ction must be the arrangement between master
and worker, and between the factory and the great outside world, lying
in wait to tear with avaricious claws any fabric, woven or written,
that this document leaves unprotected. You get, too, the impression
that weavers took themselves a little too seriously. There must have
been other arts and crafts in the world than theirs, but if so these
men of long documents ignored it.

Aubusson, then, took heart at the encouragement of the king and his
prime minister, enjoyed their fine new title to flaunt before the
world which lacked it, pored over their new Articles of Faith, and
awaited the new artist and the new alchemist of colours.

But Louis XIV was a busy man, and Paris presented enough activity to
consume all his hours but the scant group he allowed himself for
sleep. So Aubusson was forgot. Wars and pleasures both ravaged the
royal purse, and no money was left for indulgences to a tapestry
factory lying leagues distant from Paris and the satisfying Gobelins.

Then came the agitation of religious conflict during which Louis XIV
was persuaded, coerced, nagged into the condition of mind which made
him put pen to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the document
that is ever playing about the fortunes of tapestry weaving. This was
in 1685. Aubusson had struggled along on hope for twenty years, under
its epithet Royal, but now it had to lose its best workers to the
number of two hundred. The Protestants had ever been among the best
workers in Louis' kingdom, and by his prejudice he lost them. Germany
received some of the fugitives, notably, Pierre Mercier.

Near Aubusson were Felletin and Bellegarde, the three towns forming
the little group of factories of La Marche. When the king's act
brought disaster to Aubusson, her two neighbours suffered equally.

There was also another reason for a sagging of prosperity. Beauvais
was rapidly gaining in size and importance under the patronage of the
king and the wise rule of its administrators. Beauvais with her
high- and low-warp looms, her artists from Paris and her privilege to
sell in the open market, lured from Aubusson the patronage that might
have kept her strong.

Thus things went on to the end of the Seventeenth Century and the
first quarter of the Eighteenth. Then in 1731 came deliverers in the
persons of the painters, Jean Joseph du Mons and Pierre de Montezert,
and an able dyer who aided them. Prosperity began anew. Not