few friends, and the indignation of a few fools, is all we ask or hope for.  We federate?  Why?  With whom?  If our work is bad, will the association with any society in the world make it good?  Will the works of others gain anything by their association with ours?  Let us go home, messieurs les artistes, let us shut our doors, let us say to our servants—­if we have any—­that we are at home to no one, and, after having cut our best pencil, or seized our best pen, let us labour in solitude, without relaxation, with no other thought than that of doing the best we can, with no higher judge than that of our own artistic conscience; and when the work is completed, let us cordially shake hands with those of our comrades who love us; let us help them, and let them bring help to us, but freely, without obligation, without subscriptions, without societies, and without statutes.  We have nothing to do with these free-masonries, absurd when brought into the domain of intelligence, and in which two or three hundred people get together to do that, which some new-comer, however unknown his budding fame, would accomplish at a blow, in the face of all the associations in the world.”  This is what I should naively reply to Monsieur Courbet if he took it into his head to offer me any advice or compact whatsoever to sign.

[Illustration:  THE MODERN “EROSTRATE” COURBET.]

[Illustration:  IN PROGRESS OF REMOVAL, JUNE 7 1871]

The artists have done still better than we should; they have not answered at all, for one cannot call the “General Assembly of all the Artists in Design,” presided over by Monsieur Gustave Courbet, and held on the 13th of April, 1871, in the great amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, a real meeting of French artists.  We know several celebrated painters, and we saw none of them there.  The citizens Potier and Boulaix had been named secretaries.  We congratulate them; for this high distinction may, perhaps, aid in founding their reputation, which was in great want of a basis of some kind.  But there were some sculptors there, perhaps?  We saw some long beards, beards that were quite unknown to us, and their owners may have been sculptors, perhaps.  For Paris is a city of sculptors.  But if artists were wanting, there were talkers enough.  Have you ever remarked that there are no orators so indefatigable as those who have nothing to say?  And the interruptions, the clamour, the apostrophising, more highly coloured than courteous!  Such an overwhelming tumult was never heard:—­

    “No more jury!”

    “Yes! yes! a jury! a jury!”

    “Out with the reactionist!”

    “Down with Cabanel!”

    “And the women?  Are the women to be on the jury?”

    “Neither the women, nor the infirm.”

And all the time there is Monsieur Gustave Courbet, the chairman, desperately ringing his bell for order, and launching some expressive exclamation from time to time.  And the result of all this?  Absolutely nothing at all!  No! stop!  There were a few statutes proposed—­and every one amused himself immensely.  “Well! so much the better,” said one.  “Every one laughed, and no harm was done to anybody.”