tween two of their companions who have
quarrelled at a masked ball. The ground is covered with a light fall
of snow; the bare branches of the trees weave their network across the
gray sky, and in the distance we see the carriages that have brought
the disputants to the field. The duel is over. One of the men, dressed
in the costume of Pierrot, the loose white trousers and slippers, the
baggy white shirt, and white skull-cap, falls, mortally wounded, into
the arms of his second: the pallor of coming death masked by the
white-painted face. The other combatant, a Mohawk Indian (once a
staple character at every masked-ball in Paris: curious survival of
the popularity of Cooper's novels), is led wounded off the field by a
friend dressed as Harlequin. Gerome in this striking picture showed
for the first time that talent as a story-teller to which he is so
largely indebted for his reputation. Whatever his subject may be, it
is always set forth in the clearest manner, so that everyone may
understand the story without the need of an interpreter.

Leaving out of view the few pictures he painted illustrating passages
in Napoleon's career, it may be said that Gerome's taste led him away
from scenes of modern life; for even his many oriental subjects so
relate to forms of life belonging in reality to the past, that they
make no exception to the statement. He did not therefore follow up
"The Duel" with other comments on the follies of modern society--for
in the temper of that time this picture, like Couture's "Roman Orgie"
and Millet's "Man with the Hoe," was looked upon as a satire and a
warning, and owed its popularity as much to this conviction on the
part of the public as to its pictorial merits--but returned to antique
times, and showed in his treatment of themes from that source an
equal, if not a greater power to interest the public.

Gerome's two pictures, the "Ave Caesar! Morituri te Salutant," "Hail,
Caesar! Those about to die, salute Thee," and "The Gladiators," are so
universally known as to need no description. Whatever criticism may be
made upon them, they will always remain interesting to the world at
large; from their subject, from the way in which the discoveries of
archaeology are made familiar, and, not least, from the impression they
make of the artist's own strong interest in what he had to say. In
both pictures he succeeded in showing the Colosseum as no longer a
ruin, but as, so to speak, a living place people