ice of the other side. ”

“ Proceeding up on the western side of the moraine, a new branch glacier descending from the Malte Brun Range opened out on our left, its lower ice forming a fine frozen cascade, whilst a waterfall of some 200 feet descends over a rocky face from its southern and hanging portion. ”

“ Far up in the heavens stands out a noble peak of the Malte Brun Range, rising out of a glacier which nestles in a basin of rock and bristles with séracs and pinnacles of blue ice pouring into the gorge below, from whence issues an imposing waterfall of seventy or eighty feet, sending up clouds of spray and drenching all within its immediate vicinity. ”

“ For my next anecdote I turn to Elizabeth le Brun, the favourite court painter of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who, when her husband’s reckless and heartless extravagance had reduced her to comparative poverty, found herself unable to terminate the once grand receptions at which she had received the crème de la crème [Pg 140] of her contemporaries. ”

“ Many a joyous never-to-be-forgotten hour has passed in whizzing down those tempting slopes, hours only rivalled by those wild scrambles round the smooth faces of Malte Brun rock. Here one of the pioneers, in a moment of genius and wet-weather desperation, mapped out a series of routes, each of increasing difficulty. To the rock-climbing enthusiast anxious to win his spurs, the old rock provides many a breathless and exciting moment. ”

“ In 1660 they established the Gobelins, which at first was a great school for the manufacture, not of tapestries only, but of every class of furniture required in the royal palaces. Commanding the industrial arts through the Gobelins—of which he was director—and the whole artist world through the Academy—in which he successively held every post—Le Brun imprinted his own character on all that was produced in France during his lifetime, and gave a direction to the national tendencies which endured after his death. ”

“ In the passion of Admiration, the mind is occupied with pleasing thoughts, usually accompanied with love, esteem, or veneration for the object; and these sensations that give such a pleasant turn to the features. In this passion (according to Le Brun) , the eyebrow rises; the eye [Pg 22] opens a little more than ordinary; the eyeball, equally between the eyelids, appears fixed on the object; the mouth half opens; and to this disposition of features, astonishment only exaggerates a little. ”

“ In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the Italians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every form of experience—a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting, for oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls, that wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart. Considered from the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite might figure as "the infinitely little;" no blade [240] of grass being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere. ”

“ Consult only the works of the great Italian and Flemish masters. But, above all things, make as many studies as you can from Nature. Nature is the supreme master. If you study Nature with care it will prevent you from picking up any mannerisms."
PLATE III.—MADAME VIGÉE LE BRUN AND CHILD
(In the Louvre)
Vigée Le Brun painted another portrait of herself and her little girl-child; and she painted both, fortunately for her fame, when her skill was at its increase. They stand out, with all their limitations, pure and exquisite as the Madonna and Child of Italy's finest achievement ”

“ She painted several portraits of herself; one is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, one at Munich, and a third in the Uffizi, Florence. The last is near that of Madame Le Brun, and the contrast between the two is striking. Angelica is still young, but the expression of her face is so grave as to be almost melancholy; she is sitting on a stone in the midst of a lonely landscape; she has a portfolio in one hand and a pencil in the other, and so unstudied is her pose, and so lacking in any attempt to look her best, that one feels that she is entirely absorbed in her work. ”

“ Every rocky ridge and peak of the Malte Brun Range was outlined sharp against a green and primrose sky, rapidly deepening to orange and red. As we climbed we found ourselves enveloped in the alpine glow that coloured Mounts Cook and Tasman with its rosy light. Except for several schrunds to cross and one steep ice slope to traverse, we had no difficulty upon the Silberhorn. We reached the summit at 8.30 a.m., and looked once more round the western ridge at Tasman, and again we were appalled at its steepness. ”

“ Le Brun had only one real talent, that of satire; his epistle on La bonne et la mauvaise plaisanterie enjoyed a well-deserved renown. Some of his epigrams are worthy of mention with J. B. Rousseau's; La Harpe above all inspired him. One more justice should be done him: he retained [Pg 132] his independence under Bonaparte, and has left trenchant verses directed against the oppressor of our liberties [251] .
But unquestionably the most atrabiliary of the men of letters whom I knew in Paris at that time was Chamfort. ”

“ In 1855, Brun-Rollet, a native of Savoy, appointed consul for Sardinia in Eastern Soudan, to take the place of Vaudey, who had just died, set out from Karthoum, and, under the name of Yacoub the merchant, trading in gums and ivory, got as far as Belenia, beyond the fourth degree, but had to return in ill-health to Karthoum, where he died in 1857. ”

“ And she does hate them, hein?"
"Oh, my dear Brun, you've got an absurdly exaggerated view about everything. You'd twist the Beaminsters into anything to make them fit your theory."
"Oh, they'll fit it right enough. But I must be in at the death. We'll meet there together, Christopher. Things will occur before we're much older, my sentimentalist."
Christopher shook his head. "There's something sinister about your appearances in the City, Brun. 'Where the carcases are, there will....'"
Brun nodded. "It's true enough this time," he said.
CHAPTER IX THE DARKEST HOUR
"So God help us! ”

“ One gave her beauty, another genius; the fairy Gracious offered her a pencil and a palette. The fairy of marriage, who had not been summoned, told her, it is true, that she should wed M. Le Brun, the expert in pictures — but for her consolation the fairy of travellers promised her that she should bear from court to court, from academy to academy, from Paris to Petersburg, and from Rome to London, her gayety, her talent, and her easel—before which all the sovereigns of Europe and all those whom genius had crowned should place themselves as subjects for her brush. ”

“ The Modern High German Braune has added to the stem the suffix n, which belonged to the declension of the weak form Braue (compare Biene) ; similarly Old Icelandic brún, corresponding to Anglo-Saxon brû, was formed from brû and the n of the weak declension (in Anglo-Saxon the genitive plural is brûna}. Braue, like the names of many limbs and parts of the body (see Fuß, Niere, Herz, Leber, Nase) , originated in the primitively. Aryan period. The originally meaning, however, of the primitive Aryan bhrû-s (‘eye) -brow,’ is as difficult to discover as that of Herz. ”

“ Bruno was kind and gentle as well as faithful. If any body came through the field while he was watching his master’s dinner, or any thing else that had been intrusted to his charge, he would not, as some fierce and ill-tempered dogs are apt to do, fly at them and bite them at once, but he would wait to see if they were going to pass by peaceably. ”

“ He early showed remarkable aptitude for his profession, and, on arriving in Paris, attracted the attention of Le Brun, by whom he was employed at Versailles, and under whose auspices, in 1675, he became a member of the Académie Royale, of which he was elected professor in 1681, and one of the four perpetual rectors in 1707. ”

“ An immense quantity of work at Versailles was entrusted to him, and in recognition of the successful execution of four figures for the Bains d’Apollon, Le Brun induced the king to present his protégé personally with a purse of 300 louis, as a distinguishing mark of royal favour. ”

“ In the fulness of his joy, Bruno dismissed, as he thought for ever, from his mind the cruel unworthy thoughts he had once been led to entertain of his bride. It would be difficult to describe this infant to those who never saw her; but let each one think of all the children he has been privileged to know. If among such dear ones he can recall some babe of a beauty too rare and fair to attain to maturity in this bleak world, then he may in some faint degree picture to himself the nameless charm that surrounded the little Violet as with a halo. ”

“ When I talked to him of Kinkel and of my desire to alleviate his misery at least a little by conveying to him additional fare, Brune's face expressed none of the pitiable embarrassment of the man who is vacillating between his sense of duty and a ten-thaler note. Brune stood firmly upright like a man who is not ashamed of what he is willing to do. ”

“ Very fortunately this was not so; for once talent was able to silence envy, and Le Brun was admirably served by circumstances. In 1660, the king ordered a large picture of him, Alexandre pénétrant dans la tente de Darius, and the city of Paris instructed him to erect a triumphal arch on the Place Dauphine for the entry into Paris of Louis XIV and his queen, Maria Theresa. In 1661 he entered into relations with Colbert ”

“ Here the sun had done its work, and we floundered along in soft snow up to our knees. One last struggle took us over the lateral moraine and up the steep path to the Malte Brun hut. This last 300 feet is apt to prove a discouraging ending to the weary traveller, depriving him of what little energy he has left; after rest and refreshment, however, he is usually willing to concede that his labours have not been in vain. It would indeed be hard to find a more beautiful and picturesque situation than that on which this little alpine hut is perched. ”

“ Bruno answered in as careless a tone as he could manage: “they’re ugly with their great big eyes. I think if they cried, the tears would be as big—oh, as big as the moon!” And he laughed merrily. “Doos Owls cry ever, Mister Sir?”
“Owls cry never,” I said gravely, trying to copy Bruno’s way of speaking: “they’ve got nothing to be sorry for, you know.” ”