that Behagle made for it a success both
artistic and commercial, and this continued as long as he had breath.

Also was it a feather in his cap that at the time when the Gobelins
factory was sighing and dying for lack of funds, the provincial
factory of Beauvais not only remained prosperous, but opened its doors
to many of the starving operatives from the Gobelins ateliers, thus
saving them from the horrid fate of joining the Dragonades, as some of
their fellows had done.

But the followers of the able Behagle had not his capability. After
his twenty years of prosperity the factory languished under the
direction of his widow and sons, and that of the brothers Filleul, and
Micou, up to the time when the Regent Philip was fumbling the reigns
of government, and when everything but scepticism and Les Precieuses
was sinking into feeble disintegration. The factory became a financial
failure from which the regent had not power to lift it.

Again we see the name of the son of Madame de Montespan, the Duke
d'Antin, who was at this time director of buildings for the crown and
in this capacity had the power of choosing the directors of both the
Gobelins and Beauvais. The place of director at Beauvais was empty;
d'Antin must have the credit of filling it wisely with the painter
Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we
are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high
place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais
from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to its most brilliant
flowering.

[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]

[Illustration: BEAUVAIS TAPESTRY. TIME OF LOUIS XVI

Collection of Wm. Baumgarten, Esq., New York]

It is only as the history of a factory touches us that we are
interested in its changes. The result of Oudry's direction is one that
we see so frequently in a small way that it is agreeable to recognise
its cause. Oudry was pre-eminently a painter of animals. Add to this
the tendency to draw cartoons in suites and the demand for furniture
coverings, and at once we have the _raison d'etre_ of the design seen
over and over again nowadays on old tapestried chairs, the designs
picturing the _Fables of La Fontaine_. These were the especial work of
Oudry who composed them, who put into them his best work as animal
painter, and who set them on the looms of Beauvais many times