The Duke of Savoy besieged Susanne in her castle of Mouans, and she defended herself gallantly; but, forced to surrender through lack of food, she imposed as condition that the castle should be spared. The duke broke his word, and levelled it. She was furious, reproached him, and demanded 40,000 crowns indemnity, or she would brand him as a liar and perjurer. He promised the money, but departed without paying. She hasted after him, caught him up in the plain of Cagnes, and poured forth afresh a torrent of abuse. He spurred his horse, so as to escape it; she flung herself in the way, held the bridle, and used her woman’s tongue with such effect that Charles Emmanuel was glad to disburse the money on the spot so as to effect his escape.
The castle has disappeared to its foundations. The church stands intact, unrestored.
I have spoken of the Hotel of the Cabris family in the Cours. No. 1 is the ancient mansion of the family of Théas-Thorenc, and was built by Count François, who was engaged in the wars of Louis XV., and whose praises have been sung by Goethe. He was at the taking of Frankfort, when his commander-in-chief, the Prince of Soubise, acquired the celebrity of the epigram:—
“Soubise dit, la lanterne à la main: ‘J’ai beau chercher! où diable est mon armée? Elle était là pourtant, hier matin?’”
Another Grasse worthy is Fragonard, the painter, a mercer’s son, born at Grasse in 1732. He was put as clerk to a notary in early youth, but wearied mortally of the office, and in 1748 was given to the painter Bucher to be trained as an artist.
He was in full swing of favour and success in Paris when the Revolution broke out.
“Soon events became tragic, and then began the dusk of that bright and gentle life which had to him hitherto been one long smile. Frago had no thought of flying from the storm, and republicanism always remained idealised in his mind. But sadness oppressed his heart, and his friends shared it with him. These old pensioners of the king, enriched by the aristocracy, could not see without regret the demolition of the _ancien régime_, and the ruin of their protectors, emigrated, imprisoned, hunted down. Without hating either royalty or Jacobinism, the little group of artists of plebeian birth and bourgeois manners suffered in silence the great revolution in which all their past went down, as the shadows of old age deepened on them. Their art was out of fashion. Their piquant scenes, their dainty subjects, were no longer possible in the midst of political and social convulsions, and a few years sufficed to convert the respect of yesterday into the contempt of to-day. Eighty years must pass before taste and justice could bring men back to love the charming French school of 1770, to understand its importance in the history of the national genius, so as to induce the digging of its relics forth from under the cinders of the Revolution, the empire, and the bourgeois royalty.”[13]