The day after your arrival in Paris go at eight in the morning punctually to the garden of the Luxembourg, Allee de l’Observatoire, fourth bench to the right, starting from the gate.  This order is strict.  Do not fail to obey it.

Punctual to the minute, Dorlange was not long at the place of rendezvous before he was met by a very small man, whose enormous head, bearing an immense shock of hair, together with a pointed nose, chin, and crooked legs made him seem like a being escaped from one of Hoffman’s tales.  Without saying a word, for to his other physical advantages this weird messenger added that of being deaf and dumb, he placed in the young man’s hand a letter and a purse.  The letter said that the family of Dorlange were glad to see that he wished to devote himself to art.  They urged him to work bravely and to profit by the instructions of the great master under whose direction he was placed.  They hoped he would live virtuously; and, in any case, an eye would be kept upon his conduct.  There was no desire, the letter went on to say, that he should be deprived of the respectable amusements of his age.  For his needs and for his pleasures, he might count upon the sum of six hundred and fifty francs every three months, which would be given to him in the same place by the same man; but he was expressly forbidden to follow the messenger after he had fulfilled his commission; if this injunction were directly or indirectly disobeyed, the punishment would be severe; it would be nothing less than the withdrawal of the stipend and, possibly, total abandonment.

Do you remember, my dear Madame de Camps, that in 1831 you and I went together to the Beaux-Arts to see the exhibition of works which were competing for the Grand Prix in sculpture?  The subject given out for competition was Niobe weeping for her children.  Do you also remember my indignation at one of the competing works around which the crowd was so compact that we could scarcely approach it?  The insolent youth had dared to turn that sacred subject into jest!  His Niobe was infinitely touching in her beauty and grief, but to represent her children, as he did, by monkeys squirming on the ground in the most varied and grotesque attitudes, what a deplorable abuse of talent!—­

You tried in vain to make me see that the monkeys were enchantingly graceful and clever, and that a mother’s blind idolatry could not be more ingeniously ridiculed; I held to the opinion that the conception was monstrous, and the indignation of the old academicians who demanded the expulsion of this intolerable work, seemed to me most justifiable.  But the Academy, instigated by the public and by the newspapers, which talked of opening a subscription to send the young sculptor to Rome, were not of my opinion and that of their older members.  The extreme beauty of the Niobe atoned for all the rest and the defamer of mothers saw his work crowned, in spite of an admonition given to him by the venerable secretary on the day of the distribution of the prizes.  But, poor fellow!  I excuse him, for I now learn that he never knew his mother.  It was Dorlange, the poor abandoned child at Tours, the friend of Marie-Gaston.