Like Menzel, Cornelius, Alma Tadema, and Meissonier, he was small in stature, but the features of his well-formed face were anything but insignificant.  His whole person was distinguished by something I might term “neatness.”  Without any touch of dudishness he gave the impression of having “just stepped out of a bandbox.”  From the white cravat which he always wore, to the little red ribbon of the order in his buttonhole, everything about him was faultless.

Madame Gallait, a Parisian by birth, was the very embodiment of the French woman in the most charming sense of the word, and the bond which united her to her husband seemed enduring and as if woven by the cheeriest gods of love.  Unfortunately, it did not last.

After leaving Hirsau, we again met the Gallaits in Wildbad and spent some delightful days with them.  The Von Burckhardts, Fran Henrietta Hallberger, the wife of the Stuttgart publisher, the Puricellis, ourselves, and later the author Moritz Hartmann, were the only persons with whom they associated.  We always met every afternoon at a certain place in the grounds, where we talked or some one read aloud.  On these occasions, at Gallait’s suggestion, everybody who was so disposed sketched.  My portrait, which he drew for my mother at that time in black and red pencils, is now in my wife’s possession.  I also took my sketch-book, for he had seen the school volume I had filled with arabesques just before leaving Keilhau, and I still remember the ’merveilleux and incroyable, inoui, and insense’ which he lavished on the certainly extravagant creatures of my love-sick imagination.

During these exercises in drawing he related many incidents of his own life, and never was he more interesting than while describing his first success.

He was the son of a poor widow in the little Belgian town of Tournay.  While a school-boy he greatly enjoyed drawing, and an able teacher perceived his talent.

Once he saw in the newspaper an Antwerp competition for a prize.  A certain subject—­if I am not mistaken, Moses drawing water from the rock in the wilderness—­was to be executed with pencil or charcoal.  He went to work also, though with his defective training he had not the least hope of success.  When he sent off the finished drawing he avoided taking his mother into his confidence in order to protect her from disappointment.

On the day the prize was to be awarded the wish to see the work of the successful competitor drew him to Antwerp, and what was his surprise, on entering the hall, to hear his own name proclaimed as the victor’s!

His mother supported herself and him by a little business in soap.  To increase her delight he had changed the gold paid to him into shining five franc pieces.  His pockets almost burst under the weight, but there was no end to the rejoicing when he flung one handful of silver coins after another on the little counter and told how he had obtained them.