“‘He will not prove himself unworthy of our name,’ cries the father.  ’Now, my son, courage, take the axe firmly, do what I ask you, courage, strike straight.’  The father’s head falls into the sawdust, the blood all over the white beard; then comes the elder brother, and then another brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could bear, and the mother had to whisper, ’Remember your promise to your father, to your dead father.’  The mother laid her head on the block, but he could not strike.  ’Be not the first coward of our name, strike; remember your promise to us all,’ and her head was struck off.”

“And the son,” the girl asks, “what became of him?”

“He never was seen, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the walls of his castle in Granada.”

“And whom did he marry?”

“He never married.”

Then after a long silence some one said,—­

“Whose story is that?”

“Balzac’s.”

At that moment the glass door of the cafe grated upon the sanded floor, and Manet entered.  Although by birth and by art essentially Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking that often suggested an Englishman.  Perhaps it was his dress—­his clean-cut clothes and figure.  That figure! those square shoulders that swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face, the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say?  No, for I would evoke an idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression—­frank words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light.  He sits next to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt.  There is nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical.  These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school.  Their friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry.  “Degas was painting ‘Semiramis’ when I was painting ‘Modern Paris,’” says Manet.  “Manet is in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and be feted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by force.  He is as a galley slave chained to the oar,” says Degas.  Different too are their methods of work.  Manet paints his whole picture from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the devious labyrinth of selection.  Nor does his instinct ever fail him, there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely what he sees.  This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from drawings and notes.  About midnight Catulle Mendes