Among Fromentin’s pupils was Cormon, an intractable pupil with a marked individuality; yet while he ignored his professional authority, he always proclaimed him, and with real feeling, the most intelligent of masters and the most loyal of men. Fromentin did not exactly conduct a regular art-school. He had gathered around him seven or eight young artists, in whom he foresaw a prosperous future: Gervex, extremely brilliant, Thirion, the most temperamental of them all, Lhermitte and Humbert, who was the master’s favourite. Fromentin saw in Humbert a second self, more fortunate in having a chance to learn at the outset the indispensable rules of his craft, and therefore capable later on of achieving works which he himself could never carry out. Without effort, he won the adoration of his pupils. With an eloquence which came from his heart quite as much as from his brain, he preached to them the doctrine of sincere labour, of disinterested ideals, and of reverence for the past because it has produced the present. He had a combative spirit. He never hesitated to express his opinion about works or about men, since the nobility of his character forbade that he should be suspected of maliciousness or envy. Certain works of his time, that are still discussed and that our own age has consecrated, were displeasing to him: Millet’s, for example. He professed a profound esteem for the man, but he did not admit the technical value of the artist nor the importance of his ideas. For a long time Fromentin’s rank as a painter was disputed. He proceeded peaceably on his way toward fortune and glory. His literary successes confirmed and enhanced his triumphs as a painter. Through his books his pictures became known and admired by the general public. In 1859, he obtained a First Class Medal and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. The emperor, Napoleon III., invited him to Compiègne. In 1869, his election as Officer of the Legion of Honor followed upon his exhibition of the _Fantasia in Algeria_ and _The Halt of the Muleteers_. In 1868, he exhibited a very strange and disconcerting picture: _Male and Female Centaurs practising at Archery_. He wished to show by means of this work, which evoked much comment and criticism, that “the equestrian statue is the last word in human statuary.” “Mingle,” he wrote, “man and horse, give to the rest of the body the combined attributes of alertness and vigour, and you have a being which is supremely strong, thinking and acting, brave and swift, free, and yet docile.” Fromentin’s aristocratic instincts extended from men to things, and even to animals. It was he who in a certain sense discovered the horse, the Arab horse, fine and free, poet of the desert and the sun quite as much as his master. When Fromentin shows him to us with his long silvery tail and his mane quivering like waves, one would say that in the swift flight of his course the artist had lent him wings. “Nevertheless,” writes one critic, “in