"'Oh! I know how you refuse like favors! Well, allow me to tell you that you were in the wrong, for the air composed for the thing seems to me more dramatic than the one you chose; since circumstances are favorable to it, and that it need not disturb you, I will sing you the Vieux Caporal.' And I sang.
"'Yes, you are right, it is very well; sing me the second verse. … Why, it is charming; sing it all to me; I like to hear you sing.'
"At the end of the song, his face had changed its character; his eyelids were sustained, and let me see his bright eyes, which seemed to be the light of that fine mind. I kept him in this atmosphere which made him young again; I made him live in the past; I spoke to him of Manuel, his friend. Ah! then, it was a veritable resurrection. We were then in 1850, but through the enchantment of memory, he returned to the struggles of the Restoration of 1820, thirty years' difference; well, I saw them disappear as by magic. I saw this genius revive! He would get up, walk about, come back to his seat, speaking of them, of the two hundred and twenty-one, as though they were still there; the arrows of Charles X., the aim reached, the plaudits of the crowds—he seemed to hear it all. Béranger was before me. All I had to do was to copy. …
"I have not been able to resist the temptation of relating an anecdote, doubtless too flattering for me; but on reflection, I have been so tormented by fools, that it is excusable in me to take comfort in the praises of a great mind."
Now let us turn once more to some of his practical instructions. Of color he speaks thus:
"It must not be thought that he who reproduces color exactly is a co
"Like the true draughtsman, the true colorist purifies, embellishes.
"If he is a true artist, he will bring in his coloring all the laws of art: Discrimination, development, idealization.
"I cannot help thinking of our critics who, in their innocence, always make sharply defined divisions of colorists and draughtsmen; being persuaded that a draughtsman cannot be a colorist, and that a colorist can never be a draughtsman. They carry this so far that when a picture seems to them detestable in color, they feel compelled to find great qualities of drawing in it; but if, on the contrary, a work is presented, with incontestable beauties of drawing, it is necessary, and you will never be able to convince them of the contrary, that the picture should be wanting in color.