Meanwhile Camusat, ever active in the cause of archæology, carefully preserved the record of the famous Polisy Holbein, in letters addressed to his friends, the Godefroy brothers. Those letters themselves, with possibly one exception, have not been found. But the summary of their contents, drawn up by the Godefroy family, exists at the present day at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut at Paris; and shall here be given word for word:

“Memoire⁠[38] pour l’intelligence de trois lettres envoyées par Monsʳ. Camusat, chanoine de St. Pierre de Troyes [touchant un tableau faict en Angleterre de George de Selve, ev. de Lavaur qui y estoit allé visiter le bailly de Troies, sr. de Polizi, Jean d’Inteville, lors Amb. pour le Roy].⁠[39]

“Il y en a deux de Monsr. l’evesque de Lavaur, George de Selve, fils de Mr. le premier president de Selve, lequel Sr. Evesque avoit este invite par Mr. de Polizy, bailly de Troyes, ambassadeur en Angleterre es années 1532 et 1533⁠[40] de le visiter en Angleterre, comme il feit, après en avoir pris congé du Roy. Et estans en Angleterre ils feirent faire l’excellent tableau par un peintre holandois, Holben,⁠[41] lequel tableau a esté conservé en la maison de Polizy, distant seulement d’une lieue de Bar-sur-Seine, cent quarante ans⁠[42] et plus, comme appartenant au seigneur du lieu, Sr. de Sessac, jusques en l’année 1653, qu’il l’a faict transporter à Paris, en sa maison proche la parroisse de St. Sulpice, ledict tableau représentant ledit Sr. de Polizy, Jean de d’Inteville et ledit Sr. Evesque de Lavaur qui fut depuis ambassadeur près de l’Empereur Charles Quint et mourut ledit evesque en l’an 1541. On tient ledit tableau la plus belle pièce de peinture qui soit en France, au jugement des meilleurs peintres. M. le Mareschal du Plessis-Praslain a nagueres achepté la terre de Polisy, trois cens mille livres dudit Sr. de Sessac.

“On a autrefois entendu de Mr. de Vic,⁠[43] garde des sceaux, qui c’estoit la plus belle pièce de peinture qui fût en France.

“Mr. George de Selve, et messieurs ses frères, ont dignement servy la France en plusieurs ambassades et légations.”⁠[44]

Three points in this document deserve special notice.

Firstly, the name of the painter, “Holben,” is given.

Secondly, it is stated that, on its removal from Polisy, the picture was taken to M. de Cessac’s house in Paris.

Thirdly, it is asserted that no less than three letters concerning it had been sent by Camusat to the brothers Godefroy.

With regard to the third point, it has been already stated that so far no trace of two out of the three letters in question has been found. But if the rather ambiguous phrase, “il y en a deux de Monsr. l’evesque de Lavaur,” may be interpreted “relating to the Bishop of Lavaur,” there is, in the Godefroy collection, a paper which may well correspond to the third. It is a copy, dated 1654, of a memorandum drawn up by Camusat, on the family and descendants of the Premier Président de Selve. At the risk of some amount of repetition, the passage in which the “Ambassadors” figure shall here be inserted. Referring to George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, we read:

⁠[45]“... Ledit Sr. Evesque ... fust visiter en Angleterre en 1532, un sien intime amy, Mr. de Polizy, Jean de d’Inteville, bailly de Troyes lequel estoit lors ambassadeur près du Roy Henry 8; et lors aussy lesdᵗˢ evesque et bailly de Troyes firent faire en Angleterre l’excellent tableau qui est à present a Paris, au logis de M. de Sessac, auquel iceux bailly et evesque sont representez au naturel; ledit tableau fait de la main d’un Hollandois; la pièce est estimée la plus riche et mieux travaillée qui soit en France.”⁠[46]

Thus we possess no less than three documents, all written shortly after the middle of the seventeenth century; all giving in the most explicit terms the history of the picture up to that date; and each corroborating the other in every particular.

The house in Paris to which Holbein’s masterpiece was conveyed in 1653 can be identified with precision. On the last day of February, 1654, the deed was there signed by which the Maréchal Du Plessis-Praslin (subsequently Duc de Choiseul) became the owner of Polisy. After enumerating the titles of M. de Cessac in the usual way, the document describes him as “estant de present en cette ville de Paris logé faubourg Saint Germain des Prez, grande rue du Four”; and terminates with the words: “Fait et passé a Paris en la maison ou demeurent lesdits Seigneur et Dame de Cessac....”⁠[47]

Another deed, four years later in date, amplifies these details. In June, 1658, three years before her death, Madame de Cessac, née Marie de Choiseul, made her will. She is therein stated to be living “a St. Germain des Prez, Rue du Four, en l’un des corps de logis, et derrière de la maison, du Chappeaufort, parroisse St. Sulpice.”⁠[48]

The Rue du Four, it is scarcely necessary to add, still exists. The house of Chapeaufort was well known until quite recent times, and is described in histories of old Paris.⁠[49]

No further notice occurs of Holbein’s “Ambassadors” until the Beaujon sale of 1787.

Perhaps this is not surprising when it is considered that the vast majority of papers preserved in the archives of France are of legal nature; while not one of the documents containing a direct mention of the picture, which have hitherto guided us, have any connection with the law. They are exclusively derived from the learned antiquaries of the seventeenth century, bent on preserving to future generations the records of their day. But after the death of Camusat, which took place, at an advanced age, in 1655, none of his type remained, conversant with the history of the picture, to chronicle its further fate.

The difficulty of tracing the “Ambassadors” in the eighteenth century is enhanced by the fact that, in the earlier stages of its existence, that work never seems to have formed part of any well-known collection. It was, and apparently remained, an isolated family picture of startling excellence, celebrated enough at various periods of its career, but tending to relapse into oblivion when its proprietors for the time being were engrossed in the pursuits of their own generation, or devoid of cultivated interests.

Moreover, many changes had come over French taste since the days when Méry de Vic had called the “Ambassadors” the most beautiful piece of painting in France. Holbein’s sober and restrained art was out of date.⁠[50] Who shall say through how many decades the picture may now have hung unheeded on the walls of some forgotten mansion!

The darkness which envelopes the story of Holbein’s great work from 1654 to 1787 is thus partially accounted for. A chance light will doubtless, some day, reveal its forgotten track. Yet, even now, it is worth while to dwell for a moment on the circumstantial evidence at our command.

Firstly, then, it must be borne in mind that the picture reappears in 1787, under the partially changed name of “Portraits de Deux Ambassadeurs, MM. de Selve et d’Avaux.”

The alteration seems to denote either that it was for a time owned by some member of the family of Mesmes, Contes d’Avaux, or was in some manner connected with them. Let us see, therefore, if any circumstance can be found to bring that family into relation with the heirs of the Marquis de Cessac.

More than one such link does, in fact, exist.

It has been noted that when first removed from Polisy in 1653, the picture was taken to M. de Cessac’s residence in Paris, in the Rue du Four; and that in 1658, when his first wife, Marie de Choiseul, made her will, he was still living in the same house. After her death, however, he seems never again to have had a permanent home in Paris. At the time of his second marriage, to Anne Louise de Broglie, which took place in 1669, he was indeed in Paris, but at a different address, if not at a mere lodging;⁠[51] and the marriage contract specially designates the Château of Milhars in Languedoc as the “ordinary habitation” of the bridegroom.⁠[52] Milhars had been magnificently rebuilt by his father, Charles de Cazillac; and hither the Marquis de Cessac now brought his young bride.⁠[53] It was, perhaps, a rash experiment from the point of view of domestic felicity. He was now over seventy years of age, while she was about four-and-twenty. At the end of two years, unable to accustom herself to the seclusion of the country, after the gay life of the capital, she left the poor old man in dudgeon, and returned with her mother to Paris. M. de Cessac made her an allowance, and henceforth they lived separated. His daughter, Madame de Blaigny, now came to live at Milhars, and remained, though apparently without much cordiality on either side, with her father until his death, which took place in 1679.

What meanwhile became of the picture, when the Marquis de Cessac left Paris to take up his abode in the country?

The houses he owned in the capital seem to have been bought and sold as mere speculations, having no element of permanence. It is impossible to imagine the great family picture wandering from pillar to post in this succession of changes. Some more stable home must surely have been found for it.

Neither does it appear likely that M. de Cessac sold the one picture he had been at pains to preserve, when he parted with Polisy, its home of generations.⁠[54]

The natural inference is that he took the “Ambassadors” with him to one of his residences in the south.

The three principal estates were Cazillac and Cessac in Quercy, and Milhars in Languedoc.

The Barony of Cazillac was sold as early as 1689 by the granddaughter of the Marquis de Cessac; and, after that date, falls out of the competition. Nevertheless, this place has a point of interest for the present investigation. In 1665 the Marquis de Cessac bestowed it upon his cousin, Roger de Guénégaud, with the condition that he should in future bear the name and arms of Cazillac. The estate was, however, too tightly entailed on the immediate heirs of M. de Cessac for the donation to take effect; and the result was merely to add one more to the crowd of litigants who put in claims to the various property on M. de Cessac’s demise. Had the intention succeeded, this would have been an exceedingly likely quarter in which to seek the Holbein; even as it is, the question arises whether M. de Cessac may not have given the picture to the man whom he had wished to establish as the future head of the Cazillac family. But here again research has been unproductive of further result.⁠[55]

Cessac ultimately passed into the hands of another cousin of the Marquis de Cessac, François de la Roche, Marquis de Fontenilles, and owing to this circumstance enters into the lists with Milhars.

Notwithstanding the fact that the most minute search has failed to reveal any mention of the picture in the exclusively legal documents connected with the latter Château,⁠[56] it does not appear unlikely that Milhars was indeed the new home to which the picture was transported. It must be borne in mind, however, that we here enter the region of guess-work, and that the discovery of one little fact is apt to overthrow many pages of specious reasoning. The following indications are therefore given merely for what they are worth.

On the death of the Marquis de Cessac a lawsuit respecting the inheritance took place, in which the principal parties concerned were his widow, Annie Louise de Broglie, and his daughter, Charlotte de Blaigny. It is of some importance to our object to note that in the end the widow accepted a sum of money in lieu of all other claims; and that the entire property of the Marquis de Cessac was settled on his granddaughter, Marie-Renée Le Genevois, the only child of Madame de Blaigny. This took place in 1681.⁠[57]

Unfortunately Charlotte de Blaigny now quarrelled with her daughter, who remained with her father in Champagne, while her mother continued to reside at Milhars. A designing relation, François de la Roche, Comte and Marquis de Fontenilles, took advantage of this state of things to induce Madame de Blaigny to disinherit her daughter and make a will in favour of himself and of his heirs.

François de la Roche-Fontenilles was the grandson of that Jean-Jacques de la Roche-Fontenilles who had married Claude de Cazillac, the only sister of the Marquis de Cessac.⁠[58] But for the existence of Marie-Renée, he would have been the nearest heir to the property. He now took up his abode at Milhars and drew his meshes closer and closer round the unhappy old lady who ruled there. No sooner was the will signed than he began to dismantle the Château before the very eyes of his aged cousin. Furniture and valuables were hastily removed to his house at Toulouse. Fortunately Charlotte de Blaigny did not long survive to reap the bitter results of her mistake. She died at Milhars in October, 1683, a month after the making of the momentous will.

The day after the funeral Fontenilles, in the double capacity he assumed of heir to the property and executor of the will, made a formal declaration to the effect that “tous les meubles de la dite hérédité sont au pouvoir et en la jouissance dudit Sr. Conte de Fontenilles, partie desquels ont été apportés du vivant de ladite dame [Charlotte de Blaigny] audit Toulouse; et prétend ledit Seigneur Conte y en faire apporter davantage.”⁠[59]

Holbein’s picture—if indeed the Château in Languedoc had become its home—now perhaps found its way with the rest of the valuables to Toulouse. In any case, Milhars remained for some years in the hands of M. de Fontenilles.

Under the settlement of 1681, Madame de Blaigny, although certain rights may have been reserved to her, had no power whatever to disinherit her daughter and settle the property elsewhere. Immediately upon her mother’s death, Marie-Renée, now Madame Voisin, therefore instituted legal proceedings for the recovery of her inheritance.

The lawsuits dragged on, almost interminably, year after year. In 1686 M. and Mme. Voisin were indeed reinstated at Milhars, but only at the price of a ruinous pension to be paid annually to M. de Fontenilles. On the death of the latter, in 1693, his son and namesake, who now claimed the property, renewed his attacks time after time with implacable hostility. In 1697 Mme. Voisin was definitely confirmed in the possession of Milhars and of the other estates in Languedoc; but Cessac and all the remaining property in Quercy (Cazillac, we have seen, had been previously sold), had to be ceded to François de Fontenilles. Notwithstanding these sacrifices the claims for arrears of pension were still pending in 1700.

Bearing in mind that the picture reappears in 1787 under the partially corrupt title of “Portraits de MM. de Selve et d’Avaux,” it is somewhat startling to find that in the same year, 1683, in which M. de Fontenilles, the elder, seized Milhars, his son and successor, named above, became the husband of Marie-Thérèse de Mesmes,⁠[60] daughter, niece, and sister of a succession of Contes d’Avaux.

Her father, Jean-Jacques de Mesmes, Conte d’Avaux, was a President à mortier of the Parliament of Paris. Her uncle, Jean-Antoine de Mesmes, Conte d’Avaux, was one of a series of famous ambassadors of the name, and, dying unmarried in 1709, made Madame de Fontenilles his heiress. Her brother, another Jean-Antoine de Mesmes, Conte d’Avaux, was the well-known Premier Président of the Parliament of Paris, who died in 1723.

The connection of François de Fontenilles with the family of Mesmes seems to reveal a not improbable path by which the picture may have descended to modern times. Either the seizure of Milhars or the acquisition of Cessac, perhaps placed it in the possession of La Roche Fontenilles. If it remained in his hands, how easily might it have passed in later years for part of the property bequeathed to Mme. de Fontenilles by her uncle, Jean-Antoine, Conte d’Avaux, and the name of the supposed donor have crept into the title!

Mme. Voisin, now known as the Marquise de Milhars, had, however, other links with the Mesmes family, which forbid a too exclusive faith in one hypothesis. The niece of her husband, François Voisin, a daughter of Denis Feydeau de Brou, was the wife of the future Premier Président de Mesmes.

Here, then, are two distinct threads connecting the Contes d’Avaux with the only two persons, M. de Fontenilles and Mme. Voisin, who seem likely to have owned the picture at this period.⁠[61]

All that can be said, in the absence of direct testimony, is that we appear to breathe the atmosphere through which the “Ambassadors” passed. It would be rash to build too definitely on any particular theory; for other paths, which the picture may have taken, lie close at hand. Several of the great legal families of France, who were mixed up with the Cazillac or their descendants—the Mesmes, Voisin, Brou, Lamoignon—were connected by intermarriages; while the Broglie (the family of the second Marquise de Cessac) were thus related both to the Lamoignon and Voisin.

If we may for a moment suppose, however, that after the settlement of the disputes between Marie-Renée Voisin and François de Fontenilles, the picture returned, with other abstracted property—perhaps also with an altered name⁠[62]—to Milhars, another curious circumstance comes to light, which seems a possible guide to its history.

François Voisin, Marquis de Milhars, died in 1706; and Marie-Renée, left a childless widow, had to bethink herself of an heir. Her own nearest relation was the hated La Roche Fontenilles, who was, of course, out of the question. Her deceased husband’s next of kin were the children of his niece, the wife of the Premier Président. But this lady had died in 1705, leaving only two daughters; moreover, the terms of friendship which existed between them and La Roche Fontenilles must have been sufficient reason to look elsewhere.

One degree further removed in relationship, the eyes of Mme. Voisin fell upon the heir of a distinguished family, Chrétien de Lamoignon, whose mother had been Jeanne Voisin, first cousin to the Marquis de Milhars. In 1716 Marie-Renée made the will which constituted M. de Lamoignon her universal heir. In 1721 she died and he came into possession.

We may pass briefly over the first two generations of the Lamoignon family after they succeeded to Milhars. The new proprietors never resided at the Château in Languedoc. They owned considerable estates in the centre of France at Basville and Lamoignon, whence they derived their titles. But their real sphere lay at Paris, where from generation to generation they played conspicuous parts in the political events of their day. In course of time they probably removed whatever Milhars contained of value to one of their other homes.

The special point of interest in connection with this family is that Chrétien-François (II.) de Lamoignon,⁠[63] Marquis de Basville, who in 1765 sold Milhars to the family of Rey de St. Géry, was the intimate and lifelong friend of Nicolas Beaujon, at the sale of whose property, in 1787, the picture once more comes to the surface.

If the Polisy Holbein, notwithstanding stormy interludes, did actually descend from heir to heir of the house of Dinteville through this obscure period of one hundred and thirty-three years, Chrétien de Lamoignon de Basville is precisely the person in whose hands we should now expect to find it.

His intimacy with Beaujon gives curious point to these speculations. The French millionaire appointed “Monseigneur Chrétien-François de Lamoignon,” and his heirs, administrators in perpetuity of the famous Hospice (now Hospital) which he founded, and which still bears his name.⁠[64] He further begged M. de Lamoignon to be executor of his will, as a last proof of the friendship “dont il m’a toujours honoré;” and bequeathed to him a fine service of Sevres china.⁠[65]

Beaujon died on the 20th December, 1786. At the end of January, 1787, M. de Lamoignon, acting in his capacity of executor, caused an inventory to be drawn up of all the deceased gentleman’s property contained in his two palaces, the Hotel d’Evreux⁠[66] and the so-called “Chartreuse,” where he died. This inventory, which gives minute and interesting particulars of all the pictures constituting the galleries of those two residences, was drawn up by the notary Maigret, now represented by Maître Houel, in whose custody this document at present rests. At the writer’s request this gentleman kindly examined the inventory in question; but, strange to say, without success. No trace of Holbein’s “Ambassadors” is there to be found, although nothing is more certain than that the picture was sold three months later at the Beaujon sale, and included in the catalogue of the millionaire’s property drawn up for that occasion.

The inference would seem to be that either “The Ambassadors” dwelt in some third residence belonging to M. Beaujon, the contents of which were not included in the inventory in question, or that, still owned by the executor, M. de Lamoignon, who was in chronic need of money, the picture was thrown by him into the sale and disposed of at the same time as the Beaujon collection.

How it now passed into the hands of Le Brun, thence to an English dealer who sold it to Lord Radnor, and finally to the National Gallery, the reader already knows.

A table of chronology is appended which sums up the salient points of the foregoing narrative.

CHRONOLOGY.

1533. Jean de Dinteville, French Ambassador in England, and George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, are painted in London by Holbein. Subsequently the picture is taken to Polisy, Dinteville’s home in Burgundy.

1562. Claude de Dinteville, niece of Jean the Ambassador and heiress of Polisy, marries François de Cazillac, Baron de Cessac.

1653. François II. de Cazillac, Vicomte, then Marquis de Cessac, grandson of the foregoing, moves the picture to Paris. Having sold Polisy, M. de Cessac spends most of the remainder of his life at Milhars in Languedoc.

1679. Death at Milhars of the Marquis de Cessac.

1681. Marie-Renée Le Genevois de Blaigny, granddaughter of the Marquis de Cessac, is declared sole heiress of all his possessions.

1683. Charlotte, Marquise de Blaigny, only daughter of the Marquis de Cessac, attempts to disinherit her daughter, Marie-Renée, in favour of her cousin, François de la Roche-Fontenilles, and of his son, François II. de la Roche-Fontenilles.

—— Marriage of the latter gentleman to Marie Thérèse de Mesmes, daughter, niece, and sister of a succession of Contes d’Avaux.

—— Marriage of Marie-Renée Le Genevois de Blaigny with François Voisin, Marquis de Bougueval, subsequently known as Marquis de Milhars.

—— Death of Charlotte de Blaigny.

[A long series of lawsuits now ensues between François de Fontenilles, who denudes Milhars, and Marie-Renée Voisin, the rightful heiress. Mme. Voisin at last obtains possession.]

1721. Death of Marie-Renée, who, being childless, leaves Milhars to her husband’s cousin, Chrétien de Lamoignon, Marquis de Basville.

1765. Chrétien-François II. de Lamoignon, grandson of the heir of Marie-Renée, sells Milhars to the family of Rey de St. Géry.

1786. Death of M. Nicolas Beaujon, Banker to the French Court, whose will appoints his intimate friend, Chrétien-François de Lamoignon, Marquis de Basville, to be his executor.

1787. Sale of M. Beaujon’s pictures, in the catalogue of which Holbein’s “Ambassadors” reappears after a silence of a hundred and thirty-three years. The picture now becomes the property of J. B. P. Le Brun.

1792. Publication of the first volume of Le Brun’s “Galerie des Peintres Flamands, Hollandais, et Allemands,” in which there is an engraving of the “Ambassadors.” Le Brun had previously sold the picture to a dealer in England.

1808 or 1809. Holbein’s picture is bought by Jacob, second Earl of Radnor, and taken to Longford Castle.

1890. The picture of the “Ambassadors” finds a permanent home in the National Gallery.