Three portraits in one frame
Now—judging by myself at least—next to the appreciation of the work of great men, that which rouses the most curiosity is their method of working. There are museums where one can study all the phases of human gestation; conservatories where one can almost by the aid of the naked eye alone follow the development of plants and flowers. Tell me, is it not just as curious to watch the varying phenomena of the working of the intellect? Do you not think that it is as interesting to see what is passing in the brain of man, especially if that man be an artist like Vernet, or Delaroche or Delacroix; a scientist like Arago, Humboldt or Berzélius; a poet like Goethe, Hugo or Lamartine, as it is to look through a glass shade and see what is happening inside a bee-hive?
One day I remarked to one of my misanthropic friends that, amongst animals, the brain of the ant most resembled that of man.
"Your statement is not very complimentary to the ant!" replied the misanthrope.
I am not entirely of my friend's way of thinking. I believe, on the contrary, that the brain of man is, of all brains, the most interesting to examine. Now, as it is the brain—so far, at least, as our present knowledge permits us to dogmatise—which creates thought, thought which controls action and action which produces deeds, we can boldly say that to study character, to examine the execution of works which are the productions of temperament, is to study the brain. We have described Horace Vernet's physical appearance: small, thin, slight, pleasant to look at, good to listen to, with his unusual hair, his thick eyebrows, his blue eyes, his long nose, his smiling mouth beneath its long moustache, and his beard cut to a point. He is, we added, all life and movement. Vernet, at the end of his career, will, indeed, be one who has lived a full life, and, when he stops, he will have gone farthest; thanks to the post, to horses, camels, steamboats and the railroad, he has certainly, by now (and he is sixty-five), travelled farther than the Wandering Jew! True, the Wandering Jew goes on foot, his five sous not permitting him rapid ways of locomotion, and his pride declining gratuitous locomotion. Vernet, we say, had already travelled farther than the Wandering Jew had done in a thousand years; his work itself is a sort of journey: we saw him paint the Smala with a scaffold mounting as high as the ceiling and terraces extending the whole length of the room; it was curious to see him, going, coming, climbing up, descending, only stopping at each station for five minutes, as one stops at Osnières for five minutes, at Creil for ten minutes and at Valenciennes for half an hour—and, in the midst of all this, gossiping, smoking, fencing, riding on horseback, on mules, on camels, in tilburys, in droschkys, in palanquins, relating his travels, planning fresh ones, impalpable, becoming apparently almost invisible: he is flame, water, smoke—a Proteus! Then there was another odd thing about Vernet: he would start for Rome as he would set out for Saint-Germain; for China as if for Rome. I have been at his house six or seven times; the first time he was there—the oddness of the thing fascinated me; the second time he was in Cairo; the third, in St. Petersburg; the fourth, in Constantinople; the fifth, in Warsaw; and the sixth, in Algiers. The seventh time—namely, the day before yesterday—I found him at the Institute, where he had come after following the hunt at Fontainebleau, and was giving himself a day's rest by varnishing a little eighteen-inch picture representing an Arab astride an ass with a still bleeding lion-skin for saddle-cloth, which had just been taken from the body of the animal; doing it in as sure and easy a manner as though he were but thirty. The ass is crossing a stream, unconscious of the terrible burden it bears, and one can almost hear the stream prattling over the pebbles; the man, with his head in the air, looks absently at the blue sky which appears through the leaves; the flowers with their glowing colours twining up the tree-trunks and falling down like trumpets of mother-of-pearl or purple rosettes. This Arab, Vernet had actually come across, sitting calm and indifferent upon his ass, fresh from killing and skinning the lion. This is how it had happened. The Arab was working in a little field near a wood;—a wood is always a bad neighbour in Algeria;—a slave woman was sitting twenty paces from him, with his child. Suddenly, the woman uttered a cry ... A lion was by her side. The Arab flew for his gun, but the woman shouted out to him—
"Let me alone!"
I am mistaken, it was not a slave woman, but the mother who called out thus. He let her alone. She took her child, put it between her knees and, turning to the lion, she said to it, shaking her fist at the animal—
"Ah, you coward! to attack a defenceless woman and child! You think to terrify me; but I know you. Go and attack my husband instead, who is down there with a gun ... Go, I tell you! You dare not; you wretch! It is you who are afraid! Go, you jackal! Off with you, you wolf, you hyæna! You have a lion's skin on your back but you are no lion!"
The lion withdrew, but, unfortunately, it met the Arab's mother, who was bringing him his dinner. It leapt on the old woman and began to eat her. At the cries of his mother the Arab ran up with his gun, and, whilst the lion was quietly cracking the bones and flesh with its teeth, he put the muzzle of his gun into the animal's ear and killed it outright. In conclusion, the Arab did not seem to be any the sadder for being an orphan, or in better spirits for having killed a lion. Vernet told me this whilst putting the finishing touches to his picture, which ought to be completed by now.