and was invariably escorted by the charming Prince Labanoff.  There were painters too amongst the most assiduous sportsmen—­Jadin and Decamps.  Decamps, of whom I was a fanatical admirer, was just in his best period—­so too were Delacroix and M. Ingres; and all that pleiad of great artists, young then and in the full flush of their powers—­Leopold Robert, Horace Vernet, Delaroche, my own master Ary Scheffer, Flandrin, and the landscape painters Marilhat and Corot—­this last, in his first manner, dry and rectilinear, like that of Poussin.  Nobody nowadays has any idea of the eager discussions aroused by the opening of the Salon and the superior merit of such a picture or statue.  Nobody was indifferent:  everybody was either for or against; each man either attacked the artist or lauded him to the skies.  Works of art bring more money now, according as they are produced by this man or that, but they are less discussed.  Which is the best inspiration for an artist, money or passion?

The theatres too, the Vaudeville, Varietes, Francais, the Opera, were delightful.  At the Vaudeville, which had migrated after the fire in the Rue de Chartres to the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, Arnal, the inimitable, quaintest and cleverest of comic actors, was playing.  At the Varietes they were acting the Saltimbanques, a play every line of which has passed into proverbs, which all my generation have been repeating for the last forty years.  A woman of genius, Mademoiselle Rachel, had brought back its long forgotten glory to the Theatre Francais.  For my part I never saw anything so absolutely perfect on the stage.  With hardly any gesture, simply by the play of her countenance, her expressive glance, and the intonation of her voice, she expressed all the passions with an intensity that affected all her audience.  She had a genius for dress and drapery.  In her peplum she might have been taken for an antique statue, and she knew how to endue herself with the most incomparable womanly charm in all her parts, even the most savage ones.  If she had committed murder you would have loved the murderess, and, strangely enough, this extraordinary woman was never witty except with her pen.

As for the Opera, the production of the great composers who had made its glory some years before had ceased.  Of that trio of wonderful artists, Nourrit, Levasseur, and Mdlle.  Falcon, only one, Levasseur, remained.  The art of music was taking a rest.  To make amends for this, the opera shone in ballet, fairy-like performances in which pantomime and trap-doors played as important a part as the actual dancing.  Nothing could have been more enchanting than the Diable Boiteux with its many and various tableaux and its dresses, and Fanny Elsler dancing the “cachucha,” or the Sylphide or the Revolte du Serail with Taglioni.  I saw my brother Nemours in great danger during a performance of this last-named ballet.  At a certain point the dancers, representing the revoltees, armed