PASCAL QUIGNARD

Terrace in Rome

Meaume told them: 'I was born in the year 1617 in Paris. In Paris, I was an apprentice with Follín. In the city of
Toulouse, with Rhuys the Reformed. In Bruges, with Heemkers. After Bruges, I lived alone. In Bruges
I loved a woman and my face burned. For two years I hid a horrific face on the cliff that
it rises over Ravello, in Italy. Desperate men live in corners. All men
In love live in angles. All book readers live in angles. The desperate men.
they live suspended in space like painted figures on the walls, without breathing, without speaking, without
listen to no one. The cliff overlooking the Gulf of Salerno was a wall facing the sea. I have never
found joy with no other woman. It's not the joy I miss. It's her. That's why I
drawn throughout my life a same body in the hugs I have always dreamed of. The
card manufacturers who gave me their protection while I worked in Toulouse called cards
novels to the card games whose triumphs represented novel heroes. Old cards to which
they represented the prophets of the Bible or the generals of Roman History. Erotic letters to which
they showed the scenes that generate us. Now I live in Rome, where I record these religious scenes and
These scandalous cards. They are sold at the stamp shop that has the sign of the black cross, in the
Giulia street.

II

In 1639, Jacob Veet Jakobsz, a goldsmith in the city of Bruges, was appointed elective judge of the year. He had
a strange and beautiful daughter. She was blonde, very fair, tall, slightly hunched, with a thin waist, the hands
fine, with a full chest, very quiet. The young engraver Meaume saw her during the procession of the
goldsmiths' festival. He was twenty-one years old. He had completed his apprenticeship with Rhuys the Reformed in
Toulouse. Meaume arrived from Luneville in the company of Errard the Nephew, who then left him to go to
Mayence.
Her beauty left him empty.
She was drawn to his sleek figure.
So he followed her without realizing it.
But she did notice. Meaume was surprised by the look she gave him. That look lived in him for...
all his life. He immediately asked the teacher he was working with if he could introduce them. His teacher,
who was famous (was Jean Heemkers), agreed to help him out of trouble without asking a single question. They went to
greet her. She raised her eyelids. She leaned in, responding to his greeting. But they didn't say a word. Only
they exchanged their names. From that moment on, he spied on her everywhere in the free city. He was
at all the masses she attended. She slipped into the municipal ceremonies with various pretexts. She was
to all the markets. Participated in all the popular dances and in all the parties organized by the
jurisdiction of Bruges.
She, for her part, was looking for his silhouette. She saw him hide behind the parapets of the bridges in the canals.
After the stone rim of the fountains in the squares. I saw him confuse his shadow with the black shadow of
the porches and with the narrowest and yellowest shadow projected by the columns of the churches. To peek at their
his presence filled her again and again with happiness. As soon as he found her eyes, she looked down
immediately the eyelids. Sometimes she was strange and bent, very pale, in the corners, even at
full daylight, and then it was impossible to find her.
He managed to speak with his maid. Or maybe the maid went to look for him. It's an important detail, but no one
You know. The truth is that they finally met face to face.
It was in a tiny side chapel. In a cold corner. Inside the large hospital of Bruges. Ago
very cold. They are immersed in the brownish twilight of the retaining wall. The maid is watching. To the apprentice
the recorder can't think of anything to say to the daughter of the elected judge. So he timidly touches her
arm with fingers. She slides her hand between his hands. She leaves her cool hand among his hands.
He. That's it. He squeezes her hand. Their hands warm up, then they burn. They don't speak. She has the
head tilted. Then he looks directly at her, in the eyes. He opens his big eyes and looks at her. They both touch each other
in that gaze. She smiles at him. They part.
The young woman never speaks. It is the spring of 1639. She is eighteen years old. She adopts such a shy posture.
that looks a little hunchbacked. She has a long neck. She always wears severe and gray clothes. Meaume knows
who is promised to the butler of her father's house, who is also the son of another friend of Jean.
Heemkers. Since that moment, she refuses to talk to her fiancé. She doesn't even want to eat.
presence of the man she is to marry. She greatly enjoys eating, but alone, in her bed, behind the
curtain, with the maid on the other side of the door, without anyone being able to catch her taking the food to
the lips. He doesn't stop waiting for Meaume, day and night. He dreams of eating with Meaume, in his bed.
Alone with Meume in the shadow of the closed curtain of her bed.

III

Meaume said: "In the second meeting, I followed along a corridor a little candle stuck in a crucible.
of copper.
And Meaume added: "Everyone follows the fragment of night in which they flounder."
A grape swells and bursts.
At the beginning of summer, all the Damson plums crack.
"What man does not love when childhood bursts forth?"
She said: 'I don't know.'
Meaume, Jean Heemkers' apprentice, follows the flame, follows the cup and the pink fingers, follows the
created, follows the illuminated shoulders, follows the leather wall of the hallway. The first time she undresses the
daughter of the elected judge of the city of Bruges is in the house of Veet Jakobsz. A common bourgeois house
that leads to a channel. They place the candle as far away as possible. In the light of the candle, the confusion is mutual, and then,
Once revealed both in all their nakedness, the audacity is comparable, the sudden joy, the hunger
She is reborn almost immediately. In the hour following Meaume's departure, the young woman's appetite increases.
more and more. In the days that follow, when he encounters the recorder, he dares all the gestures
that are represented in her soul while she sleeps. When he does not see her, when she is alone, she pales with desire.
She says her breasts hurt. She tells him that her flower, now always open, now always fragrant, is
soaked at all times. Although they often meet, they cannot join in every appointment. Interestingly,
when she enjoyed, when her body testified to it with complete clarity, her face never reflected the
happiness. That amazed Meaume the Engraver. One day, she told him: 'I'm embarrassed to tell you, but
my belly is like a coal." He replied to her: "Do not be troubled to speak to me this way. My sex stands up every time
what I think in your gaze, even when I am on the street, even when I work in the workshop." Little
Soon, she starts calling him at any hour. Not caring how long the meeting lasts. Even if it's just
one minute. His own greed, or his untimeliness, confuses her, but she cannot resist the desire to have him.
on his side. As for Meaume, these calls annoy him because he has work to do for Heemkers and
because the slightest irregularity affects the acid water baths, but it doesn't matter, it immediately goes to
the places that the maid indicates to her.
In the garden (July 1639).
In the bedroom, twice.
In the basement, lighting himself with a dull iron flashlight.
In the ancient brick factory.
In the attic, six times.
In the dining house.
Once, in a boat that she rented for the whole day.

IV
In the dining house. The window suddenly opens with the deafening noise of thunder. Over the
lovers, who are in the midst of riding, suddenly a rain of shrapnel falls. The butler of Jakobsz,
he is called Vanlacre, he has injured himself while spraying the window panes. He wavers. His lip is bleeding.
Remove the lid from the ceramic jar you have in your hand. You are about to throw the contents of a
bottle of strong water on Meaume, who has separated from the naked and so white body of the daughter of
Jakobsz. Meaume tries to stand up, he still has the viscous and blue sex, he wants to confront
Vanlacre advances, separates, retreats. It is a moment as ridiculous as it is useless. The fiancé of the daughter of
Jakobsz has thrown the strong drink. Meume's chin, lips, forehead, hair, and neck are burning.
The acid reaches the hand of the daughter of the elected judge, who lets out a scream. Everyone shouts, so intense is the
pain of each one. They take Meaume to his master's house. Heemkers calls a doctor, who takes care of his
disciple. The eyes have not suffered damage. The entire face is already swollen.
Then, the wounds fill with pus. He suffers in a horrible way.
When the fever subsides, Meume wants to meet again with the daughter of the elective judge. He goes to see the
created.
The maid tells him that her mistress does not wish to receive him. And she adds that her mistress has not inquired about his condition.
during de Meaume's illness.
—And what does that mean? —Meaume asks.
Well, it is her will, replies the maid, uncomfortable.
Meaume writes to the daughter of Jacob Veet Jakobsz.
The great Heemkers, who is a friend of Jacob Veet Jakobsz, allows himself to be influenced by him (without hiding it from Meaume.
the authority that the magistrate exercises over him, who does more or less as he pleases in the city
Franca from Bruges speaks to Meaume so that he doesn't bother his friend's daughter again. The young man
Vanlacre has to pay a fine. Heemkers forces his apprentice in the art of etching to
accept the amount set by the judge. Meaume pockets the sum. The young engraver, to whom the
the abandonment of the elective judge's daughter and his silence continue to torture, he seems quite calm. It has
he resumed his work in the Heemkers workshop. He varnishes the plates with the pad. He sharpens his punches in
the stone twice instead of once.
Just at that moment, the girl hands him a letter.

The letter from Jacob Veet Jakobsz's daughter addressed to Meaume: 'I have received your letter with pleasure, which
ask for news from my hand. Certify your affection and I thank you for it. It has a gap, but it is not
dead. I can move all the fingers that God has seen fit to give me. I can even wiggle them without
difficulty. They help me write to you without letting frustration take hold of them or hinder their movement.
You have added a beautiful gift, which has pleased me. The portrait you have made of my face and my
the chest favors me, so skillful is your art. The frame of red shells is beautiful. I have cut the chest
with scissors, because you filmed him naked and I didn't think it was decent. When a while ago,
after eating, my gaze has stumbled upon your letter and that small portrait of mine that you have
I am obliged to do so with the punch, my eyes have filled with tears, because I say goodbye to you. The day before yesterday I...
I was looking in the church. Yesterday I saw you come down the alley and enter your master's shop.
Now you are horrible. Also, remembering your quarrel with Ennemond, I realize that you fight very ...
bad. It can't get worse. Above all, I reproach myself for having offered myself to you shamelessly. I have thought
I'm really sorry about it. So, an hour ago, I went to look for my father to ask him to
I rushed my wedding with the one who burned my hand when he threw the bottle, and he believes that after the
unpleasant scandal that this lawsuit has caused in our city, and since the engagement has already been
they have celebrated, the news will be welcome. For you, my door will always be closed. We will not return to
Let's see. Nanni.

VI
A few days later, one beautiful morning in August 1639, Nanni said to him
wake up. Meaume cannot believe his eyes. She is there, in her attic. The girl he loves has
returned. She leans over him. She is tapping him on the shoulder. He is naked. She does not covet his
nudity. On the contrary, he throws a shirt over her belly. He whispers urgently:
Listen to me! Listen to me!
It becomes as if someone is chasing her. Her features are those of a woman who is scared. The anguish
shines in his eyes. His face is rosy, sweet, long, thin, serious. He has dark circles under his eyes. He has
gathered simply the long hair behind the gray cap. She wears a gray dress, a white collar.
She is more beautiful than ever. She leans over him.
You must leave immediately.
The sleeper sits on the bed. He rubs his eyelids. He smooths his hair as best he can.
You have to leave the city today.
Why?
Right away.
—Why right away?
He is coming. He wants to kill you.
He touches Meaume's face with an expression of horror and says:
I liked the face from before. It saddens me that you have lost it.
What have you done? Why do I have to leave in a hurry? asks Meaume, pushing away with
violence on her face and hair from the hands of Nanni Veet Jakobsz.
She remains silent. She slowly brings her hand closer to the shirt with which she has concealed the painter's nudity.
Through the fabric, he gently squeezes, and then grips the sex that tenses under the shirt. He looks at her.
He abruptly lets go of the sex that has hardened. He gives her a beautiful smile. But he tells her, stopping to
to smile
—Because I told him that I loved you.
Suddenly, she starts to cry. She blows her nose.
You have become a really horrible man,
I can't help it.
Frankly, you don't see yourselves!
She puts the handkerchief back in her sleeve. She says to him:
I wanted him to kill you. Now I don't want him to kill you.
As soon as these words are spoken, he pulls away from her arms. He gets up, gets dressed, goes down two floors, arrives at
the private chambers of his master, he meets with him and his wife. He leaves without losing a
moment.
Meaume says: "My poor song took me elsewhere. Just as there is music of perdition, there is
a painting of perdition.
Acidic water is stranger than a color.
As he had a burned face, those who knew him could no longer recognize him.
Converted a misfortune into an opportunity. Changed his appearance and began to steal in Bruges. He
He moved to Antwerp without anyone noticing and continued stealing. He stole, but he loved her.
Inexplicably, when he discovered that he only loved her, he stopped stealing and seeking voluptuousness.
in the company of the street girls, who were not disgusted to see his face; or for those who,
more simply, money was a distraction. He went to Mainz. In Mainz, Meaume the Engraver
he found Errard the Nephew again, with whom he shared a heated room. The room was
big enough to store the boards, the varnishes, the box, the easel, the dove feathers, the
bathrooms. A year later, in 1640, he saw her. It is the early hours of the afternoon. She is alone, dressed in blue and
yellow, in front of the magnificent golden bell of the goldsmiths' alley in Mainz, waiting for him.
Once again, he is unable to take his eyes off the young woman.
She stops. She attracts him more than ever. She approaches him, tilting her head slightly. In response to
In one of her questions, she confirms that she has been married for ten months. To a new question.
She answers yes, she has a child. Whose? She does not respond. She raises her gaze. She laughs. She takes his hand.
—Come —he says.
-No -he replies.
He looks at her. Then he shakes his head no. And he runs away.

VII

He runs, he ran. He left Mayence. He was alone for twenty days, without sticking his nose outside, in a hostel.
from the other side of the Rhine, where he was staying with six other men in a kind of stable. Twenty days
of sobs without tears, with the body in the hay and its dense smell. Then he left that world, crossed the
Wurttemberg, the cantons, the Alps, the States, Rome, Naples. He hid his face in Ravello for
two years, over the little village, on the cliff above the Gulf of Salerno. And finally, in 1643, he arrived in Rome,
to the Aventine, to the terrace with its attic, to the nighttime images, to the erotic cards in which
I dreamed of love. In the prints, the label of the black Maltese cross of Via Giulia could be seen. The shop of
a stamp vendor was near the Palazzo Farnese. To get there, the engraver only had to
walk a hundred meters along the bank of the Tiber, pass in front of the synagogue, cross the Jewish ghetto.
He signed at the bottom left: Meaumus sculpsit. His father had been a candle maker. It's rare.
that the son of a sailing ship becomes an engraver. The father of Lasne, the one of Callot and the one of Poilly were
goldsmiths. The boy, who showed an incredible talent for sketching natural poses with a pencil and the
body expressions, to bring forth from the night the hands and faces, to represent the scenes
vile or humble or shameful things that had never been seen before, placed it very soon.

VIII

After turning forty, Meaume said he had experienced eight ecstasies. To a Roman colleague who told him...
she asked what they were, he said: 'A dream, a memory, a canvas painted by Gellée that he gifted me.'
same in the year 1651 and that represents Saint Paula in the port of Ostia, a girl in front of the
ships in the port of Bruges." Then he stopped speaking and meditated in silence. He had only mentioned
four.
Few days later, Palm Sunday, again in Meume's workshop on the Aventine, the companion
he came back and asked the recorder why he had gone quiet when he was evoking his visions.
"Because I suffer in the presence of certain images," Meaume replied. They heard rising from the alley,
still fresh, the singing of the Hebrew boys was prostrating their garments on the way. The children, who had come out
from the ship of the Mouth of Truth, they headed to Santa Sabina. The procession ended at Saint Paul
Extramuros with the celebration of the vespers in front of the tomb of the apostle, where the
last branches.
After a while, the procession left the alley and reached the banks of the Tiber. The singing faded away.
And suddenly, she disappeared.
The recorder and his companion worked in silence.
During the afternoon of that same day, the recorder drew back the black velvet curtain that protected the
canvas of the Lorenés.
This was the first wonder that Meume showed to his companion.
Then he took a jar out of the chest. It was a human ear in a glass jar. It was very faded.
It was as transparent as the membranes that frogs have between the toes of their feet.
Then, Meume returned to the chest and took out a tapestry that he unfurled on the ground. It was the work of the upholsterers.
flamingos of the Gobelins; it had been stolen during a period of religious disturbances from a caravan
the Valonians tasked with taking it to the Louvre. The right side of the tapestry depicted Ulysses swimming in
the stormy sea, while the ship was capsizing behind him. The main part showed Ulysses naked in
the coast of the ugly ones, dripping water and hiding its sex from the gaze of Nausicaa, who holds a
blue ball in the hand.
The fourth wonder, he said, is a drawing.
He first set aside two heads of decapitated Saint John the Baptist that were in the portfolio and kept one.
copy of the Roma Sotterranea by Bosio, a book full of nighttime scenes. Then he showed a
very clear dry point: a girl with an elongated face, wearing a bourgeois headdress and a white ruff,
She is sitting on a messy bed, in front of the open window. Masts can be seen and in the distance, at the ...
right, in the midst of the white dawn, a pale sea tower still wrapped in a halo of mist.
The girl's eyes, which look ahead, reflect fear.
The fifth is an engraving in the black manner. It represented a ruined village in the mountains. Above it, in
the limit of the clouds, a steep path and a donkey beside the abyss. To the left, a legend
Recorded: Sitting on the donkey Lucius. Meaum. Sculps. August. 1656. Then, the cross of Malta.
The sixth dream, then murmured Meaume, was Nanni of Bruges in the shadow...
But he was interrupted because he no longer had a voice in his throat.
He had only said six.
Meaume the Engraver gifted his colleague the engraving in the black manner that represented the mountain.
and the Pyrenean path over the abyss. I said: "Upon seeing the old forum turned once again into pasture, I felt
inside me, a strange joy. I looked at the small elm avenue, at all the animals that
they passed among the vineyards and the bushes, to the stone carvers in front of their campfires, to the
silver or gold coin seekers with their spade on their shoulder. I didn't imagine Rome like this." Upon arriving at
Rome, in 1643, Mr. Meume learned to engrave landscapes with Mr. Gellée. He said of Mr.
I fear that his talent lacked the sense of color. What concerned his hand was intensity.
of the vision, and did not take care of anything else. Never, in thirty-five years of work, did he see his hand. What
it had to emerge was what he saw in the back of his mind, behind his eyes. The vision took shape in the
shadow, stood out from the background, tore itself away to a night that did not know light. If Meaume had been
nature would have only created the lightning or the moon or the foaming waves of the breaking ocean
stormy against the black rocks of the coast. Or the nakedness revealed by chance under the fabric. Or a bone
of an animal or a piece of flint found on the ground. About the landscapes of hills or the views
mountainous, Meaume himself said: "I believe that natural places are like animals, just like us. The
a stream flowing down or the bed it has dug is similar to the bird that waits gliding in the air or to the
donkey that climbs wobbly. The vaults of the dark caves are filled with figures that form the
constellations. The bears of the Pyrenees that stand on their hind legs are immense jellyfish.
that typhoons cause capsizing.
The Grünehagen version is not exactly the same: One day while filming images of paradise in his
terrace in Rome, his companion, who was born in Abbeville and was named Poilly, observed his
immobility and its concentrated expression and he said to her, to make her laugh: 'Do you think you will enjoy in paradise'
some ecstasies comparable?" But Mr. Meaume did not lose his seriousness and stated that even in paradise
it would feel like this. 'I wonder if the same God could have imagined them,' said Poilly. Meaume
He replied with the same seriousness: 'It is matter that imagines the sky. Then, the sky imagines life.'
Then, life imagines nature. Then, nature grows and shows itself in different forms that,
more than conceiving, it invents by rummaging in space. Our bodies are one of those images that the
nature has tried to make of light." Grünehagen adds: "Mr. Gellée said of Mr. Meaume, to
In a joking manner: 'The recorders are serious.' This is what the Italians call German humor.

IX

This is Meaume's dream: he is sleeping in his attic in Bruges (the accommodation that has been lent to him)
Jean Heemkers above his rooms, on the third floor of the house that overlooks the canal). The sex becomes tense
abruptly on her belly. The thick and torrid white light of the sun shines around the naked bust of
a young blonde with a long neck. The light overflows all the contours of her body, gnaws at the silhouettes of her
cheeks and her breasts. It is Nanni Veet Jakobsz. She bows her head. She sits on him. She sinks it into
she suddenly. He enjoys.

Some words from Meaume the Engraver, referred to by Grünehagen. About Nanni Veet Jakobsz: "The
Love consists of images that haunt the spirit. To these irresistible visions is added a conversation.
inexhaustible that is directed to a single being, to whom we dedicate everything we live. This being can be alive or
dead. His affiliation is found in dreams, for in them neither will nor interest count. Now
Well, dreams are images. In fact, to be more precise, dreams are both the parents and the masters.
of the images. I am a man who is attacked by images. I create images that arise from the night. I
I had consecrated to an ancient love whose flesh has not faded in reality, but whose vision has
has stopped being possible because its use has been granted to a more beautiful specimen. There is nothing more than
to say.
About his art: "The varnish that the acid will bite must have the consistency of honey in winter. No
It goes without saying that the application is painful for the hand that extends it, because it has to be like this.
difficult. The sizes follow the shadows. The shadows follow the vigor of the light. Everything flows and shines in
a unique meaning.
About the landscapes: "To tell the truth, being honest, and because I do not want to lie, nothing of what has been
made by the hand of man I like as much as the rugged landscapes of God. Not even a canvas
painted in Rome by Claude Lorrain. Neither an etching by Morin. Nor the port of Bruges. Nor the
Tiberius Castle in the Gulf of Salerno. I prefer the Atlantic Ocean to the Golden House or the treasure of
Emperor Alexander. The Colosseum, at the foot of Mount Oppio, is not as beautiful as a storm.
Whenever there was a storm, the recorder would leave his house and wander the mountains.
Claude, who was called the Lorenés, said one day to Meaume the Engraver: 'How can you know what
Does it hide behind the appearance of all things? I can't do it. I've never been able to guess the bodies.
feminine ones that I desired through the fabrics that separated me from those shapes. I saw nothing but the colors.
and its irisations. Time and again I have been surprised by my mistakes.
Meaume replied: 'Be a painter. You are not a engraver dedicated to black and white, that is to say, to the
concupiscence. Once, in a free port in Flanders, I felt disturbed.
Claude Gelée, known as the Lorain, said: "If there are no appearances of this world, they cannot be painted."
images of him. Only the light that burns his shapes can be painted.
What light are you talking about?
I am talking about the light that illuminates him.
And do you think that the sun burns the earth it illuminates?
Yes.
Maybe you are right.
I believe that sunlight is the only beautiful thing because it allows us to discover all things. That's why I live now.
in Rome and not in Saint-Dié or in Lunéville.
But what is the use of painting, if everything is consumed?
Everyone adds their stick to the fire that lights up the world.
I can't deny that I, with my acidic water, add something to what burns.
The recorder fell silent for a brief moment.
Later, turning his gaze to the terrace, he said: "However, I don't think you are right.
There is a distinct appearance of this world. There are often dreams. Sometimes it is necessary to remove the sheet from the
bed and discover the bodies that love each other. Sometimes it is necessary to show the bridges and the villages, the towers and
the viewpoints, the boats and the cars, the people in their rooms with their pets. A
Sometimes the fog is enough, or the mountain. Sometimes just a tree that leans pushed by the gusts of the wind.
wind. Sometimes even the night is enough, more than the dream that brings back to the soul the presence of what it
lacks what has been lost.
XI

The series of Pyrenean engravings in the manner of black represents, first, a mountain village in
ruins. In the lower left corner: Sitting on a donkey Lucius. Meaum. Sculps. August. 1656. Above
the village, on the mountainside, extends a vast cemetery. It is larger than the town itself.
town and is closer to us, as we look at the engraving.
A great golden cemetery. It is an immense garden completely abandoned. As abandoned as the
nature existed before the first man appeared in it. The stones have moved. Slabs
that the snows, with the help of the centuries and the winds, have disunited. The moss has covered them. The ivy has
devoured the trails.
The ivy, which clings to everything that rises, has entangled itself in the crosses and has imprisoned them to
after hiding them, forcing them, breaking them.
In the second engraving, Meaume the Engraver has drawn himself and has hidden his face.
disfigured under a large straw hat. He crosses the very dark porch of the small church of
Mountain. The porch is a few meters away from the church.
This series of engravings in the maniera nera style, dated 1656, commemorates the long journey of Meaume the
Recorder made with Abraham Van Berchem fleeing from the French during the summer of 1651.
In the aguafuerte, the engraver walks among the graves. He walks among the men of old, who sleep.
Then, the two shadows arrive at the black ship. The floor is covered with multiple tiny shards.
Underfoot, the yellow stained glass crunches that have shattered or, perhaps unscathed, break under the
soles of the boots. It's like a window in a food house that overlooks a small canal. There is no
God.
God was also not in this small drawing of a dark church. Only the ruin of the place under the light.
Only the wind could be confused with the divinity venerated in this empty sanctuary on the hillside of the
mountain.
The wind whistles sometimes.
The fabrics, which fell in tatters along the walls of the enclosure, fluttered inside the nave.
abruptly, with shakes, as if they were alive.
From the cross without a victim that rises on the altar, sawdust flows onto the hands of Juan and the face of
Maria.
The bell has collapsed near the vault of the sacristy. Also, the bell is in time.
of old. It is the fourth engraving. The great bronze bell has sunk a little into the tiled floor
red stone. Next to it, only the dusty vestige of a rope remains.
This sound that was only dust on the crimson marble is pure pain. Not even a gust of wind.
brushing the ground of the place would have made the bronze sound; it would have only dispersed and erased that vestige of
rope, test of provoked abandonment and of the lost complaint.
In the fifth black engraving, both leave. They descend again into the valley. It is sweltering hot, the
the leaves of the trees are motionless, the silence is oppressive. The air no longer moves. It's almost honey or milk
thick and pasty with silence. It is a whitish mass without a single sign.
There are no men left on earth. Abraham and Meaume take the opportunity to advance openly.
All day long they followed an empty path covered with mirages that waved like water.
in front of them.
There are no wasps. There is not a single fly in the air that weighs on the ground.
The yellow grass underfoot, hard and sharp.
The Pyrenean night has already invaded not the sky, which remains blue over the peaks, but the valley. In this
recorded in the black manner the darkness has devoured the village, the path, the bridge, all the farms and the
stables. For the shadow of the mountain casts a true darkness that seems almost crimson due to its intensity.
of darkness. Except for a stretch of the path that climbs up the slope of the peak across from it. A stretch of
pink that escapes to black.
We see it pink.
Abraham and Meaume got lost.
They had lost themselves in the depths of the valley, in the thickest part of the forest. There was no light anymore. No path. It was cold.
It had been a long time since there was a path in the world. Abraham walked ahead. He walked slowly, in
silence. They saw the edge of the forest. Abraham moved forward. He stopped next to a young religious woman who
he was herding his goats.
Sister, could you tell me where we are?
Have you gotten lost?
Yes.
We are in the Kingdom of Spain, she murmured. I am ashamed.
Then the young nun caressed the back of her left hand with her fingers. She raised her eyes towards
Abraham Van Berchem smiled at him.
I don't think so, the old man replied, smiling in turn to respond to the expression.
rejoicing of the young woman.
May God hear you! exclaimed the nun. I don't know how to tell you how much joy I would feel. I would like so much
that we weren't in this damn country...
Then, her face darkened. Then she said sadly:
I fear that we are no longer on the earth.
At that moment, Abraham took her hand.
The young nun did not withdraw it.
I repeated:
Are we on Earth?
He said:
Do you really believe it?
She burst out laughing. He immediately let go of her hand and they parted ways.
Meaume the Recorder turned back after about twenty steps. The young nun was squatting in
the impenetrable shadow of the forest, with the buttocks resting on the calves, half hidden by the
tree trunks that had collapsed on the mountainside, in front of the forest. That is what
recorded.

XII

Marie Aidelle was climbing up the path that led to the sea. She was holding on to the bushes, to the roots, to the
bushes, to the broom, wild and difficult was that cliff path. He had the jacket
soaked. The same as the shirt that covered her breasts. Sweat was running down her face. Finally
He pushed the door of the house. He was about to step into the darkness of the vast room when a weak sound escaped him.
scream; next to the home there was an unknown man, with a disfigured face. He was horrifying.
He said:
I am horrible, I know.
—No, no —Marie said weakly.
It's so hot... I would gladly drink a little wine as a welcome.
Of course.
Who is it? Esther suddenly asked from upstairs.
The old shipwreck provocateur had long retreated to the weeds.
Who are you? repeated Marie. She studied that washed leather face, the round, shiny eyes,
attentive.
My name is Meaume.
Marie did not answer. She entered the adjacent small room, which smelled of mushrooms, and took a picture. She handed it to him.
Meaume murmured:
Did the tanner sell it to you?
The street vendor.
If you prefer it that way.
Because the peddler had been a tanner. Then Meaume approached. He took the two soaked hands of
sweat of the young woman. He said:
Old Abraham will be here before the month ends. We have taken a long time because we have spent
for Spain.
She saw the wooden box in the middle of the room. She asked:
How did you manage to get this box up the path?
I have not come by the path. I have come through the forest. These are my plates and my burins. It is my book.
master. My poor treasure.
But Marie kept looking at the box insistently. Meaume took a few steps, leaned down, and opened it. She saw
the new copper plates, and others corroded by verdigris. He was an engraver. Back then it was said
waterfortist.
It will be difficult to provide you with accommodation.

There will be a block,

No.
There will be a farm.
No.
There will be a stable.
—Yes.
That will be enough.
And for work?
What is missing? asked the old Trognon, who had appeared under the enormous horizontal beam of the
door.
Nothing. Nothing.

XIII

Engraving of Marie Aidelle in sweet carving with burin strokes. Marie is sitting under the trees, by the shore.
from the pond. He has taken off the wooden clogs. He moves his toes in the water. He has
pulling the dress up to the knees. He sees the reflection of the white thighs in the stagnant water, beneath
of her.
Suddenly, she sees the light of the water reflected in his eyes. It's recorded. It shows. It shows in such a way that she
He has raised his eyes to look at her and they shine with sweetness, deeply. He desires her. He is going to sit next to her.

XIV

Meaume the Engraver began by drawing his designs on blue paper. With a little chalk. He went down
until the sea at all hours. He spent his days immersed in the roar of the water at the foot of the cliff. The
Perraux Path, the pestilent mud, the banks of green and slippery rocks, the big rollers
whites of the waves that crash, that advance with an irresistible force: all these visions seemed to him
magnificent. His head was spinning. The air was so violent... It was like a drunk man since
it has been so long that he can no longer escape the intoxication. He was coming from Rome and was discovering the
Atlantic. The first drawing in the Perraux, dated 1651, was the island; the edge of the island on the edge of the
horizon. The second drawing was for the enormous roller of the rough waves. The third, some
fishermen dragging their nets over the shiny wet sand. Then an oyster fisherman
with her rake. Marie Aidelle looked at the drawings with admiration. When evening fell, Marie
I contemplated the flame of the lamp whose light was reflecting on the copper plate, I contemplated the hand of
I was advancing and the magnifying glass that moved at the same pace was contemplating the steel burin that was tracing.
incisions directly in the metal. Meaume had a steady hand. She felt good beside him. Marie
Aidelle used to drink at night. And she started drinking even more. She would fall asleep on her arm,
admiring him in silence. He belonged to the school of painters who paint in a very refined way.
the things that most men consider the coarsest: the beggars, the laborers, the
mud fishermen, clam sellers, cockle sellers, crab sellers, speckled bass sellers,
girls taking off their shoes, girls barely dressed reading letters or dreaming of love, maids that
sheets are ironed, all the ripe fruits or those that begin to rot and evoke autumn, the remnants of the
meals, drunkenness, smokers' gatherings, card players, a cat licking its bowl
of tin, the blind man and his guide, lovers embracing in different postures without knowing that someone is watching them.
is watching, mothers breastfeeding their children, philosophers meditating, hangmen, candles, the shadows of
things, people urinating, people defecating, the old, the profiles of the dead, the animals that
rosy or those who sleep. Marie was regaining the curiosity of her early childhood, the thousand questions that she
to his father, already dead, or to the canon of Hambye, or to Toussaint, the chief surgeon. And he asked in
the room: "Why have you never painted? Why did Jacob Callot never use colors? Why those
traces, typical of the art of Meaumus, like strange letters of the alphabet, to create the shadow?" One day, in
the cliff, he placed his hand on her shoulder. She immediately rejected it. Meaume approached the
abyss; he looked at the waves at the foot of the cliff. Marie then said to Meaume the Engraver:
You have to forgive me. As soon as my breasts are touched, I suffer for being a woman. All women of
This is how it is around here.

—Even old Trognon?

—Even her.
And he added almost immediately, in a quieter voice:
You surely don't know this, but the women who live in this world often have a bad memory.
And he/she fell silent.
Please, talk to me —he added—. Talk to me. Say something. She was crying. He took her hand. She pulled it away.
immediately.

Fifteen

Meaume looked at the fruit that Marie was stacking in the fruit bowl. He brought the candle closer to the thick bunch of grapes.
black. She tried by all means to keep her face in the dark. She was thirty-five.
years. His face was tanned; his burns, not so much. He brought the candle closer and touched the grains of grape.
black. She touched the reflection of the light on the grains with her fingertips. She turned to Marie. The
He tightened his arms around her and she abruptly accepted his embrace. She rested her forehead on his shoulder.
Meaume said that she had bat skin. So fine. So soft. So pulsing, smooth and warm.
So she told him about the chief surgeon of Lower Normandy, about the pockmarked skin of his face, like that of
Meaume. His eyes widened as he spoke. But Meaume the Engraver did not want to listen to what he was saying nor
those comparisons with another man. He rode off on horseback. Sometimes, Oesterer would lend him the
horse to Meaume. The next morning, Meaume went to meet Marie, who had gone to the town.
from Perreux. She was climbing the path. Meaume got off the horse, placed the reins in the young woman's hands,
he took his basket and walked the path, next to her.
The weather was nice. Summer was coming to an end. The brambles were full of blackberries. The thistles
they raised their blue heads covered in fuzz. The stream, half dry, could barely flow toward the sea.
It was stagnant in the curves of the tiny stream. The butterflies, perched everywhere, were almost no longer
they flew; they aged.

XVI

They opened the double door of the large gallery, and Mr. de Sainte Colombe entered first. He was followed by
Abraham Van Berchem. A little later, Marie Aidelle, Meaume the Engraver, and Oesterer entered. There was
two long lines of small aquariums and nurseries placed directly on the marble slabs. Near
of a hundred. Meaume the Engraver said: 'It is Noah's ark.'
But Mr. de Sainte Colombe did not respond to the observation that Meaume had made to get his attention.
Attention. The two old men were watching the salamanders, the newts, the turtles, the snails, the
crabs that devoured each other in the golden aquariums under the soft light of the chandeliers.
These rooms—said the Lord of Sainte Colombe to Abraham—are the gallery of the ancestors.
"Yes," said Abraham Van Berchem.
Here are the grandparents, still eating.
Yes.
The old are insatiable, said Mr. de Sainte Colombe.
Marie Aidelle found that place hateful and, gathering her skirts, hurried away.

XVII

Mrs. Pont-Carré played the lute well. They even took her lute to the visiting room so that the
the bishop of Langres could hear her play. Her interpretation was full of sadness, of English severity, of
slowness, of pride. Accompanied the lute or the theorbo to the lord of Sainte Colombe in the concerts
private ones that he held at his house by the Biévre. He also liked books. He had a judgment
independent and an almost republican devotion. She was the first to donate a sum of several thousand
pounds to build in Port-Royal des Champs, in the wild countryside and the edge of the forest that is there
near Versailles, a new building to which women could retire, away from men. There they had
some beautiful rooms that overlooked directly onto the gallery of the visiting rooms, with a hall full
of cameos. He had a separate chapel from the room where he had placed his desk. He built
a large terrace in front of the bedroom windows, where she placed sixty pots with orange trees. The lady
de Pont-Carré was generous. It sheltered Jansenists, republicans, and tyrannicides sought by
the bodies of archers, to the Jews, to the Puritans. He opened his arms to all the persecuted.
Meaume the Engraver and Abraham Van Berchem went to the Parisian house of Mrs. de Pont-Carré, in the
Street of Bad Words.
They waited for the famous violist who had arranged to meet them at that house, but he did not show up.

Eighteen

Thus was the life of painters back then: a succession of cities. They wandered. Meaume went from Paris to
Lavaur, then to Toulouse, Lunéville, Bruges. In this order. The third trip, hurried and painful, was to
Lake Como, the Milanese, the Republic of Venice, the duchies of Parma and Bologna. In Bologna, it
he became a stained glass painter. After Bologna came the terrible solitude of Ravello. Then, Rome.
Later, Spain, Le Perreux, Quend, Paris, Antwerp. Then, London and Utrecht. In Rome, he made engravings.
for sale. Since his arrival, he worked for a stamp seller on Via Giulia, near the palace
Farnese, copying engravings, tracing with pencil on a sheet, ironing the back of the sheet
soaked in soot, finally engraving the copper over the footprints. They said he was a disciple of Vi-
call for the figures, from the Carrache for the postures, from Claude Gellée for the places. He did not allow himself
to see neither in the mansions of princes nor in those of cardinals. When he left his house in the mountain
Aventino wore a large straw hat that concealed the features of his face. The long walls of
Roma, with a blue shadow like the sharks, guided their steps. And the shadow, depending on the time, shaped
their walks. The gardens, the vineyards, the groves of elms, the fields, the ruins. The masses of
bougainvilleas that hung from the old walls. Roofs of tiles that overflowed over the alleys
full of dirt and slippery moss. Some time later, when his sight weakened after his return
from London, I used to work on the terrace, on the second floor, in full sun, under a small roof of colored tiles
that he had enlarged. Sometimes he still copied musical scores or music lessons for the great
public. In the past, the Roman plebs who had rebelled against the patricians retreated to the Aventine Hill.
until their rights were recognized. An old warrior who belonged to the consul Appius Claudius
he bared his back and shouted: Provoco! What in the ancient language means: 'I appeal to the people of
Rome. He liked the increasingly deserted landscapes, the increasingly nocturnal ruins, the seas
with a tiny boat in the distance, as far away as possible, like the boat of death. Below, to the left,
Meaumus sculpted. In winter, he closed the window. He worked in the empty room where he displayed his
stamps. Along the wall, a table and two chairs. The canopy hid the bed. Marie Aidelle slept
in that bed for almost a year.

XIX

One day, Meaume said to him: 'When Abraham crossed the Italian Alps during the thaw of 1651, traveling
step by step, his mule fell, he lost everything, he had to continue his way with empty hands and
the French soldiers arrested him for vagrancy. Then, an old soldier stepped forward through the ranks and
He pointed with his finger. He declared: "That is the man who killed the governor of the Pig square a long time ago."
nerol. May my fingers be crushed if what I say is not true." After hearing these words, everyone
they pounced on Abraham and began to hit him. The old man would have died if the two older ones had not
they had been interposed. The new commander of the garrison of Pignerol decided that if they wanted to do
they should take Abraham to Toulouse, which was the city where they had murdered the count, since
It was about an ancient French knight. The regiment was divided. The troop assigned to guard...
The prisoner arrived in Thónes, and then in Talloires.
In Talloires, to cross the lake that separated them from the city of Annecy, the soldiers requisitioned two
boats. They loaded them too much, pulling on the ropes to fit everything in and there was no need to
to make a second trip. The sailors raised the sails. Old Abraham watched the maneuver,
cornered between two sacks against the side of the boat. It was cloudy. The cargo of sacks,
tabernacles, weapons, and barrels kept increasing and he hid it from the view of the company. The old man
He said there would be no other opportune moment to escape. With great effort, he managed to free himself.
The clouds were so black that they added their darkness to the night that was beginning to fall.
He passed to the small boat that followed the barge. Nobody saw him. Since he didn't have a knife, he couldn't cut the rope.
that tied the lifeboat to the pontoon. He hesitated. Then he slid into the icy waters of Lake Annecy. He wanted
swim, but there was too much silence. The clouds were running to the East like galloping animals.
soldiers and sailors watched them pass overhead, just a few meters from their faces. In the
Mountains are like that. If they had stretched out their arm, they would have touched them.
Finally, the stars reappeared in the night sky.
The gust of wind suddenly stopped.
Abraham didn't know if they could still see him from the boats. He floated like a log under the moon. He only moved
the feet, the thighs and the arms, slowly, so that the biting cold of the lake wouldn't cut through to the bones. Thus
The night passed. The sky became paler. I had the feeling of being a piece of ice that the currents
they dragged at their whim. With their head turned towards the shore, they gazed at the light of dawn at the moor that
it started to fill with wandering mists. Breathing was difficult.
Abraham told Meaume that he suddenly smelled the pungent, fresh, and delightful scent of the royal pines in
the morning air. At that moment, he/she started to swim.
He reached the silent shore. Everything was silent and blue. He took off the garments he was wearing one by one; the
he hung from the branches or spread them over the rocks to let them get sunlight. He stood there, naked, in
halfway between silence and dawn, looking at the mountain and trembling under a ray of sunlight.
On the mountain, he found a sheepfold where the ground was dry. He lay down and slept. Then he headed to
Vercelli. From there, to Asti. In Genoa, the ship headed towards Tuscany.
The ship docked in Porto Santo Stefano, in Civitavecchia. And then in Ostia.
When he arrived in Rome, the old man climbed the steep Meaume staircase.
Meaume said: "I had just eaten. I was still rinsing my mouth. The maid was holding the plate for me.
for it to spit. They announced an old dusty knight waiting at the door of the
rooms on the second floor. Would Mr. Meaume the Engraver like to receive a man from Berchem?
I fell down.
Abraham, who was still in the doorway leading to the stone staircase, said to me: "One day
you didn't want to keep living, and I saved you. Now it's your turn." I immediately replied that his words
they offended me.
Providing a reason destroys love.
Giving meaning to what one loves is a lie.
Well, no human being experiences any joy other than the feeling of being alive when it is.
the sensation becomes intense.
And there is no other life.
I installed the old knight of Berchem on the terrace. I made him lie down under the tiled shed.
golden where I used to work in spring so that he could rest. And he fell asleep. I ran along the shore
from the Tiber. I arrived at the shop of the stamp seller on Via Giulia. I gathered all the money I could.
so that we would leave in a hurry.

XX

Almost completely white dry point. A shape can be distinguished behind the balusters devoured by the
light. An old man, with his eyes closed, white beard, hand between his legs, on a terrace,
in Rome, at dusk, in the third hour of the day, under the last golden rays of the sun, happy to
to be free and happy to live, between wine and sleep.

Twenty-one

"We left before dawn broke." While he spoke, Meaume was handing a to Marie Aidelle, a.
for one, his copper plates, which he was taking out of the wooden box. One represented the old warrior
in a bunk on the way to Portus Augusti.
Stormy skies like no one has ever seen. Or of a foolish whiteness.
The muddy and dirty beaches of the Mediterranean between the wetlands of Leucate and Perpignan.
Small and arid paths on the Spanish slopes to reach the other sea.
A huge black bear disemboweled among the bushes, wearing a collar with two rows of
bells.
In the Catalan mountain, one had to stay away from the towns. Any foreigner was treated...
like a wild beast. During the summer of 1651, in the fields of France, they burned everyone.
Egyptians and Jews they could find. They dismantled the wagons to turn them into firewood.

XXII

Then, Meaume showed Marie a very dark plate that represented the shadow of an immense
cliff. 'Upon arriving near Perreux, old Abraham called me aside. When he was outside
the reach of the ship captain's ears, he told me: "I want to go alone to Dunkirk, where I have something to
do. I will return." We looked at the cliff, so white and so high that it faded into the white sky. We were
just below. The cliff cast upon us the immense night of its shadow. Higher up, where
the summit was outlined, the moon was shining, although the sun had not yet set. There are places in the
world that dates back to the origins. These spaces are moments where the time of Yore has
petrified. There everything converges in the ancient wrath. It is the face of God. It is the trace of strength.
primordial more immense than man, more vast than nature, more vigorous than life, so
overwhelming like the celestial system that precedes the three. This is how we entered the tiny
Quend port and its ruins.
The sun was setting and spreading its layers of gold over the chalk.
The boat moored at the dock.
As we stepped out of the shadow of the cliffs, we admired the shimmering of the sun and the waves and the reflections of
houses and boats as far as the eye could see. Abraham Van Berchem placed his hand on the shoulder of
Recorder. He said: "As one grows older, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate oneself from the splendor of the landscape that one
it crosses. The skin worn by the wind and age, stretched by fatigue and joys, the hairs,
tears, drops of sweat, nails and hairs that have fallen to the ground like leaves or dead twigs
let the soul pass, which strays more and more often outside of the skin. In reality, the last journey
It's just a dispersion. As I grow older, I feel better everywhere. I no longer reside too much.
in my body. I fear I could die any day now. I feel that my skin has become too thin and porous.
And I tell myself, 'One day, the landscape will pass through me.'
"I loved you!" shouted the recorder.
Meaume hugged the elderly man and kissed him on the cheeks.
He waded into the water, holding onto the wooden pillar of the dock. The water reached his knees.
From there he headed to the mud by the shore. He did not turn back. He was excited. His lips trembled.
tears started to slide down her cheeks. 'One day, the landscape will pass through me,' was the phrase that
Abraham Van Berchem said to Meaume the Engraver before leaving and dying. Quend is a beautiful.
name.
The black way is a reverse engraving.
In the black way, the plate is completely engraved from the beginning. The grain must be crushed to
to bring forth the white. The landscape precedes the figure. Ludwig von Siegen invented the black manner in
1642. A year later, in Brussels, Siegen revealed his secret to Ruprecht of the Palatinate, who introduced it.
In England in 1656. There are only twenty-four black manner engravings by Meaume, all made
after the death of Abraham.
In certain languages, they call the grater that scrapes the entire plate in the black way a cradle.
Each form seems to emerge from the shadow like a child from its mother's womb.

23

There is little light. Meaume the Recorder was naked. He approached Marie to love her. He said to her: 'I beg you,
don't lower your gaze.
Her breasts were firm. Her lips, thick and soft. Her sex was wet. She exuded a wonderful aroma.
Marie smelled a wonderful scent of black forest, ferns, and mushrooms.
The round and pale shoulders.
Soft as silk are the breasts, full of milk, imbued with a smell that would always attract. Both
they remained silent.
Marie covered her breasts and stood up. Meaume followed her. She turned around and said to him: 'If I had wanted you to'
you would have followed me, I think I would have told you.
Meaume stopped in his tracks. Simply, his upper lip trembled again with sadness. Here, in
Berchem, Marie Aidelle was denying him his room again. He said to himself, "It's because of my face." And he closed the door behind him.
she. Then she closed the door of the Renaissance house behind him. He left for Antwerp, which he had not yet set foot in.
since his face became disfigured.

XXIV

Upon returning from London, Marie lived for almost a year with Meaume in the workshop in Rome, on the bank.
left of the Tiber, the year 1655. It was a happy year. One day when she had a bad dream and woke up with
The face bathed in sweat, he wanted to calm her down. He said to her: 'Whatever happens, you have me by your side.'
Trust me. Do not fear anything. Since we have lived together, you are under the shade of my roof.
it was more than Meaume had said to any woman since Nanni Veet Jakobsz. But Marie took it
very bad. He answered: 'What do I want a roof for? I never suspected we lived together for such a reason'
mediocre." He moved the sheet that covered his feet and got out of bed. Suddenly he shouted: "In
In any case, if that's the case, I am ashamed for you!" Meaume then asked him, in a much lower voice,
Marie Aidelle: "Why did you come to Picardy? Why go to Quend, where I was going?"
I liked the name of the village. I wondered what could happen to me in a place called Quend.
What guided my steps was not desire, but curiosity. I wandered aimlessly.
She boarded a ship. The ship docked in the county of Nice. A carriage took her to Lyon.

25
About anger, Marie said: "All the unhappy ones are born from the anger of their parents, which the pleasure that has...
has not been able to satisfy.
In anger, our ears stop hearing.
Aristotle of Stagira: "Just like the swimmer who dives from the top of a rock cannot
stop his impulse before sinking into the water, the angry man cannot stop his fury.
The abbot of Saint-Cyran: 'Anger is the refusal of color. Meaumus the Roman was the painter of rejection.'
of color. Black and anger are one and the same word, just as God and vengeance are the only
eternal act. The Eternal said: 'Vengeance is mine.' In other times, kholé did not mean anger, but
blackness. For the Ancients, the anger of melancholy was the blackness of the night. There will never be enough black.
to express the violent contrast that tears this world apart between birth and death. But it is of no use.
It's no use covering your eyes, giving the cloth two turns, and tying it at the nape. One should not say: between the
birth and death. One must speak with a determined voice, like God: between sexuality and hell.
Meaume said: "Such are human feelings. The falling rain washes away the colors."
Anger is as exhilarating and dizzying as voluptuousness.
The ospreys and the seagulls say that the ocean, which ends up breaking against the pier that
The flood finally beats and inundates the streets, it is happy.

XXVI

In the cities of men, the places where the deeds of notaries are archived when they are fulfilled
A century is called a minute. In 1656, Marie Aidelle left Meaume's workshop on the Aventine,
In Rome. On November 25, 1658, Meaume was in Paris and attended the wedding of Marguerite.
Weyen, daughter of Weyen the Buriler, merchant of prints from rue Saint-Jacques who had the image
of San Benito on the sign. Below the ornate initials of the stamp vendor, a large H joined
to a large W, the signature Geoffroy Meaume is very legible. That day, November 25, 1658, the daughter of
Weyen married Francois de Poilly the Elder, also known as Poilly of Abbeville.

27

There is an image engraved by Meaume in the black manner that represents the old Abraham possessing
Oesterer in the block. Meaume claimed that he had indeed caught them by surprise when the youngest one
he bowed before the elder. In Meaume's drawing, Abraham has the body of an old man, the ribs
marked, the fallen belly, the bare shins.
There is another impudent postcard, made in the same way (that is, printed after 1656), quite
singular. It is the Temptation of Saint Anthony. The saint hermit is sitting in front of the cave, with the sex
erect in hand. His eyes cry. The gravel separates the saint from a woman with her legs wide open.
and her head bowed over her night, which she seems to be looking at, but which cannot be distinguished. Next to the
woman, a little devil poops on an open book. To the left, a Castilian plays the violin for a
javelin
In an oval. The right hand emerges from a lace fist and extends the fingers, except for the bent index finger.
towards a violently turgid man's sex, right in front of the mirror where the candle that
Illuminate. The mirror and the candle are on a small table with a marquetry top.
Finally, not an engraving in the black manner, but a drypoint, one of the luminous compositions
by Meaume. In the center of the engraving, Marie Aidelle pulls a dripping bucket of water from the well.
man sitting on the curb, with his back turned, takes a small stone out of his shoe (undoubtedly Meaume himself, already
who is seen from behind). In front of him, with a paddle in hand and his pants down, Oesterer. A
slim woman (Esther) dries the penis with a white cloth. On the right, a donkey.

Twenty-eight
Meaume the Engraver died at the end of the year 1667 in Utrecht. Gérard Van Honthorst was by then
then a painter of bad reputation. Honthorst lived from 1590 to 1656. There is nothing that relates the works of
Meaume and those of Honthorst, except for the darkness. But in the year 1667, Meaume died in Utrecht, in the house
by Gérard Van Honthorst, and a print, signed on the left side and dated December 1666, it
I would try if necessary. The recorder must have left Rome at the end of the year 1664. Or in the autumn of
1666. It is not known for certain. At that time, Holland was a rich nation that appreciated works of
the French. But the reason for Meaume's trip does not seem to be due to the wealth of the cities of
Holland. In Rome, Gérard Van Honthorst was called Gherardo delle Notti, which means Gérard of the Nights.
the Nights. The beautiful workshop in Utrecht then belonged to the wife of Wilhelm Van Honthorst, whose
her name was Catherine. It is Marie Aidelle who cradles the body of Meaume, who has committed suicide at home.
de Honthorst. It is also unclear why Marie Aidelle has met with the engraver in Holland, at home.
from Gérard de las Noches' sister-in-law, at the moment of his death.

29

At the end of February 1664, in Rome, a series of thirty-two obscene images, all of them
purchased in a store on Via Giulia, were delivered to the eldest son of one of the families most
important people of the city, named Eugenio, a very handsome, cultured, refined, sensitive, and chaste young man.
All were the work of Meaume the Engraver. The purchase was made at the request of the family's doctor, Marcello.
Zerra. The young patrician whom I had examined thoroughly, twenty years old, vigorous,
endowed with well-formed genitals, he claimed he could not marry because he had never felt in his life
wish. The parents, who had no faith whatsoever in what their eldest son said, made Zerra do it.
Marcello Zerra prescribed obscene images that Eugenio had to look at for an entire
night in the company of two Florentine prostitutes, one of them older and sweet, not to say accommodating,
and the other much younger and lively. The attempt not only failed, but also aroused in Eugenio a
repugnance that reached nausea, and the nausea was so violent that it caused her distress. The women
of the joyful life of the city of Florence were unable to agree on the outcome of their
night efforts. The youngest one stated that the boy's body had been lifeless and that his
alma had felt terribly unhappy and, since they asked for her opinion, she concluded that according to
She was not made for civil life, that is, virile or paternal. The older whore, fearing not to receive
the compensation they had agreed upon for the two round trips, in addition to the entire night, he maintained
that the statement was incorrect, that the young man had experienced a fleeting erection and that another night
it would easily overcome her hesitations and other difficulties that she had had time to observe
attentively. Upon hearing that the woman of ill repute proposed another night of pleasures, the young Eugenio became
fainted. It was necessary to call for a two-wheeled carriage. At the family palace, Zerra himself interrogated that
same day to the laundresses, who declared they had never seen the slightest trace of night pollution in
the sheets of the eldest son. Zerra asked the parents to reflect before promising their son. But the
The head of the family did not pay attention to him. Important and old interests forced the eldest son to join the
girl who was destined for him from a very young age.
Eugenio never managed to consummate the marriage with his wife.
The young woman, who remained intact, complained to her family, and they echoed her distress. In fact, the family
politics threatened to contest the marriage if his daughter did not soon lose her honor, in addition to enjoying
a little natural joy.
Consulted again, Zerra prescribed once more the fascinating images of Meaumus and suggested to the young woman.
wife who helped her husband achieve the consistency of desire using all her fingers of the
hands. The young man killed himself on May 22, 1664. The engravings were pulled from commerce. They loaded in
a cart with the copper plates and all the prints that were in the shop with the label of the
black cross, whether by the hand of Meaume or by those of other artists, and they took them to fifty meters
there, to the Field of Flowers, where they were burned and melted before the crowd. It is one of
the reasons why so few erotic cards remain directly printed with the original plates of
Claude Mellan or de Meaume the Engraver.
XXX

In 1882, during the annual meeting of the regional societies of Fine Arts, Mr. Gastón Le Bretón
presented a paper on A beautiful engraving in the manner of black attributed to Meaumus that represents a
obscene scene. The description by Gastón Le Bretón is as follows: 'The portrait is signed and dated.
Meaum Sculps. Rom. August. 1666 down to the left, next to a Maltese cross. The character, whose
the head is in shadows, wearing an unbuttoned black taffeta vest that reveals the anatomy, very
beautiful. She is turned from left to right and looking straight ahead, sitting. She has her legs open. Her desire
he stands out against the backdrop of a tapestry from Flanders. His right hand points to some beautiful shells
marinas on a folding stool placed where the floral patterned upholstery is lifted a little. To the
on the left, on the cardboard that is on the table, under his left hand, the sentence reads from beginning to end
"Collection of Nocturnal Prints": this is the famous cursed book from 1650. The character already has
certain age. His general appearance is one of sadness. The head, sunk in the shadows of the tapestry and the shelf
The stone that is higher up has something terrifying. All the light, whose source cannot be seen, falls upon the belly and
the natural parts in violent turgor." This etching in the manière noire has not been seen since 1882.
There is no doubt that it is after the burning of books and distorted images in the Campo dei Fiori.
in May 1664. It has never been reproduced.

XXXI

The two most famous engravings by Meaume the Engraver that have been preserved, and which appear in
numerous copies and a large number of editions are San Juan on the island of Patmos and Hero and Leander.
The Saint John of the island of Patmos is on top of a mountain. He is sitting in the shade of a tree,
supported on a rock. Write the Apocalypse. On the right side of the stronghold, landscape and narrow, a
eagle, clinging with its claws to the edge of the ridge, receives the light among its immense wings spread wide
of the setting sun.
Hero and Leandro is an engraving in the manner of black. At the top of a gothic tower battered by the waves that it
the storm still stirs, Hero, almost naked and disheveled, leaning forward, holds in her hand
to the right a Roman lamp with the wick lit that illuminates one of her breasts, and tries to distinguish in
the sea the body of her dead lover, floating on his back, naked, with his head violently thrown back
backwards, while the waves play with him like with a broken branch.

32

I believed in the judgment of God, but I had not the slightest faith in the immortality of the soul. However,
according to Poilly, throughout his stay in Rome he would go to the small and unique church of the Mouth of the
Truth.
He took off his hat and sat there.
Sometimes he/she knelt.
Every day, even under the sea rain, even when the haze covered the river and clung to the
walls and the trees, I was going to the Fabricius bridge, a few meters away. I went down to the bank, next to the ruins
and the tide. With my back against the bark of a tree, sheltered by the foliage or an old stone,
among the ducks and geese splashing in the mud, under the gaze of the gray goats, I contemplated the
Tiber, its whirlpools, its precipitation, its sprays of white foam that hit the rocks, and
took refuge in its muffled noise.

33

In Meaume's inventory in Rome, a human ear is listed in a glass jar. It also appears in
the Eight Ecstasies of Meaume the Engraver, according to Poilly.
That ear seems to have been in the trunk on the second floor of the Meaume workshop between 1665 and 1702.
It happened that a young man from Magdeburg, whose nickname was Oesterer, liked men. In the
In the 1640s, he was educated with Abraham Van Berchem in Antwerp. It happened that he was waiting in Quend,
in the company of Marie Aidelle, when Abraham and Meaume the Engraver, fleeing from the ferocity of the
French soldiers were trying to meet them by sea. At the tournament of the Almadieros of Authie, in the
spring of 1651, Oesterer competed on behalf of the potters. And, to everyone's dismay, he became
in king. Then the shipbuilders gathered and, against the opinion of the sailors, of the
mud fishermen, sea fishermen, potters, and tin workers decided to annul the
tournament. They organized a second competition, in which Oesterer gave a hand in pledge, which, by
supposedly, he lost. A competitor lends a hand as a pledge when he allows it to be tied behind his back. It is
it's impossible to fight on water with one hand tied, because then the balance of the body is
too precarious. Apparently, only a raft maker could be king of the year in each river. But this
injustice of the almadieros and the lieutenant of the port of Quend provoked an attack of Oesterer
rage that neither Marie Aidelle nor the innkeeper nor the potters who had chosen their champion succeeded
calm.
The fisherman advances over the water, holding in his hand the harpoon that allows him to push towards the shore.
the logs that float in the Authie. This image appears in the silver plate signed Abril. 1665,
Measure. Sculpt.
The man suddenly turned towards Oesterer and attacked him with the harpoon.
At first, Oesterer dodged the hook.
When Oesterer heard that the lumberjack attacking him was breathing faster and faster, he took the opportunity to
kill him.
Oesterer always fought by ear.
When the tide went out and the innkeeper of Quend discovered the body, which was hitting the pier, he threatened the
Austrian calling the English soldiers.
Oesterer beat up the innkeeper for a long quarter of an hour.
She pointed to the stack of ironed clothes that was on the table.
Where did they wash it? In the laundromat?
Yes - answered the innkeeper, red as a poppy. Oesterer did not want to put on washed clothes in the
city. Because in the city there were funeral laundries. The young Oesterer referred to "funeral laundries" as
the laundry rooms from where water was taken to cleanse the dead. According to Oesterer, that water brought bad
Good luck. He went to a secondhand dealer in a neighboring town and exchanged the washed clothes in Quend for clothes that he did not...
liked it. So he resigned himself to stealing a light blue suit from the house of a bourgeois. But a man who had
seeing the young Austrian kill the lumberjack followed him everywhere. He spied on Oesterer at all hours, and
everyone saw him spying. There was no butcher shop, window, tavern, or small shack in the dunes where
they wouldn't have seen him ask. Marie Aidelle pointed out to Oesterer the presence of that man who
spoke against him.
Marie Aidelle whispered to Oesterer that she had an idea. He asked her to tell him. She confided in him.
he/she burst out laughing.

One day when the man had squatted down and was listening with his ear pressed against the potters' door,
Oesterer, who was his champion, immobilized him, holding his hands. Then, with a nail and a hammer,
Marie slammed her ear against the door.
The man stayed there, crouched and nailed down. The whole village went to see him. Even the tinmen went to
They saw him and laughed. They took off his underwear and ripped his shirt. He didn't know how to pull out the nail without
to tear off his ear. He shouted for them to unpin him, but no one dared. The victim of this abuse asked him
to a woman who was passing by to cover her face with a handkerchief so that no one would see the shame she felt
They gave their position and the needs that were felt underneath. His words softened the woman, but he left her
to speak, because she feared the fury of the champion of the potters. She was a tin worker. In the end, one night, the
the man tore off his ear and no one saw him again. Meanwhile, up until then, everyone
he despised the young Austrian for his customs, but from that day on, everyone respected him. But the
lumberjacks hated him. Marie Aidelle kept the ear in salt inside a ceramic jar, and then in the
glass jar that was in the workshop of Meaume, marked in the Roman inventory without knowing the
reason. There is no news that Meaume made engravings of ears.

34

On June 8, 1666, at the age of forty-nine, Meaume the Engraver was assaulted in the field.
Roman. This is evidenced by a statement from the archers of Rome, dated that same day and signed by
once names. At that time, the engraver lived alone. He is sitting in the field, among the stones
sunbathing, with her back leaning against the trunk of a small oak tree. The wide straw hat was
it hides the face and protects it from the sun. He is dreaming.
A young man wakes him up, grabs him, knocks him down on the dry ground, and plants the knife in his neck to
to decapitate him.
The recorder notices an intense smell.
Look at the face of the young man who tries to slit his throat. He looks at him, and his features disturb him. He contemplates. He does not scream.
Curiously, think of a wood engraving by Jean Heemkers, who was his teacher in Bruges. In
In this engraving, Hildebrand is in front of Hadubrand, who raises the weapon. The father sees that his son...
He decides to kill him. He sees that his son does not recognize him. He sees the fatal gesture that is preparing in his son's gaze.
But the father says nothing. The young man, twenty-six years old, sinks the knife into his neck. Blood flows.
They say this is how spring is born from winter.
At that moment, from a grove of elder bushes a little higher up, a shadow emerges with a bag.
that runs down the hill among the ruins, the nettles, the brambles, the columns' cylinders
falls, the stunted oaks.
The young man abruptly leaves Meaume half-slit in the dust of the hill; he stands up from a
jump; and begin the chase of the one who has taken to his heels.

35

Meaume is lying on a straw mattress. In the hut of a shepherd, in the Roman countryside. A doctor
he is wrapping the neck with a white cloth. The engraver thinks about the previous scene. He says, panting:
I think I have been jealous my whole life. Jealousy precedes imagination. Jealousy is a
"Organ of vision stronger than sight."
The young man of twenty-six years who has assaulted him is in front of him. He is surrounded by four archers from Rome. He is
standing; pale; her beauty is extraordinary; she has her hands tied behind her back; she can't manage to say three
meaningful consecutive words in Italian.
Next to him is a pottery reseller who looks at him with greed, even with fervor, and tries to help him.
In the end, the man tells the archer next to him, who only speaks Flemish and that he does not
he knows the Roman language. He says in Flemish that he has been confused. He murmurs in defective Latin,
gesturing with his hands: "Forgive me! Forgive me!"

36

Then Meaume suddenly started to cry and turned his face to the wall. He asked in a low voice,
flamenco, in the twilight:
Where do you come from?
—From Bruges.
What is your name?
—Vanlacre.
Meaume said nothing more.
Vanlacre continued:
I arrived in Rome today. They just stole everything I had. I'm here because I'm looking for my father. My
true father, who lives in Rome. I know that he sells his engravings on Via Giulia. The seller of
Estampas hasn't wanted to give me his address. Do you know that engraver?
—No. I do not know him —Meaume answered in Flemish, without turning around.
Then the beautiful young man, although his hands were tied behind his back, knelt on the beaten earth,
in front of the mattress. He asked in Flemish, with more insistence, the man he had just wounded:
That recorder is called Meaumus. Do you know him?
—No. I do not know him —Meaume replied.
In the bag that was stolen from me, there was an engraving that Meaumus had made of my mother's face.
I look so much like that image that anyone who saw it would be confused, the young man continued saying.
flamenco—. That image would have ended any discussion. It would have silenced all doubts. And that's it.
no the
I have.
They may find the thief, or your purse.
--said Meaume.
—I hope so! —exclaimed the young man.
At that moment, the consul of Flanders and the Netherlands entered the peasant's hut.
I beg you again to forgive me, sir, the beautiful young man knelt, repeating in Flemish.
pressed against the straw mattress on which Meaume was lying—, for believing that you were the
man who had stolen my travel bag.
Meanwhile, the consul, the doctor, and the archers had started to argue.
Meaume then turned to the group of archers and said in Italian:
Let this young man go!
But the four archers were not willing to let that happen. Meaume lifted his torso as best he could and
managed to straighten up on the peasant's bed. His face was covered in sweat. The blood turned red the
the cloth that surrounded his neck. Tears streamed from his eyes. His nose was running. He was panting. His ugliness was even more
repellent that is customary. He took a bag out of his underwear. He gave a gold coin to the doctor who
he had care. He gave the archers four coins. One of the archers stood Vanlacre up by shooting
from his shirt, and untied his hands. The archers ordered the doctor to write a report for
to take him to his garrison. They asked the pottery dealer and the consul to inscribe his name on it.
Then they asked the priest for it. Vanlacre also signed. Then, the young man addressed for the last time to
Meaume, who was still lying on the straw bed; he continued not to recognize him; the young man knelt down.
new; he kissed the engraver's hand; he continued to babble his unintelligible "Forgive me! Forgive"
"me!"; he stood up abruptly again; he didn't even greet the consul of Flanders, nor the archers, nor
to the priest, nor to the pottery dealer. He has already left the hut. The hens are clucking. He runs up the hill.

37

They had his carriage brought from the Aventine to the Portuensis Gate. They took the engraver to his house. He
ordered the two maids to close the door to everyone except for her friend Claude. They did not
they opened again neither when they knocked nor when they scratched the door of the yard that led to the alley
invaded by moss. Only Claude Gellée would visit him in the afternoons. The two maids would open the door upon hearing the
signal they had agreed upon. They helped the old gnarled painter up the stone steps that led
to the terrace of the old and narrow dwelling. They brought wine and soup for the two men and then left them.
talk in the shade of the wooden beam, in the cool of the afternoon. Meaume the Engraver shrank little by little. Like
As a consequence of his throat injury, a diverticulum lodged behind his vocal cords and it
weakened the voice. He could only swallow liquid foods.

Thirty-eight
Conversations between Meaume the Engraver and Gellée the Painter. "If that young man hadn't told me his
name, I would never have understood the joy that overtook me when he grabbed me by the neck in the
field.
At first, Claude Gellée did not understand anything that the aguafuertista was saying, but he let him murmur.
thinking that it would be good for her to trust a man whose relatives still lived in Lorraine, just like
than their own family.
As he leaned over me shouting, I noticed a marvelous smell coming from his hand and his breath.
the time. I'm not talking about the little grove of elderberries.
Meaume also said:
Rome is no longer isolated, as it was before the past overflowed and crossed the walls.
One day, however, Claude replied:
You speak in riddles. And that is irritating for those who listen to you.
Meume replied:
There comes an age when a man no longer meets life, but time. We no longer see living.
life. We see the time that devours raw life. Then the heart shrinks. And we cling to a
piece of wood to see the show that bleeds from one to the other for a little longer
the end of the world and to avoid falling into it.
Claude the Painter told him that what he was saying was not much clearer than before, although the sentences
that pronounced they were correctly built.
Meume said:
At the bottom of man, there is an irresistible night. Every evening, men and women remain
asleep. They sink into that night as if the darkness were a memory.
They are a memory.
Sometimes, men believe they are getting close to women; they look at the expression on their faces; they tend to
arms towards their shoulders; they return to their bodies every evening and lie against their sides, but
Not because of that they sleep; they are nothing more than the toys of the night, tied by the invisible scene that has them.
engendered and that casts its shadow everywhere and over all things.
"I don't understand anything you are saying," replied Claude Gellé.
Meaume complained that he could no longer draw. It took him an enormous effort to compose a
frontispiece that depicted a woman crying and looking at a distant plain, and a little horse. It had been
promised to Anne—Thérése de Marguenat for her book on courtesy, voluptuousness, crimes
and the pleasurable feelings. One afternoon he said to Lorenés:
The essential part of my life has been fulfilled. I have seen two or three things for the first time.

39

As it grew, the diverticulum that had first lodged in the recorder's throat and then in his esophagus,
started to put pressure on the lungs, causing secretions and inflammation. He had three
pneumonias that greatly exhausted him, and that complicated with bronchitis and dry coughs and
weak. So he made a will, because he believed that the fever was going to end his life.
In Grünehagen's book, Grünehagen says that Meaume claimed at the end of his life: 'When I
I feel sadness wash over me in front of my copper plate. I can no longer find time to think about a
Image, or rather to have it before my eyes and reproduce it. My work is elsewhere.

XL

When Claude Gellée insisted that they slit his throat, Meaume the Engraver refused. One day not
wanted to open the door to Claude Gellée, who had arrived accompanied by a barber; the maids had
received orders not to let anyone into the house except for Lorenés, but only Lorenés. Meaume had
told the maids that he feared a stranger more than any other man,
extraordinarily beautiful, who would possess an image of their own hand. To tell the truth,
the recorder was more depressed than sick. He decided to leave Rome, which had burned the
the most vibrant and happy images of all those he had composed. Gellée the Painter let him speak. He knew
although the reason the recorder invoked was an excuse, and that those words made sense, but
they were old. So he insisted that I tell him the truth, but the recorder replied: 'I don't know why I don't'
I already have vivid images in my soul. That is the truth. And that's why I cry.
But no matter how much Meaume said, Claude doubted that his friend was telling the truth.
The narrow street where Meaume's two-story house was nestled led to the church of the
Mouth of Truth, above the Tiber.
One day, the Lorenzian said:
Buddy, I would like us to go together along the shore to the Mouth, and that you stick your arm in it.
I would like to know if God would tear your hand off with a bite!
Claude laughed, but Meaume did not. Without losing his seriousness, he asserted that we always lie, no matter what we say.
Let's say. And the more we insist or strive to uphold the truth, the more we lie.
My friend, the truth is this: no one lies entirely when lying.

XLI

In June 1667, the English fleet was completely destroyed on the Thames. The treaty of
The colony was signed on December 15. On December 16, Meaume the Engraver issues a second
testament - in an even more accented whisper - in Utrecht. His throat has strangled
definitely. The notary and Catherine Van Honthorst lean over the bed, with their ears almost
footprints to her mouth. She hasn't eaten anything since the summer. On the 18th, she adds a codicil naming Marie.
Aidelle. Without a doubt, that is the reason why Catherine Van Honthorst sends word to Marie. He does not...
recognizes. Suddenly, he draws on the surface of the puree that has been brought to him —and that he has refused to taste—
a small spring vine.
Immediately after, he asks for blue paper and chalk again.
Draw again. Draw: at the foot of the cliff, along the path, a peasant returns from the fields with the
lay on the shoulder. Next to the table that is under the elm, Oesterer and Meaume are playing morra. The
Chickens peck. A girl urinates while bending her knees.
In Utrecht, he draws on blue paper, paradoxical as it may seem, a black galleon in the Arno, between the
Santa Trinità Bridge and Alia Carraia Bridge. Four rowers are holding a nautical tournament. In the water,
Near a girl who cries in a small boat, a corpse floats.
Suddenly, he starts talking to a dead person. He pronounces the name Nanni. He says: "Ah! The secret of my
dreams were a body that returned again and again. A long time ago, a woman was horrified to see my
face. Then I lost, forever, most of the substance of my life. I have preserved the gaze
what was in her eyes when she turned them towards me, but she refused to let me share her life. I
having to travel through worlds that were not his own but, in every dream, in every image, in every wave, in
In all the landscapes I saw something of her or that came from her. I attracted and seduced her with another appearance.
At that same time, her memory grew sluggish. Catherine, who had been the sister-in-law of the deceased Gérard des
Nuits went to look for Mane Aidelle and told her that the dying man was talking about someone named Nanni. Marie paled.
Then he filled with rage and said violently, in a low voice: 'Since I was born, I have not seen a single man
who completely surrendered to the woman he loved. And I have never seen a man who did not seek in his
company somewhat submissive, pleasant, fragrant, nutritious, approving, a warm and soft wrapping, a part
of her reproduction, the memory of the mother. The absent ones are always there. The great absentees are
each day higher, and the shadow they cast darker. What we have lost is always right. I
I say that love is a filthy deception." Then he went to the room where Meaume the Engraver.
he was agonizing at the age of fifty, he took his head in his arms and cradled him until he died.
This is how she delivered the soul. She did not cry when he was dead, but everyone who came and went
At Catherine's house, I saw how unhappy Marie Aidelle was, and not because of the fasting of the Natals. She seemed
that they had abandoned her.
Forty-two

The last two dreams of Meaume. He approached the window. The panes were divided by rods.
of lead covered with gray moss. In the distance, the bay could be seen. It was raining.
There were only four boats next to the wooden dock that bordered the estuary in that place. One had the
completely blue helmet. A deep blue over the dark water.
This is the first dream. In colors. The last dream, black: the dreamer looked at the facade covered by the
shadows of the Louvre palace, the tower of Nesles, the bridge, the black water. Everything sleeps. He is
eating a waffle.

XLIII

When Meaume the Engraver was still in this world, in the last days of his life, dead from
hunger and having lost memory, no longer recognized the faces. Made strange gestures over the
sheets and talking to the flies. At the end of his life, Meaume the Engraver suffered many hardships and
confusions of thought. He had bouts of sadness followed by long silences. He suffered abrupt
outbursts of hatred against those around him. He said that the flies talked to him and that it surprised him.
Once, when they brought him dinner —and while he refused to try it— a fly landed on the edge.
from the bowl. Suddenly, the fly, which was sipping a bit of broth, lifted its head and said to him:
Are you a man or a ghost now?
---I don't know—Meaume replied—. And you?
I don't know either. But I tend to think that I'm alive,
of the meat.
Meaume rejected the fork that was offered to him with his hand and then said to the fly:
I believe I have come very close to being alive. My ancestors visit me. I keep within me the
woman I lost. She also visits me. She even became a young man who threw himself on me under the
shadow of a tree on the Aventine hill. The gaze of others visits me and strangles me, so much
That embarrasses me. In reality, I am not myself. Is that what it means to be a ghost?
In that case, I prefer to be a fly,
On the 24th, during the third watch of the Natales, while everyone is fasting, Meaume dies without having
I haven't been able to eat anything since August.

44

Meaume neither recorded nor printed the aquatints he drew at the end of his life. There is no doubt that because of this,
the darkness is, in them, softer. This is the first nighttime scene: near a willow, to the right,
Marie Aidelle, sitting on her heels, holds a candle; in the center, standing, the innkeeper holds a
lantern; next to him, beside a boat stranded on the shore, the potter holds the lamp he has placed in the
edge of the boat; the three illuminate a completely naked young man (Oesterer) who is
looking for something in the river.
The river is the Authie.
The drawings on copper are by Meaume. The engravings were made after his death. The printing is
dark, yet velvety. They are not images in a black way.
A lamp, a clay pot filled with oil, a wick, a copper plate, two burins, silence,
a bony hand, the night.
At noon, the light falls directly onto the river and some soldiers pass in single file across the bridge.

XLV

The Inventories of Mr. Meaumus, Roman Citizen and sculptor of Aguafuerte have two pages.
infoli y, curiously, are dated in the following century (1702).
After the death of the engraver, it was discovered that he was rich: a hundred beautiful jewels and just as many fabrics.
and famous paintings from which two hundred twenty thousand francs could be taken from the embassy. A house of
sixteen thousand francs in Rome and a farm overlooking the Gulf of Salerno with vineyards and fields valued at
four thousand francs. No outstanding debt. Two beds, two trestles, two trunks, four tables, four
banks and so many stools. A four-wheeled carriage lined with black serge. A cape, two
overcoats, four shirts and three leggings.
The two horses were sold.
They gave the cat to one of the maids.
Meaume the Engraver, a citizen of the Villa of Rome, learned to draw with Follin. He learned the
rudiments of the trade of card maker and the shadows with Rhuys the Reformed in Toulouse.
He learned sweet carving and the aguafuerte technique with Johann Heemkers in Bruges. He learned to engrave the
landscapes of nature when he arrived in Rome, in Claude Gellée's workshop. He was born for an art
that requires cold blood and a lot of patience. The aguafuerte burned his face. He never painted. Daret obtained
the shadows crossing the carvings; Mellan, opening parallel grooves; Meaume, juxtaposing small and
strange letters. He asked for ten thousand pounds for copper. The print cost half a pound, and the image less.
still. She refused to execute gray letters, vignettes, coats of arms, titles, flourishes, cards, endings of
chapter. There is only one portrait of Meaume, by Poilly d'Abbeville, which depicts him sitting in the
Roman countryside, illuminated by the rays of the setting sun that fall on the grazing animals, with the
features of a Saint Joseph, reading, the left hand resting on an old wall, the fingers covering him
ear. Below, to the right: F. Poilly scul. Pascet Dominus quasi Agnum in latitudine. The first among his
friends was Claude Gellée. Although he was born before Meaume, he outlived him by fifteen years; like him, he was
originating from a Loreto family; then came Michel Lasne, Norman; Weyen, Flemish; Abraham
Van Berchem, Dutch; Ruprecht, from the Palatinate; Honthorst, from Utrecht. He taught for two seasons.
Abraham Bosse from Tours. Abraham Bosse spent two seasons in Rome without anyone knowing.
because he was Protestant. He completed his apprenticeship under the name of Aquila. Abraham Bosse had chosen
that name due to the warning that God gives to Job in the Bible: And wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.
eagle. (Wherever there is a corpse there is an eagle) (Job, XX-XIX, 30). In Paris, Meaume the Engraver gives him
I used to buy the varnish from the string instrument manufacturer Pardoux, on the Île de la Cité, because it was the
harder than could be found and obtained. He discovered that the black varnish from manufacturers of
string instruments allowed for such a dry, pointed outline that the most skilled artists in this
the procedure was confused with the burin. Meaume the Engraver taught this procedure to the gentleman
Bosse, who noted it in his book. Catharina Van Honthorst had it engraved in Latin letters on the tombstone:
He died ripe for heaven, but not for death. His name will live forever. He will stand forever.
nomen".

46

Meaume the Engraver had become so skilled in handling the burin that sometimes, when he had
having finished drawing a copper intended for the aguafuerte, I took the punch and engraved in a single stroke
small silhouettes, or vegetation, or insects, or pebbles and rocks, in the spaces where emptiness was obstructive
the vision.
Very few recorders see the images they compose in symmetry.
He composed standing, leaning forward, half lying on the table. He applied the varnish with his wrist.
It was rubbing on the copper for hours; I never applied it with a brush.
He blackened the copper plate with the help of a flame.
After recording, I tilted the wooden easel, placed the stack of watercolor at the foot, set the plate down.
of copper over the ridge and was pouring the aguafuerte.
Then he stroked the aguafuerte with a dove feather to intensify the bite.
Both the aguafuertista and the burilador, like so many artisans of that time, under the guise of their art and
after being inspired by older works or having reproduced them, they resold them to the
understood that they were going in search of him.
Grünehagen refers to these words of Meaume in 1652: 'One must see engravers as translators.'
that transfer the beauty of an abundant and magnificent language to one that is not as much, but that possesses a
greater violence. This violence immediately imposes its silence on those who confront it.
the assertion of Meaume the Lorenese seems to respond to that of Mellan of Abbeville, who claimed to have engraved
always their paintings with more fire and more freedom than those shown by the painters, subjected like
they were a multitude of colors and the temptation to seduce. Mellan would say: "What has
dragged mortals to their doom since the first fruit is the profusion of paintings and dyes.
Five plates dedicated to Marie Aidelle and signed as such. An old woman from behind, sitting in
a footstool, warming her hands by the heat of a brazier. Next to her, a cat. Two keys hang from her
waist. On the back of her right hand, stretched over the left hand, a snail pokes its head out and
It displays its little horns. It is a strange engraving.
The sun is at its zenith. From the terrace, the rooftops of Rome can be seen below. The overhang provides a
long six-foot table. On top of the table, there are two varnished copper sheets. Under the tabletop of the
table, two piles for the acidic water. In the inner room, the source of light comes from a window with
the diamond-shaped crystals. To the right of the stone window, the folds of a canopy curtain
they hide the bed and the trunk that holds the Homeric tapestry. In front of the window, there is a large table,
four feet, empty. Next to the walls there are two armchairs to receive. A fireplace with
shelf. There is nothing else in the room.
Immodest woman. Jupiter, inflamed with desire, leans over the body of the sleeping Antiope. The daughter of
the king of Thebes has his arm bent over his head; his mouth open; his thighs apart; his
The body seems happy, but its face reflects horror. There is something in its gaze akin to the jealousy of Nicteo.
The god of Olympus bows his head right above the genital parts of Antiope. He contemplates the sex of the
wonderful young woman. The divine right hand pulls back the curtains of the bed. The rest is black. Aguafuerte and
dry point.
Immodest woman. Black manner. Characters seen from the front, in an oval. One is kneeling, the other
sitting. The latter holds the hat in his right hand. His head, tilted forward, only
let me see the mass of the hair. The belly is bare, and what overflows from it partially sinks into the
mouth of the delicate young woman, with a slender neck, who is kneeling. To the right, a hanging reveals the
bookshelves of a library.
The Louvre and the Pont Neuf in the countryside, the shadows along the river, some little animals, under the sun.
Admirably recorded.

XLVII

Marie Aidelle spoke to Catherine Van Honthorst about Meaume's childhood. The grandmother baptized the child.
with a finger of blood from the murder of Concini, to fortify it. As he grew older, he liked red wine, from
who was abused. And then he let himself die. Meaume was born in Paris in the spring of 1617. He was from Lorraine.
He said: "The faces of children are uncertain." That's why he never drew them. Upon turning fifty,
he had a tense and strange face. He was very thin. His eyes kept shining like those of children.
chest and that of the frogs. Very large gray balloons, but it was not known what they were translucent. They lived life in
a dark water. They were very intense, but it was not possible to say what lay behind those eyes.
pain, hunger, anguish or a heartbreaking rage. The wound on the face increased the uncertainty of their
expressions.

***