136/143 His reputation, however, had penetrated thither. was growing weary of Simon Vouet's factitious lustre; he wanted Le Poussin to go to Paris. The painter for a long while held out; the king insisted. "I shall go," said Le Poussin, "like one sentenced to be sawn in halves and severed in twain." He passed eighteen months in France, welcomed enthusiastically, lodged at the Tuileries, magnificently paid, but exposed to the jealousies of Simon Vouet and his pupils. Worried, thwarted, frozen to death by the hoarfrosts of Paris, he took the road back to Rome in November, 1642, on the pretext of going to fetch his wife, and did not return any more. |