aver." He had a passion for collecting drawings,
paintings, and other works of art, and when his workshops were burnt his
collection was valued at 60,000 livres. This taste brought him into
money difficulties, and in 1704 his creditors obtained a decree
against him, and he would have been imprisoned if the King had not
extended the safeguard of the Palace of the Louvre to him on condition
that he made an arrangement with them. He was a member of the Academy of
S. Luke as sculptor and brass engraver. The Cabinet of the Dauphin was
considered his masterpiece, in which the walls and ceiling were covered
with mirrors in ebony frames, with inlays of rich gilding, and the floor
laid with wood mosaic, in which the initials of the Dauphin and his wife
were intertwined. The drawing made for it is now in the Musee des Arts
Decoratifs, but the work itself no longer exists. On August 30th, 1720,
his works were burnt, it was thought by a thief whom the workmen of
Marteau, his neighbour at the Louvre, had surprised some months before
and punished summarily, who, by way of vengeance on the "menuisiers,"
set fire to the "ebenistes." Nearly everything he possessed was either
burnt, lost, or stolen; models of the value of 37,000 livres, wood and
tools worth 25,000, many pieces of furniture finished or in course of
construction; works in metal, as well as in wood, and his whole
collection of drawings, paintings, and objects of art. His total loss
was estimated by experts at 383,780 livres, more than 1,000,000 of
francs in the money of to-day, from which an income of 50,000 francs
might be expected. This valuation was on an inventory drawn up shortly
after, perhaps for the purpose of getting the King's help. The number of
undeniable productions of his hand is small, but objects which came from
the studio after his death are tolerably plentiful since his four sons
carried on the business, though not the inspiration; contemporaries
characterised them as "apes." Two commodes which were in Louis XVI.'s
bedroom at Versailles are now in the Bibliotheque Mazarin, and a chest
which was forgotten in the Custom House at Havre now belongs to the
museum of that city. A cabinet is in the Mobilier National, and a
pedestal is in the Gruenes Gewoelbe at Dresden. Other genuine Boulles are
in the Wallace collection, in the Rothschild collection, and at the
Hotel Cluny. A writing table, for which the millionaire Samuel Bernard
(who died in 1739), a great colle