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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: admired the dust on the stone-floor,--a huge blunder, by the way, for
Fougeres had painted greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the
base of the walls. "Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand
francs, and the Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the
cross of the Legion of honor to this son of a peasant who had fought
for the royal cause in 1799. (Joseph Bridau, the great painter, was
not yet decorated.) The minister of the Interior ordered two church
pictures of Fougeres.
This Salon of 1829 was to Pierre Grassou his whole fortune, fame,
future, and life. Be original, invent, and you die by inches; copy,
imitate, and you'll live. After this discovery of a gold mine, Grassou
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