compatriots, he likewise felt the prejudice of race. "The glory of the
colonel of the Empire and friendship for that good Florent," as he said,
"covered all."

Poor and good Florent! That marriage was to him the romance of his youth
realized. He had desired it since the first week that Maitland had given
him the cordial handshake which had bound them. To live in the shadow of
his friend, become at once his brother-in-law and his ideal--he did not
dream of any other solution of his own destiny. The faults of Maitland,
developed by age, fortune, and success--we recall the triumph of his
'Femme en violet et en jeune' in the Salon of 1884--found Florent as
blind as at the epoch when they played cricket together in the fields at
Beaumont. Dorsenne very justly diagnosed there one of those hypnotisms of
admiration such as artists, great or small, often inspire around them.
But the author, who always generalized too quickly, had not comprehended
that the admirer with Florent was grafted on a friend worthy to be
painted by La Fontaine or by Balzac, the two poets of friendship, the one
in his sublime and tragic Cousin Pons, the other in that short but fine
fable, in which is this verse, one of the most tender in the French
language:

Vous metes, en dormant, un peu triste apparu.

Florent did not love Lincoln because he admired him; he admired him
because he loved him. He was not wrong in considering the painter as one
of the most gifted who had appeared for thirty years. But Lincoln would
have had neither the bold elegance of his drawing, nor the vivid strength
of coloring, nor the ingenious finesse of imagination if the other had
lent himself with less ardor to the service of the work and to the glory
of the artist. When Lincoln wanted to travel he found his brother-in-law
the most diligent of couriers. When he had need of a model he had only to
say a word for Florent to set about finding one. Did Lincoln exhibit at
Paris or London, Florent took charge of the entire proceeding--seeing the
journalists and picture dealers, composing letters of thanks for the
articles, in a handwriting so like that of the painter that the latter
had only to sign it. Lincoln desired to return to Rome. Florent had
discovered the house on the Rue Leopardi, and he settled it even before
Maitland, then in Egypt, had finished a large study begun at the moment
of the departure of the other.

Florent had, by virtue of the affection felt for his b