got as far as the newspapers.  I was curious enough to go and see the picture at Durand-Ruel’s.  It was a view of Rome by twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction, I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it.  But I had not a halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty!  To overcome it, I laid siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother’s children as if they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!) could resist their wheedling.  I succeeded, as I had hoped, and Marilhat’s picture became my property.  But certain of the jury went and complained to the King, and I was greeted with, “Oho! so you are going to set yourself up in opposition!  I’ve trouble enough already with those artists!  It’s the Civil List (that means it’s me) that takes them in at the Louvre.  I can’t be the only judge as to what is accepted and what isn’t.  I have to have a jury, the Institute is good enough to undertake the job—­all its members are dying of fright, and I shield them under my own responsibility, just as I do my ministers, although it’s contrary to the letter of the law—­and it’s you, one of my own sons, who comes and sets an example of insubordination!  Much obliged to you, sir!”

My picture was inspected all the same I need hardly say the grand-parents pronounced it frightful, a regular daub.  I hung my head under this double-barrelled censure, and drooped my ears like a whipped spaniel, but I stuck to my opinion, and likewise to my Marilhat.  I think it was shortly after this little adventure that I added another “daub” to my “gallery.”  One morning as I was busy modelling (for I dabbled in sculpture too) in my sister Marie’s studio, Ary Scheffer came in, and began telling me about an unknown artist he had met, quite young, a man of undoubted talent, who was in a terribly poverty-stricken condition.  Six hundred francs would take him out of his difficulties, and he would give two small pictures, pendants, which he had just finished, in exchange.

“What do they represent?” I inquired.

“They are both landscapes, connected with episodes in Walter Scott’s novels.  One represents the charge of Claverhouse in the Covenanters, and the other the Army of Charles the Bold crossing the Alps.  Come!” added Scheffer, turning to me.  “Be good-natured.  If you have six hundred francs, give them to me!”

I chanced to have the money, and gave it him.  “What’s your protege’s name?” asked I

“Theodore Rousseau.”  Fancy that great artist selling his pictures in pairs, as furniture, in fact—­for bread!