Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/47

has only been familiar to men for whom French literature does not begin the day when “Malherbe came,” François Villon has had the honor of being the most pillaged, even by the big-wigs of modern Parnassus. They threw themselves upon the poor man’s field and coined glory from his humble treasure. There are ballads scribbled under a pent house at the street corner on a cold day by the Bohemian rhapsodist, stanzas improvised in the hovel m which the “belle qui fut haultmire ” loosened her girdle to all comers, which nowadays metamorphosed into dainty gallantries scented with musk and amber, figure in the armorial bearing enriched album of some aristocratic Chloris.

But behold the grand century of the Renaissance opens, Michael Angelo ascends the scaffolds of the Sixtine Chapel and watches with anxious air young Raphael mounting the steps of the Vatican with the cartoon of the Loggie under his arm. Benvenuto Cellini is meditating his Perseus, Ghiberti is carving the Baptistery doors at the same time that Donatello is rearing his marbles on the bridges of the Arno; and whilst the city of the Medici is staking masterpieces against that of Leo X. and Julius II., Titian and Paul Veronese are rendering the home of the Doges illustrious. Saint Mark’s competes with Saint Peter’s.

This fever of genius that had broken out suddenly in the Italian peninsula with epidemic violence spreads its glorious contagion throughout Europe. Art, the rival of God, strides on, the equal of kings. Charles V. stoops to pick up Titian’s brush, and Francis I. dances attendance at the printing office where Étienne Dolet is perhaps correcting the proofs of “Pantagruel.”

Amidst this resurrection of intelligence, Bohemia continued as in the past to seek, according to Balzac’s expression, a bone and a kennel. Clément Marot, the familiar of the ante-chamber of the Louvre, became, even before she