Boulanger had taken the subject of his painting from the works of the famous poet who had just died. Mazeppa, captured, is being bound to a wild horse, which is going to bear him away, heart-broken, fainting and dying, to those new lands where a kingdom awaited him on his awaking. The contortions of the strong young limbs as they struggled, stiffening, against the villains who were lashing him to the back of the savage beast, offered a marvellous contrast, not only in the technical presentation of the flesh, which was quite excellent, but even more so in the physical and moral suffering of Mazeppa as compared with the callous strength of his executioners.
Finally, there was Géricault, who, although he was not represented in that year's Salon, was talked about almost as much as those whose pictures hung on its walls. And this was because the new school, wanting a leader, felt that Géricault was the man, even although so far he had only painted a few studies. He had just finished le Hussard and le Cuirassier,—which the Musée lately bought back, on the accession of King Louis-Philippe,—and he was finishing his Méduse. Poor Géricault! he too was to die, and to die miserably, after he had done his Méduse. I saw him a week before his death. The reader wonders how I became acquainted with Géricault? In the same way that I became acquainted with Béranger and Manuel. At my weekly dinners at M. Arnault's house, I often met Colonel Bro, a brave, excellent soldier, to whom every thought of the army was dear, and who had been friendly to me solely because I was the son of a general who served in the Revolution. Of course Bro was opposed to the Bourbon Government. He had a house in the rue des Martyrs, No. 23, and in that house there lodged various people according to their varying fortunes—Manuel the deputy who had been expelled from the Chamber, Béranger the poet and Géricault. One day when we had been speaking of Géricault, who was dying, Bro said to me—
"Come and see his picture la Méduse, and the painter himself, before he dies, so that you can at least say you have seen one of the greatest painters who ever lived."
I took care not to refuse, as will readily be believed, and the meeting was arranged for the following day. You ask what Géricault died of? Listen, and observe how, at every turn, fate seemed to put a cross against his name. He possessed some fortune, an income of about twelve thousand livres; he loved horses and painted them admirably. One day, as he was mounting a horse, he noticed that the buckle of his breeches belt had come off: he tied the two ends of the strap together and set off at a gallop. His horse threw him, and the knot of the strap bruised two vertebrae of the spinal cord as he fell. He was under treatment at the time for a disease which settled in this place; the wound never healed, and Géricault, the hope of a whole century, died of one of the longest and most painful diseases there is—decay of the spine. When we called upon him, he was busy drawing his left hand with his right.
"What on earth are you after, Géricault?" asked the colonel.
"You see, my dear fellow," said the dying man, "I am turning myself to account. My right hand will never find a better anatomical study than my left hand can offer it, and the egoist is taking advantage of the fact."
And, indeed, so thin was Géricault that one could see the bones and the muscles of his hand through the skin, as they are seen in plaster casts used for models by art students.
"My dear friend," asked Bro, "how did you bear your operation yesterday?"
"Very well ... it was a very curious experience. Just imagine, those butchers were cutting me about for ten minutes."