Gérôme had always wished for a sudden and brusque death, "without physic and without night-cap." He was spared both physical and moral decline. At the age of seventy-nine he climbed the stairs, four steps at a time, and sprang upon moving omnibuses running. He died suddenly of a cerebral congestion, on his return from a dinner which he had attended together with his colleagues of the Institut, January 10, 1904. THE ARTIST'S WORK It is difficult to enumerate in detail all the works of Gérôme, whose originality and energy were inexhaustible. Only a short time before his death he declared that with the help of the sketches contained in his cupboards he had material enough to keep him busy for twenty-five years longer. Instead of attempting to draw up a chronological list of his paintings, which would be only approximately correct, even if limited to the more important, it is more profitable to study this conscientious artist under his principal aspects. Although he made some talented attempts, Gérôme neither was nor wished to be a portrait painter, any more than a painter of modern life. He had, however, as has been pointed out, all the necessary qualities for this type which demands so much precision and assurance. In _The Emperor Napoleon III Receiving the Siamese Ambassadors at the Palace of Fontainebleau_, now in the museum at Versailles, there are eighty portraits. The artist has represented himself, side by side with Meissonier, and the story is told that a certain general accorded him a sitting of only ten minutes. Besides the large and somewhat sombre portrait of Rachel, which adorns the Stairway of Artists at the Comédie-Française, and which was painted from existing likenesses and from memory, there is scarcely anything else to cite than the portrait of his brother while a student in the Polytechnic School, a _Head of a Woman_ (1853, at the museum of Nantes), those of M. Leblond, at Vesoul, mentioned by M. Guillaumin, of M. A. T. (1864), of Cléry, the great lawyer, and of Charles Garnier, the celebrated architect of the Opéra. As a sculptor, Gérôme has left some admirable busts, among others those of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, bequeathed to the National Museum, of _General Cambriels_, of _Henri Lavoix_, the _Monument of Paul Baudry_ destined for La Roche-sur-Yon, and, most important of all, the _Equestrian Statue of the Duc d'Aumale_, which is now to be seen at Chantilly, and the model for which is at the museum of Besançon.