Louis Blanc’s is a character which it is difficult to resist loving, so frank, generous, simple, and whole-souled was he. If he erred, it was largely because he attributed to others that warmth and devotion for common interests which he experienced, and that high point of honor which guided him. His tender solicitude and affection for his wife was beautiful, while his love for his brother Charles, the writer on art, has been celebrated far and wide. It is even said that his diminutive size was due to his sacrifices in behalf of the younger brother, to whom he gave the largest share of the lunch which they carried to school. A sympathetic chord seemed to connect them, for when Charles was ill in the summer of 1882, Louis, to whom the news had not been communicated, said to his friends, “Charles is ill: he is in danger.” So it proved, for Charles soon died. The affliction was a heavy blow to the surviving brother, and probably hastened his own death, which happened only a few months later. “Charles Blanc was a kind of complement to Louis. The delicacy of his (Charles’s) intellectual nature was a source of ever-new delight to the politician and man of the people, whose heart throbbed for all the woes and wants of humanity, and whose life was devoted to action rather than to the contemplation of art.”[100] This intimate affection had been noticed long before, and Alexander Dumas had them in mind when he wrote his “Les Frères Corses”—“The Corsican Brothers.” Louis’s purity of character and his honesty of purpose were remarked by every acquaintance. Mr. Smalley[101] applies to him what Emerson said of Charles Sumner: “He was the whitest soul I ever knew:” and continues: “If ever a man lived free from stain, it was he who has just died. All his life long the fierce light of passionate political and still more passionate social controversies beat upon him. He made innumerable enemies; he was the object of innumerable calumnies. Not one of his enemies hated the _man_, not one of the calumnies touched his private worth.” Karl Blind, his friend, thus describes his personal appearance: “A very small, but elegantly formed man; of almost Napoleonic features, as may be common to many Corsicans; entirely beardless, which was rare in the revolutionary days. The glance of his dark, prominent eyes, brilliant, almost sparkling; his thick, dark-brown hair, long and straight; the color of his countenance rather dark. Notwithstanding his short figure—for he was not taller than Thiers—an impressive appearance.”[102]