and poetry, took place under circumstances that deserve to be recorded.

Gérôme was betaking himself to the offices of the Artiste, at that time presided over by Arsène Houssaye; in his hand he held a line drawing of his own recent idyll of classic times. On the staircase he encountered Gautier who had paused there, and who began to talk to him in glowing terms of the Salon and especially of a painting by a newcomer, named Gérôme.

"But that is I, myself!" cried the young man with keen emotion, and he showed his drawing to the author of Enamels and Cameos.

Continuing to draw his inspiration from antiquity, he set to work with a stouter heart, in a studio on the Rue de Fleurus, which he shared with Hamon and Picou, associating with artists and with musicians such as Lalo and Membrée.

His labours were twice interrupted: first, by an attack of typhoid fever, through which his mother came to nurse him; and secondly, by the Revolution of 1848 when, in compliance with the expressed desire of his comrades, he was appointed adjutant major of the National Guards.

It was about this same period that he received a first class medal and found himself well advanced upon the road to fame.

"I have always had the nomadic instinct," Gérôme used to declare, and complacently questioned whether he did not have a strain of gypsy blood among his ancestors. In his notes and souvenirs, which he entrusted to his relative and friend, the painter Timbal, he confesses, along with his various artistic scruples, his passionate love of travel.

PIERRE LAFITTE & CIE, PARIS

PLATE III.—ANACREON WITH BACCHUS AND CUPID

(In the Museum at Toulouse)

Gérôme had a magic brush that permitted him to undertake all types of painting with the same facility. This is how he so often happened to treat subjects taken from antiquity and was able to render them in all their classic beauty. It is not without interest to compare him, in this style of painting, with Nicholas Poussin, whom he admired, and with Puvis de Chavannes, whose method he execrated.

He was haunted by a longing to visit Greece, and more especially the Orient, with its marvellous skies, its resplendent colours, its barbaric and motley races of men.

In 1853, in the company of a number of friends, he traversed Germany and Hungary, planning a lengthy visit to Constantinople. Owing to the war, he was forced to cut short his trip at Galatz. But he brought back a collection of energetic and striking sketches of Russian soldiers, which later served good purpose in his Recreation in Camp, Souvenir of Moldavia. And in like manner, in all his distant journeyings, he invariably showed the same eagerness to seize and transcribe his original documents, content to let them speak for themselves, without his having to distort them to fit the special purpose that he had in view.

This painting found a place in the exposition of 1855, together with The Age of Augustus, a notable achievement in which Gérôme revealed the measure, if not of his true personality, at least of his lofty conscience and his integrity as an artist enamoured of accuracy and truth, even in the imaginary element inseparable from this type of allegorical apotheosis. Notwithstanding a few dissenting opinions, these two works were judged at their true value, and Gérôme received the cross of the Legion of Honour.

At this time he was scarcely more than thirty years old. A most brilliant career henceforth lay open before him.

Gérôme remains, beyond question, the unrivalled painter of Egypt, whose aspects, enchanting and sinister alike, he has reproduced in a series of pictures of finished workmanship and vibrant colouring.

It was in 1856 that, together with a few friends, among others Bartholdi, then twenty-two years old, he undertook his long tour through Egypt. To-day, one can go to Cairo or up the Nile as casually as to Nice or Italy and with almost as little trouble. In those days it was not a question of a simple excursion, of which any and every amateur tourist would be capable, but of a veritable expedition.

Unforeseen adventures appealed to Gérôme, for he was brave, energetic, and eager for new sensations. M. Frédéric Masson, the eminent historian, who was one of his companions through the desert, has since shown him to us, in a series of graphic recollections, as perpetually on his feet, indefatigable, ready to endure any and every vicissitude for the sake of sketching a site or a silhouette.

His stay in Egypt was for Gérôme a period of enchantment. He has left, in regard to it, some hasty but expressive notes. He passed four months on the Nile, well filled months, consecrated to fishing, hunting, and painting, all the way from Diametta to Philae. He remained the four succeeding months at Cairo, in an old dwelling that Suliman Pasha rented to the young Frenchmen. "Happy epoch!" wrote the painter, "Care-free, full of hope, and with the future before us. The sky was blue."

He returned to Paris with an ample harvest of sketches, a supply of curious, novel, and striking themes to work up. M. Moreau-Vauthier shows him to us at that period of his existence, full of unflagging energy and pleasant enthusiasm, in the company of Brion, Lambert, Schutzenberger, and Toulmouche,—not to forget his monkey Jacques, who took his place at the family table arrayed in coat and white cravat, but would slink away and hide himself in shame when, as a punishment for some misdeed, they decked him out as a ragpicker.

What jolly parties were held in that "Tea Chest," in which Gérôme then had his studio, Rue de Notre-Dame-des-Champs! It was the scene of many a festival, entertainment, and joyous puppet show, attended by spectators such as Rachel (whose portrait Gérôme painted in 1861), her sister, George Sand, Baudry, Cabanel, Hébert, and others.

This was, nevertheless, an epoch of prolific work and constant research. Gérôme passed ceaselessly from one type of painting to another; one might say that he rested from his exotic landscapes by evoking, with an ever new lavishness of detail, curious or affecting scenes from Greek and Roman antiquity.

Thus rewards and successes multiplied, and he experienced all the joys of triumph. Already honorary member of the Academy of Besançon, he was appointed professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863, and in 1865, member of the Institut, where he succeeded Heim.

Meanwhile he fought a duel with revolvers and was gravely wounded. His mother hastened once again to his bedside and saved his life a second time. Since the ball had passed through his right arm, complications affecting his hand were feared. The artist declared that if necessary he would learn to paint with his left. No sooner was he cured than off he started again, bound for Egypt, whence he passed to Arabia and, more venturesome than ever, continued on his way, as one of his biographers phrased it, "making sketches clear to the summit of Mt. Sinai."

He was destined to make still other journeys, notably that of 1868 in company of Messrs. Bonnet, Frédéric Masson, and Lenoir; and his companions paid tribute to his unfailing spirits and his powers of endurance. But at the age of forty he married. The bride was Mlle. Goupil, daughter of the well-known picture dealer.

He was