Part 19 (1/2)
Dieu fut! et l'ouvrier adora son image,”
was placed on his book-plate by the philosophical atheist Sylvain Marechal, who wrote a work ent.i.tled ”Fragmens d'un poeme moral sur Dieu,” dated 1781.
David Koning remarks:
”L'Art c'est la vie.
La Nature c'est la mort.”
Whilst Patrice Salin fairly gives himself away:
”Tel que je suis, prends moi.”
Others have used mottoes which come under no special category, such as that on an engraved label bearing the name _J. G. Lafont_:
”Des plaisirs sans apprets, des amis peu nombreux Les livres, les beaux arts, et la philosophie Voila le vrai bonheur, il suffit a mes voeux.”
”Tots besoingners tots escripre.”
_Valentin Mourie._ (See page 238.)
”Point de Roses sans epignes.”
_Edward S. Potter._
”Honneur a qui rapporte.”
_L. Delatre._ (See page 240.)
”La mort n'y mord.”
Ex-Libris _Fr. Serrier_. (See page 242.)
”Vive la Joie.”
On the plate of _M. Joy_.
In 1791 Monsieur J. B. Michaud cried aloud on his book-plate for ”_La Liberte ou la Mort_” and many others adopted the phrase, at a time when Death was certainly more _en evidence_ than Liberty.
Poor Leon Gambetta, probably the most daring and original of modern French politicians, had his book-plate inscribed ”_Vouloir c'est Pouvoir_,” an axiom which he, the son of a poor provincial grocer, had proved correct up to a certain point.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BOOK-PLATE OF FR. SERRIER.]
There is no article in the ”Dictionnaire des Girouettes” more laughable than that devoted to Monsieur Nicholas Francois de Neufchateau, who, not content with being a political turncoat of the first order, celebrated each of his changes of faith by songs in honour of his new ideal of government. These poems, here side by side in the dictionary, proclaim the man at once a venal weatherc.o.c.k and a conceited prig.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BOOK-PLATE OF JACQUES FLACH.]
He was born in 1752; before the outbreak of the Revolution he was a lawyer in Paris; afterwards he became President of the National a.s.sembly, when he called King Louis XVI. a traitor, yet this did not prevent his being sent to prison by Barrere in 1793. On his release he wrote a poem in honour of Barrere; later on he joined with the senate in advising Napoleon to create himself emperor. The emperor could do no less in return than create Neufchateau a Count of the Empire. What became of him on the Restoration does not appear, except that in 1815 he obtained permission to dedicate a volume of his fables to the king.
To the end of time the ex-libris of Monsieur N. Francois de Neufchateau will not only pompously proclaim all the t.i.tles given to him by Napoleon I., but describe in verse the blazon of his arms, in which, as he says, the useful and the ornamental are curiously blended, the whole being surmounted by one of David's _toques_, with the five waving ostrich feathers denoting senatorial rank.
Yet this was the man who had previously written: