And still he worked—­it was his only rest!  Meissonier painted very few pictures of women, and in some miraculous way skipped that stage in esthetic evolution wherein most artists affect the nude.  In his whole career he never produced a single “Diana,” nor a “Susanna at the Bath.”  He had no artistic sympathy with “Leda and the Swan,” and once when Delaroche chided him for painting no pictures of women, he was so ungallant as to say, “My dear fellow, men are much more beautiful than women!”

During the last decade of his life Meissonier painted but one portrait of a woman, and to America belongs the honor.  The sitter was Mrs. J. W. Mackay, of California.

As all the world knows, Mrs. Mackay refused to accept the canvas.  She declared the picture was no likeness, and further, she would not have it for a gift.

“So you do not care for the picture?” asked the great artist.

“Me?  Well, I guess not—­not that picture!”

“Very well, Madam.  I think—­I think I’ll keep it for myself.  I’ll place it on exhibition!” And the great artist looked out of the window in an absent-minded way, and hummed a tune.

This put another phase on the matter.  Mrs. Mackay winced, and paid the price, which rumor says was somewhere between ten and twenty-five thousand dollars.  She took the little canvas in her carriage and drove away with it, and what became of the only portrait of a woman painted by Meissonier during his later years, nobody knew but Mrs. Mackay, and Mrs. Mackay never told.

Meissonier once explained to a friend that his offense consisted in producing a faithful likeness of the customer.

The Mackay incident did not end when the lady paid the coin and accepted the goods.  Meissonier, by the haughtiness of his manner, his artistic independence, and most of all, by his unpardonable success, had been sowing dragons’ teeth for half a century.  And now armed enemies sprang up, and sided with the woman from California.  They made it an international episode:  less excuses have involved nations in war in days agone.  But the enemies of Meissonier did not belong alone to America, although here every arm was braced and every tongue wagged to vindicate the cause of our countrywoman.

In Paris the whole art world was divided into those who sided with Meissonier and those who were against him.  Cafes echoed with the sounds of wordy warfare; the columns of all magazines and newspapers bulged with heated argument; newsboys cried extras on the street, and bands of students paraded the boulevards singing songs in praise of Mrs. Mackay and in dishonor of Meissonier, “the pretender.”  The assertion was made again and again that Meissonier had fed sham art upon the public, and by means of preposterous prices and noisy puffing had hypnotized a world.  They called him the artist of the Infinitely Little, King of Lilliput, and challenged any one to show where he had thrown heart and high emotion into