his
most hurried crayons, pen-and-ink sketches, and aquarelles Guys is
ever interesting. He has a magnetic touch that arrests attention and
atones for technical shortcomings. Abbreviation is his watchword; his
drawings are a species of shorthand notations made at red-hot tempo,
yet catching the soul of a situation. He repeats himself continually,
but, as M. Grappe says, is never monotonous. In love with movement,
with picturesque massing, and broad simple colour schemes, he
naturally gravitated to battle-fields. In Europe society out of doors
became his mania. Rotten Row, in the Bois, at Brighton or at
Baden-Baden, the sinuous fugues of his pencil reveal to succeeding
generations how the great world once enjoyed itself or bored itself to
death. No wonder Thackeray admired Guys. They were kindred spirits;
both recognised and portrayed the snob mundane.

As he grew older Guys became an apparition in the life of Paris. The
smash-up of the Empire destroyed the beloved world he knew so well.
Poor, his principal pleasure was in memory; if he couldn't actually
enjoy the luxury of the rich he could reproduce its images on his
drawing-pad. The whilom dandy and friend of Baudelaire went about
dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding
acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's
reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to
all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast
this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did
not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five he began to go
down-hill. His habits had never been those of a prudent citizen, and
as his earning powers grew less some imp of the perverse entered his
all too solitary life. With this change of habits came a change of
theme. Henceforth he drew _filles_, the outcasts, the scamps and
convicts and the poor wretches of the night. He is now a forerunner of
Toulouse-Lautrec and an entire school. This side of his career
probably caused Dr. Muther to compare him with Paul Verlaine.
Absinthe, the green fairy of so many poets and artists, was no
stranger to Guys.

In 1885, after dining with Nadar, his most faithful friend, Guys was
run over in the Rue du Havre and had his legs crushed. He was taken to
the Maison Dubois, where he lived eight years longer, dying at the
venerable age of eighty-seven, though far from being a venerable
person. Astonishing vitality