but long
before that he had ceased to work. "I cannot add much to my reputation,
and do not care to add to my store," he said. In 1855, the world
positively rang with his name, but I doubt whether this universal
admiration gave him much satisfaction. He exhibited more than fifty
works at the Exposition Universelle of that year, a good many of which
had been rejected by the "hanging committees" of previous salons. True
to his system, he rarely, perhaps never directly, called the past
judgment in question, but he lived and died a dissatisfied man. Unlike
Mirabeau, who had not the courage to be unpopular, Decamps derived no
gratification from popularity.

I knew Eugene Delacroix better than any of the others in the marvellous
constellation of painters of that period, and our friendship lasted till
the day of his death, in December, 1863. I was also on very good terms
with Horace Vernet; but though the latter was perhaps a more lively
companion, the stronger attraction was towards the former. I was one of
the few friends whom he tolerated whilst at work. Our friendship lasted
for nearly a quarter of a century, and during that time there was never
a single unpleasantness between us, though I am bound to admit that
Delacroix' temper was very uncertain. Among all those men who had a
profound, ineradicable contempt for the bourgeois, I have only known one
who despised him even to a greater extent than he; it was Gustave
Flaubert. Though Delacroix' manners were perfect, he could scarcely be
polite to the middle classes. With the exception of Dante and
Shakespeare, Delacroix was probably the greatest poet that ever lived; a
greater poet undoubtedly than Victor Hugo, in that he was absolutely
indifferent to the material results of his genius. If Shakespeare and
the author of the "Inferno" had painted, they would have painted like
Delacroix; his "Sardanapale" is the Byronic poem, condensed and
transferred to canvas.

Long as I knew Delacroix, I had never been able to make out whether he
was tall or short, and most of his friends and acquaintances were
equally puzzled. As we stood around his coffin many were surprised at
its length. His was decidedly a curious face, at times stony in its
immobility, at others quivering from the tip of chin to the juncture of
the eyebrows, and with a peculiar movement of the nostrils that was
almost pendulum-like in its regularity. It gave one the impression of
their being assailed by some unpleasa