nt smell, and, one day, when
Delacroix was in a light mood, I remarked upon it. "You are perfectly
right," he replied; "I always fancy there is corruption in the air, but
it is not necessarily of a material kind."

Be this as it may, he liked to surround himself with flowers, and his
studio was often like a hothouse, apart from the floral decorations. The
temperature was invariably very high, and even then he would shiver now
and again. I have always had an idea that Delacroix had Indian blood in
his veins, which idea was justified to a certain extent by his
appearance, albeit that there was no tradition to that effect in his
family. But it was neither the black hair, the olive skin, nor the
peculiar formation of the features which forced that conclusion upon me;
it was the character of Delacroix, which for years and years I
endeavoured to read thoroughly, without succeeding to any appreciable
degree. There was one trait that stood out so distinctly that the merest
child might have perceived it--his honesty; but the rest was apparently
a mass of contradiction. It is difficult to imagine a poet, and
especially a painter-poet, without an absorbing passion for some
woman--not necessarily for the same woman; to my knowledge Delacroix had
no such passion, for one can scarcely admit that Jenny Leguillou, his
housekeeper, could have inspired such a feeling. True, when I first knew
Delacroix he was over forty, but those who had known him at twenty and
twenty-five never hinted at any romantic attachment or even at a sober,
homely affection. And assuredly a man of forty is not invulnerable in
that respect. And yet, the woman who positively bewitched, one after
another, so many of Delacroix' eminent contemporaries, Jules Sandeau,
Alfred de Musset, Michel de Bourges, Chopin, Pierre Leroux, Cabet,
Lammenais, etc., had no power over him.

Paul de Musset, perhaps as a kind of revenge for the wrongs suffered by
his brother, once gave an amusing description of the miscarried attempt
of George Sand "to net" Eugene Delacroix.

It would appear that the painter had shown signs of yielding to the
charms which few men were able to withstand, or, at any rate, that
George Sand fancied she could detect such signs. Whether it was from a
wish on George Sand's part to precipitate matters or to nip the thing in
the bud, it would be difficult to determine, but it is certain that she
pursued her usual tactics--that is, she endeavoured to provoke an